Yalmaz Siddiqui is a dark-green environmentalist, who once started a business called, of all things, "eco-eco." But in his job as the senior director for environmental strategy atOffice Depot，总部位于佛罗里达州博卡拉顿（Boca Raton）的每年116亿美元的Office Products巨头，他没有谈论拯救地球。取而代之的是，他专注于可持续性的业务利益，尤其是那些吸引Office Depot客户的业务利益。竞彩足球app怎么下载

"It really is rare for me to invoke climate change or landfills or toxicity in my internal arguments," Yalmaz says. "We're in Florida. We're not in San Francisco or the Pacific Northwest. Impassioned arguments about environmental issues don't resonate."

Whatever his approach, it seems to be working:Office Depot具有绿色信誉。InNewsweek's ranking of U.S. companies，他们是顶级零售商，总体上排名第八，领先于竞争对手主食（17），百思买（19），J.C。Penny（64），星巴克（82）（82）和Whole Foods Market（106）。虽然排名值得商标，但新闻周刊写道：

Office Depot, at No. 8, is the single retailer to make it into the U.S. top 10. It's had its share of operational successes -- saving 3,000 tons of wood and up to $1.5 million a year simply by delivering goods in paper bags rather than cardboard boxes, for instance. But, as with IBM, perhaps more significant are the tools Office Depot provides to its largest customers, including cities, states, and large corporations. It shows customers the environmental and financial tradeoffs of their purchasing decisions on everything from copy paper to cleaning supplies.

这种以客户为中心的方法有助于解释Office Depot可以做什么，以及在“绿色”方面做什么。至少目前，您不会在Office Depot商店的屋顶上看到太阳能，因为投资的回报不足。您会看到对能源效率的关注，因为ROI是有道理的，并且您会看到更多关注销售绿色产品，因为这些销售的利润直接降至最低点。

I spoke to Yalmaz by phone the other day because I'm interested in how people inside companies -- intrapreneurs, they're sometimes called -- promote change. There's a small army of these folks in corporate America, and the work they do matters.

With Washington gridlocked (or worse) on environmental issues, it's up to corporate America (as well as state and local government) to deliver the change we need.

Yalmaz, who is 41, started "eco-eco" after college to sell organic clothing, reusable organic cotton bags and other dark-green stuff. "It didn't resonate with the marketplace," he said. Subsequently, he got a masters in environment and development, did consulting work with PwC and IBM focusing on the forest, paper and packaging industries and then joined Office Depot in 2006.

该公司将其环境战略分为三：绿色，购买绿色和卖绿色。Be Green更专注于内部操作，这主要是关于省钱。主要但不是完全：您希望的是办公地点，购买了可回收的纸张，基本上没有业务案例。（如果古典经济学家对世界的运作方式是正确的，那没有回收的纸张。它的成本高，并且表现不及维珍森林的纸张。）

But, as Yalmaz notes: "It's an iconic product, when it comes to organizational greening. It's the everyday symbol of environmental commitment. It's very tangible." Through its purchasing requirements, he explained, the federal government helped create the market for recycled paper.

Office Depot在向机构客户提供供应时用更轻的重量袋代替纸板箱也引起了很多关注。那是双重胜利，节省了公司的资金并取悦客户。Yalmaz说：“出售它是为了满足客户渴望减少包装的愿望的方式。”

Office Depot设定定义绿色产品时，还采用了务实的客户驱动方法。该公司研究了Key的采购政策，例如EPA和美国绿色建筑委员会，而不是自行衡量其出售商品的环境影响。

"We've tried to make the definition of green products as simple and accessible as possible," Yalmaz says. That's a different approach from the one taken by Walmart and its partners inThe Sustainability Consortium, who are setting out to do complex, science-based life cycle analyses of thousands of products.

Unlike Walmart, Office Depot hasn't set big attention-getting goals like zero waste or being powered entirely by renewable energy. It's ranked No. 16, behind Staples (No. 4) and Walmart (No. 5) inEPA的清单of the top 20 retail green power partners. But, to its credit,Office Depot is unusually transparent关于它的环境表现，posting a dashboardthat tracks its progress or lack thereof. For example, you can see that the percentage of copy paper sold with post-consumer recycled content actually fell between 2008 and 2010.

This week, to spur sales of green products,Office Depot recognized 25 of its own customersfor their "leadership in greener purchasing." Winners from the FORTUNE 500 include Chevron, JP Morgan Chase, Google, Bechtel and Comerica. Says Yalmaz: "If I was to be asked, what is the ultimate metric of success of our environmental program, I'd say it was 'green spend' by customer."

To borrow a phrase from economist and author Gernot Wagner,but will the planet notice?这很难说。显然，如果Office Depot销售更绿色的产品代替常规产品，我们会更好。而且，如果更绿色的公司行为为政治行动铺平了道路，就需要对气候变化和其他问题产生重大影响。

"Normalization of green behavior works better than a message of environmental guilt," Yalmaz says.

On the other hand, let's not fool ourselves into thinking that buying recycled paper orPilot pens made out of recycled bottles(try them, they're cool) get us where we need to go. It won't.