Last week, I had the good fortune of hearing Casey Sheehan, CEO of Patagonia, deliver a riveting presentation about the authenticity and sustainability of his organization. While outdoor products may seem far afield from the building industry, Casey's down-to-earth message was fundamental, and the very things that make Patagonia unique are universally applicable to businesses in all sectors.

"Innovation is about listening," Casey passionately emphasized, as he relayed tale after tale of how Patagonia uses feedback from employees and customers as the basis to make business development and new product decisions.

People protect what they love, and Patagonia is the poster child of consumer loyalty: Even in a down economy, the company has more than doubled its revenues over the past three years. Casey attributes the company's tremendous and somewhat unexpected growth to its commitment to quality, sustainability, and community. According to Casey, these three things are intricately linked—he asserts that a company's quality issues are a mirror image of larger environmental and social issues.

While Patagonia isn't perfect, as evidenced by the recent scuttlebutt over their sourcing of down feathers (see the 'Lowdown on Down' entry in the company's blog), the company strives for perfect communication. To that end, the company launched the Footprint Chronicles as a vehicle to analyze and discuss the environmental impact of a growing number of its products.

In the spirit of environmental stewardship, Patagonia is launching the Common Threads Initiative, an unprecedented campaign to spur the "sustainability economy." The Common Threads Initiative is a partnership between Patagonia and its customers to make, buy, and use clothes more sustainably. Through this initiative, the company will actually encourage its customers to reduce consumption by purchasing fewer Patagonia products, repair products that have been purchased (the company is offering free repairs), and recycle old products to reduce landfill waste.

Casey is an unabashed supporter of extreme transparency, insisting that we will only achieve real sustainability when businesses disclose their total environmental impact. According to Casey, "extreme transparency is the only way that consumers can make sensible purchasing decisions."

The concept of extreme transparency is permeating the entire outdoor apparel industry. The creation of the sustainable apparel index, an industry-wide tool for measuring the environmental and social performance of apparel products and the supply chains that produce them, is transforming the outdoor industry.

Casey forecasts that once consumers get a taste for such extreme transparency in apparel, they'll demand it elsewhere. Indeed, if Casey's predictions manifest, extreme transparency may be coming to the building industry sooner than we think. It seems to me that it would behoove forward-thinking building professionals and manufacturers to start looking to companies like Patagonia for sustainability-related ideas and inspiration.

Have ideas about how we can achieve extreme transparency within and beyond the building industry? Visit www.greenbuildermag.com, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter @greenbuildermag for regular updates and breaking news

Have ideas about how we can sustainably revitalize our economy? Write to me at sara@greenbuildermag.com or follow me on Twitter @SaraGBM.

There is an interesting rift that has occurred in the building industry, which has become even more pronounced in today's challenging economic climate. Some building professionals claim that green building is simply too expensive, so they have resisted incorporating sustainable solutions into their building practices. Other professionals assert that sustainability has given them a distinct competitive advantage and that it is, in fact, the reason they're still in business.

Jacob Atalla, Senior Director of Sustainability Initiatives for KB Home, sits firmly in that second camp. In a recent interview with Green Builder Media, Mr. Atalla revealed how the nation's number one green home builder (according to Calvert and EPA) plans to maintain its competitive advantage by preserving affordability through delivering high-performance homes to buyers at no additional cost.

Mr. Atalla foresees that the growth of the smart grid, electric vehicles, and "time of use" energy pricing will require smarter homes. Therefore, KB is driving towards building all net-zero energy homes within the next 5 years. To measure performance, KB has created the Energy Performance Guide (EPG)—a label with a HERS-based projected score that allows customers to assess the value and performance of a home prior to purchase (much like the miles per gallon label on vehicles.)

C.R. Herro, Vice President of Environmental Affairs from Meritage Homes, EPA's 2011 EnergyStar Partner of the Year, is aligned with Mr. Atalla in his assertion that sustainability has provided Meritage with a decided competitive advantage, enabling the company to expand into new markets across the country, in spite of the economic downturn.

In an interview with Green Builder Media, Mr. Herro affirmed that the key to Meritage's sustainability success is the implementation of sound building science and innovative technologies to provide smarter, greener, and more efficient homes to buyers at no extra cost.

National production builders have historically been chastised by the sustainability sector for trumping long-term value with lowest upfront cost. However, it seems to me that if companies like KB Home and Meritage are practicing common sense environmentalism to create a long-term value proposition that exceeds the short-term cost of production changes, building professionals of all kinds could do the same by applying innovative thinking.

Are the builders who are hiding behind the claim that green building is too expensive responding to realistic market conditions, or are they just plain lazy? If they exerted a little more effort to develop inventive, cost-effective solutions, would the myth finally be debunked?

Want to learn more about important sustainability issues? Visit www.greenbuildermag.com, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter @greenbuildermag for regular updates and breaking news

Have ideas about how we can sustainably revitalize our economy? Write to me at sara@greenbuildermag.com or follow me on Twitter @SaraGBM.

In today's "throw-away" society, I can't help but wonder—where is "away"? Dr. Marcus Eriksen and his team at the Algalita Marine Research Foundation are embarking today on a three-week journey across the Pacific Ocean to explore this very question.

Earlier this week, Green Builder Media's President, Ron Jones, interviewed Dr. Eriksen on our Impact Series: Game Changers in Sustainability webinar program.

During the interview, Eriksen explained that the cultural roots of our "single-use" economy began doing World War II, with the invention petroleum-based materials like plastics, fuels, lubricants, textiles. The mass production of these products was necessary to kick start our economy at the time, so solutions were developed with a short-term, even myopic, perspective.

Since the 1940s, these products have become the pillars of our economy. While there have been considerable advances made in plastic-based technologies, there has been only modest development in our approach to or disposal of single-use plastics.

Our inadequate waste management has resulted in "garbage patches," or floating trash islands, twice the size of Texas in the North Pacific, South Pacific, North Atlantic, South Atlantic, and Indian Oceans, as well as beaches around the world littered with plastic combs, dolls, crates, and other products that have been kicked out by the tide.

Plastic waste readily absorbs organic pollutants such as DDT and PCBs. And rather than biodegrading, it photodegrades, breaking down into smaller and smaller pieces. Research teams like Eriksen's regularly encounter marine mammals, fish, reptiles, and seabirds that have fed on the plastic particles, thinking that they were plankton, and have become so engorged with toxic plastic that they've starved to death (which makes me think twice about eating sushi ever again!)

Fortunately, Eriksen is optimistic about the future. Countries around the globe are responding to our waste conundrum and creating appropriate regulations. China has banned plastic bags. The Netherlands has implemented advanced waste-to-energy programs. Germany has created economic incentives to eliminate all kinds of waste. Cities around the United States, such as Los Angeles and San Francisco, have also implemented plastic bag bans, finding that they will realize tremendous cost savings by eliminating the need to clean up bags from trees, drains, and other infrastructure.

Eriksen believes that if we can stop the flow of trash to our water sources, the ocean would "self-clean" within a decade by ejecting plastic waste onto beaches, where we can initiate cleanup efforts. And, he sees a bright future in naturally produced biodegradable plastics, such as PHAs.

Eriksen advises those of us in the building industry to come up with innovative waste-to-energy solutions or long-term uses of post-consumer recycled plastics (such as decking, roofing, and siding) to turn existing plastic waste into practical raw materials.

I took away a feeling of empowerment from the discussion with Eriksen. The ability to "zero-waste" my life isn't something that I have to wait for. I don't have to lobby government or industry to regulate it. I don't have to encourage manufacturers or building professionals (or publishers) to innovate. I can change my own behavior today and inspire those around me to do the same through a just a little encouragement and education.

I look forward to learning more about the research findings from Eriksen's journey to the North Pacific Gyre as he and his team sails from Waikiki, Hawaii to Vancouver, British Columbia. Track his voyage on our website, where we'll bring you daily updates, blogs, photos, and videos of the crew's wild and exciting journey.

Want to learn more about important sustainability issues? Visit www.greenbuildermag.com, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter @greenbuildermag for regular updates and breaking news

Have ideas about how we can sustainably revitalize our economy? Write to me at sara@greenbuildermag.com or follow me on Twitter @SaraGBM.