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Go Green @ Work

After several months in the oven, I am thrilled to announce the launch of my new venture, Viridus, a community for business professionals to discuss and advance corporate sustainability. 

Viridus is a practical "how to manual" for issues everyone faces at work.  Our belief is that everyone has a "green collar" job and it is how you do your job that actually makes it green or not.  An accounting department working on reducing paper billing, an engineering group designing for recyclability, a purchasing department seeking to reduce the ghg footprint of their supply chain, a facilities department looking to reduce energy or water consumption and especially those who work in corporate sustainability will all find value at Viridus.

Viridus is a members-only site with 100% user-generated-content.  We feel that an environment of business professionals who have responsibility for the sustainability of their organization is particularly valuable.  This way members don't have to worry about being solicited by vendors, press, regulators, NGOs, etc.

We are strongly committed to improving the sustainability of businesses everywhere and look forward to building the Viridus community.  We are currently in invite only private beta.  If you would like to request an invite, please sign up here.  In the meantime, please feel free to send us feedback, comments or questions.

And lastly, over the next few weeks I'll be posting more on my transition from EIR back to entrepreneur, so stay tuned!

You Already Have An Eco Job!

I've been following the growth of the industry of "corporate sustainability."  That's basically the business of making a company greener (among other things including being more socially responsible).  Over 100 US companies now have a "chief sustainability officer" and it's becoming common place for businesses to think about greenness at every level.  That said, most people don't really think of their job as having a "green component."  It is interesting to see that when companies create a "green project" they usually get a deluge of employee requests to join or help.  Often the response from the project leader is "we don't have any more openings," but Dave Douglas, VP of Eco Responsibility at Sun totally nailed it with his article, "You Already Have An Eco Job!" In it he makes the case that every employee in every function has a part to play in improving their company's sustainability.