OAKLAND, CA — Can a company take on sustainability initiatives -- and promote their green credentials -- while also lobbying behind the scenes to halt, slow or weaken environmental legislation?

That was the dilemma faced by members of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in 2009: Companies working toward smaller carbon footprints found themselves under scrutiny for their membership in the business lobbying group, which opposed the climate legislation then working its way through Congress.

A bill ultimately failed to pass the Senate and the hubbub largely disappeared, but the example illustrates the tightrope companies must walk to balance lobbying efforts with CSR initiatives. The situation forced some like Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) to take a hard look at whether the groups with which they were associated shared the same values.

"We decided to take a step back and say at this time, our association with the Chamber was not aligned on such an important issue," Melissa Lavinson, PG&E's director of federal environmental affairs and corporate social responsibility, said during a workshop at the 2011 Ceres Conference in Oakland this week. "We thought we should just part ways at that point and reassess at another time."

Lavinson and other business leaders explored the dilemma and challenges of aligning their corporate social responsibility stances with public policy or lobbying efforts. It comes down to companies backing up their green talk with action -- or fear the potential backlash.

A couple of recent cases in point:

• Environmental groups called out American Airlines and United on Wednesday for promoting their environmental records during Earth Day last month while also suing to block the European Union for holding "all airlines accountable for their global warming pollution resulting from flights to, from and within the European Union." The companies are reportedly lobbying U.S. government to rule the law invalid. 

• American Electric Power scored kudos this week, earning a first runner-up nod for its most recent CSR report in the Ceres-ACCA North American Awards for Sustainability Reporting. The company also received flak for its efforts to stall some EPA emissions regulations, prompting a new ominous-sounding campaign by several environmental groups, who are asking the power generator "to publicly name the number of lives it wants Congress to sacrifice to give AEP and other polluters delays and rollbacks of national limits on toxic air pollution."

But it isn't always easy to align sustainability and public policy positions, especially when you consider a company like VF Corporation, a diverse apparel company whose brands run the gamut from The North Face and Jansport to 7 Jeans and John Varvatos. The North Face has been an active player in sustainability for many years, but its approach may not effectively apply to VF's other brands, which have diverging interests and customer bases.

"We're looking at what it actually means for this $8 billion company to actually become more sustainable," said Letitia Webster, VF Brands' director of corporate sustainability. "That's really the business challenge when you think about policy and policy changes, is how do you find the common denominator that we can all rally around as a company, and then we can actually communicate and address policy that makes sense for our business."