"Empire of Dirt" By niXerKG. Creative Commons license.

After reading one too many reports that corporations were going “zero waste,” I began to wonder what this means for landfills. Could we really be headed toward a world without trash dumps and Superfund sites?

Considering that there’s possibly as much as 30 tons of industrial trash for every ton of municipal solid waste, we are talking a lot of trash; though corporations have even trashed the word and now consider their castoffs the fodder of new “profit centers.” But what happens to these newly branded “resources” after they’ve been “reduced, reused or recycled”? I learned the answer is far from straightforward. Read the story on Alternet.org.

I was on Wisconsin Public Radio this morning discussing my new E Magazine cover story on what happens after little, trusted and/or organic companies get bought out by big corporations. Can they be trusted?

You can download the segment here.  Or click here to listen.

“Sellouts” – that’s pretty much how the founders of trusted little and/or organic outfits tend to be seen after they sell to corporate America. While that conclusion is often true, it turns out to be a bit more complicated. I looked at the question from several perspectives in  my package of stories for E Magazine. It was fantastic to have the time to take a serious look at the various factors and pressures facing these companies. Check them out!

The Big Green Buyout
Countless Green Brands Have Been Snapped Up By Big Corporations. Can They Still Be Trusted?

Building a Responsible Brand
Advice from Four Green CEOs

The Little Company That Could
Organic Cereal Maker Nature’s Path Has Charted Its Own Course and Thrived

When researching my book, “Green, Inc.,” I was floored to learn that the leaders of large environmental groups receive salaries that put them in the top 1 percent of U.S. taxpayers.  Add in fringe benefits, expense accounts and travel budgets, and the top brass at World Wildlife Fund, The Nature Conservancy, Environmental Defense Fund and other groups make between $400,000 and $1 million a year.

Those astronomical salaries are part of a paradox that has hamstrung U.S. environmentalism for a number of years now: While the environmental “industry” is bigger, better funded and more professional than ever, growing numbers of critics say its professionalization has undercut what made it a “movement” in the first place. And, not just any movement but one powerful enough to bring us clean air and water acts and other environmental protection laws we often take for granted today. The drive to become Washington insiders and woo corporate sponsors appears to have eroded power of these groups to speak for the public and get solutions to pressing problems. But it’s sort of a chicken and egg question: Are the ridiculously high salaries the cause or merely and effect of this paradox?

Of course, there are other, even more pertinent questions: Are these top-earning environmentalists capable of being watchdogs of the public good? Are their groups in a position to call polluting companies to account, even as they vie for donations from corporate moguls and the corporations themselves?

Last week, when the White House released information on staff salaries, I was struck again about how absurd it is that the country’s most influential environmental leaders make more than another guy in a public interest job, the President of the United States. Barack Obama earns $400,000 a year, according to this Washington Post article. That’s about half of Steven Sanderson’s annual take at the Wildlife Conservation Union. Sanderson primary responsibility: running the Bronx Zoo. Obama is a leader of the free world. Anybody else see a problem here?

My latest magazine feature, a package of stories on corporate sustainability, is now online! It examines the booming “corporate responsibility” movement and asks whether companies that claim to be good citizens are backing up those flowery words with meaningful actions. Too often, it’s not the case. But there are some encouraging examples too.

The pieces for Miller-McCune Magazine include a main story, “Corporations, Meet Transparency” followed by case studies on three companies – Alcoa, Cargill and DuPont – and a final sidebar discussing companies that do a better job of walking the good citizen talk and offering websites where readers can get the lowdown on the worst corporate sustainability posers.

It’s good to see the stories finally in print after months researching and writing them, followed by months awaiting publication.

Please give the stories a read. Then, come back here and tell me what you think!