A green tag is formally known as a tradable renewable certificate. Other names are Renewable Energy Credit, Renewable Energy Certificate (REC or ‘rek’ for short), and in Europe they are often called Renewable Obligation Certificates.

Bill Capsalis talks about his experience with Gaiam.com and defining the Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability Concept (LOHAS). What is it? What is different about the LOHAS customer? What worked, lessons learned, what small businesses should consider, and the future of marketing.

IS: Tell me about your work experience in marketing and in general for sustainable business.

BC: I have over 22 years of corporate marketing experience at the level of VP of Marketing. In my early career I worked for a mail order work wear clothing company in Boston. After relocation to Colorado for a lifestyle change I began taking MBA classes at CU Boulder and networked my way into a job with a regional office of Kinko’s. I spent almost 12 years helping to build Kinko’s into a national brand servicing the commercial market and rapid expansion. It was one of those jobs that can make your career. After leaving Kinko’s I spent a couple of years in different industries. I finally landed in the natural products / sustainable world with Gaiam. I joined Gaiam as the VP of Marketing just before the company went public in 1999. Gaiam was small at the time but on an upward curve toward a multi-channel healthy lifestyle company selling through catalogs, the internet and at retail. Most of what I learned about the industry came from that experience and the success we experienced while I was there. I launched the Gaiam.com web site which was very successful in the first year of operations. We sold over 5,000 products set up in hundreds of categories for the LOHAS consumer.

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In the wake of the dot-com bust, forward-thinking investors have been in search of the next big thing to revolutionize the economy while lining their own pockets. Many venture capitalists seem to be banking on the so-called "clean tech" sector--startups committed to sustainable practices and products, embracing such industries as alternative energy generation and water purification. Clean-tech companies are also emerging in the sustainable agriculture, manufacturing and transportation sectors. Today, the deals are flowing as both individual "angel" investors and well-established venture capital (VC) funds are wing for their piece of "clean tech."

But major progress reported by international survey of top corporate sustainability reports.

Boards are failing to disclose to financial investors how environmental and social issues pose strategic risks and opportunities for their businesses, according to an international review of corporate sustainability reports by SustainAbility, the United Nations Environment Programme and Standard & Poor’s. Risk & Opportunity: Best Practice in Non-Financial Reporting finds that only three reports of the Top 50 assess the balance sheet implications of key environmental and social risks, despite this information being increasingly important to analysts, investors, lenders, insurers and re-insurers.

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It started with a vision of what business could be. At the urging of United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, 38 companies, including Nike and Volvo, embraced nine principles ranging from not hiring child workers to cutting down greenhouse gas emissions.

Now, five years later, some 1,500 firms have signed on to what has become the world's largest corporate citizenship initiative, the United Nations Global Compact, which held its first summit here last month. That explosive growth illustrates what many business leaders already believe: Corporate social responsibility is entering the mainstream.

A salient commentary on why green products succeed and fail, including an example of each case. Also included is a brief quiz to test yourself on your marketing.