Joel Makower

Joel Makower is chairman and executive editor of Greener World Media, producer of GreenBiz.com and other websites, events, and business information services. He is author of more than a dozen books, including Strategies for the Green Economy.

For 20 years, Joel Makower (www.makower.com) has been a well-respected voice on business, the environment, and the bottom line. He is executive editor of the acclaimed website GreenBiz.com and its sister sites, conferences, and research, all produced by Greener World Media, of which he is co-founder and chairman; he also serves as a senior strategies for GreenOrder, a sustainability management consultancy. Joel is author of more than a dozen book; his newest, Strategies for the Green Economy, was published by McGraw-Hill. He also writes “Two Steps Forward” (www.readjoel.com), a popular blog on green business, clean technology, and green marketing. The Associated Press has called him “The guru of green business practices.”

ULE 880: The World Weighs In
By Joel Makower, August 23, 2010
We've just reached the halfway point in the public comment period for ULE 880 -- Sustainability for Manufacturing Organizations -- the company-level sustainability standard my colleagues and I...
Introducing ULE 880 - Sustainability for Manufacturing Organizations
By Joel Makower, August 02, 2010
Today, a new sustainability standard for companies is being released for public comment: ULE 880 - Sustainability for Manufacturing Organization....
What Color is the Triple Bottom Line?
By Joel Makower, July 26, 2010
What do you call someone committed to sustainability?...
Walmart and the Sustainability Index: One Year Later
By Joel Makower, July 19, 2010
The retail giant’s sustainability dreams don’t appear to have diminished, though it's clear the company has been humbled by the fiendish complexity of all it has set out to do....
Shanghai: A City of Two Tales
By Joel Makower, July 08, 2010
After a week at the Shanghai Expo, I've seen competing visions of what the future looks like....
The 'Living Principles' for Designing Our World
By Joel Makower, June 24, 2010
A new framework, "The Living Principles," aims to help bring sustainability to design in all its many forms, from products to companies to systems of commerce....
GreenBiz.com: 10 Years After
By Joel Makower, June 21, 2010
GreenBiz.com, which launched 10 years ago today, has come a long way since June 21, 2000, both the website and the world of green business, though for all of our success, we've only just begun to...
Who's the Biggest Greenwasher of Them All?
By Joel Makower, June 17, 2010
For all the sound and fury over deceptive, disingenuous corporations seeking to falsely create a green image, that the biggest offenders of greenwash aren't companies. And they're not politicians...
A New Sustainability Standard for Business
By Joel Makower, May 28, 2010
Today, the veil of secrecy is being lifted on a project in which my colleagues and I have been engaged for several years: The creation of a global sustainability standard for business....
How to Win Green Friends and Influence People
By Joel Makower, May 02, 2010
In the wake of Earth Day's hype-fest, here are three new reports on marketing and communications....

Green Business and Cleantech Find Common Purpose: The State of Green Business 2010
By Joel Makower, February 16, 2010
After many years of operating in separate worlds, sustainable business practices and green technology are finding common cause for the greater good....
Packaging Companies Rethink the Box: The State of Green Business 2010
By Joel Makower, February 15, 2010
Packaging issues have been of concern ever since the advent of "green" as a business issue, and in 2009 a number of genuine packaging innovations appeared to think outside the box and...
Food Companies Put Their Supply Chains on the Menu: The State of Green Business 2010
By Joel Makower, February 12, 2010
The sustainability of food hasn't traditionally been much of a mainstream consumer issue, but the practices of Big Food have come under attack by activists, and companies are learning that...
Toxics Become a Strategic Issue: The State of Green Business 2010
By Joel Makower, February 11, 2010
The toxicity of products and manufacturing processes has been a concern ever since Silent Spring was published 48 years ago, but a confluence of events and trends in 2009 pushed toxics further...
IT Aims to Save the World: The State of Green Business 2010
By Joel Makower, February 10, 2010
IT companies are backing up their claims that technology can more than offset its own carbon footprint by developing a seemingly impressive array of capabilities to make the world not just more...
Energy Efficiency Gains Horsepower: The State of Green Business 2010
By Joel Makower, February 09, 2010
As managing greenhouse gas emissions approaches the importance of simply managing energy bills, a new generation of technology is making it easier for firms to pull the plug on wasted power....
Greener Fleets Hit the Streets: The State of Green Business 2010
By Joel Makower, February 08, 2010
While individual car buyers stayed out of showrooms with disastrous results, corporate and institutional buyers proved a bright green spot for the industry with increased purchases of hybrid-...
Green Innovation Becomes a Great Idea: The State of Green Business 2010
By Joel Makower, February 05, 2010
As the parade of progress marches inexorably forward, a growing number of innovations have a distinctly green tinge, significantly reducing material, chemical, water and energy inputs....
Green Marketing Gets Even Murkier: The State of Green Business 2010
By Joel Makower, February 04, 2010
Even in the midst of the deepest recession of the last 20 years, shoppers from São Paolo to Shanghai were ready to shell out more cash for eco-friendly products. Is the tide turning for the...
The State of Green Business 2010: Alive and Kicking
By Joel Makower, February 03, 2010
Kicking off the release of the third annual State of Green Business report, we present the first of our look at the 10 biggest trends in the greening of mainstream business: Radical...

What's Happened to Earth Day?
By Joel Makower, April 22, 2010
Looking back 40 years, it sometimes feels little has changed: Earth Day seems largely an exercise in symbolism....
Brainstorm Green's Good Fortune
By Joel Makower, April 19, 2010
Hats off to Fortune magazine, whose Brainstorm Green conference last week was one of the best events I’ve ever attended....
Earth Day and the Polling of America, 2010: Me First, Planet Later
By Joel Makower, April 12, 2010
April brings the latest crop of pre-Earth Day surveys. Spoiler alert: It's not a pretty picture....
When It Comes to Cars, ICE Is Still Hot
By Joel Makower, April 05, 2010
If you were to believe the mainstream media, the future of transportation is electric. But the conventional gas-powered internal combustion engine (ICE) won't be going away any time soon....
The Green Consumer, 1990-2010
By Joel Makower, March 29, 2010
The author of the 1990 book "The Green Consumer" (and the founder of GreenBiz.com) looks back at 20 years of green consumerism and ponders whether the whole exercise is a distraction....
Clean Technology's Unstoppable Energy
By Joel Makower, March 22, 2010
A new study reveals clean energy's impressive growth, even more remarkable given the flagging economy, low energy prices, and the lack of climate legislation....
A Tale of Two Countries: Japan, China, and the Low-Carbon Economy
By Joel Makower, March 15, 2010
Japan's business leaders are focused on cutting emissions, though they have about the same level of a roadmap as Americans; their neighbor to the southwest, however, has quickly moved into the...
Toyota and the Future of Green Marketing
By Joel Makower, February 16, 2010
What does Toyota's travails mean to green marketing? That's a question that seems ripe these days, as the leading Japanese auto maker gets a comeuppance for its allegedly serious safety defects....
Financing Our Cleantech Future
By Joel Makower, January 18, 2010
Bill Green changed jobs recently. Why is that news? If you're concerned about the future of clean technology, Green's career move warrants more than just passing interest....
The Green Business Decade in Review
By Joel Makower, January 04, 2010
As we view the whatever-it's-called decade in the rearview mirror, it's tempting to assess what's transpired since the good old days of Y2K to see how far we've come — and how far we haven't...

FEATURED

What’s Your Green Business Resolution for 2010?
By Joel Makower, January 04, 2010
We wanted to know what kinds of commitments — formal or informal — people were making in their companies....
Is There Hope for Business after Copenhagen? Climate
By Joel Makower, December 21, 2009
I've been trying over the past few days to find some Hopenhagen in Copenhagen — that is, to see some positive outcome to the COP15 climate summit just concluded. The two-week event ended...
Companies Should Focus on Healthcare as Much as Environment, Says Survey
By Joel Makower, December 21, 2009
Americans believe that companies should be at least as actively involved in maintaining and improving health as it has been in maintaining and improving the environment, and say they are more...

Green Confidence Index

Green Confidence Index A monthly snapshot of Americans’ attitudes about and confidence in their leaders and institutions, nationally and locally, as well as in their own understanding of issues and their willingness to make green purchasing choices.