You have to understand the way businesses work. Any project a company engages in must benefit the financial bottom line of the company—even when that project helps save the planet. That’s what businesses do. Make money. The Globe and Mail ran a story yesterday on how Canadian firms are trailing behind Asian firms in their pursuit to green the workplace. It turns out that about 75% of those foreign firms want or expect to receive some return on investment this year as a result of shrinking their carbon footprint. They want to make money doing the right thing. For North American companies, on the other hand, that figure drops to 35%. Let’s face it. For more than a century now we’ve lived and worked a life based on conspicuous consumption of every resource available to us. Now we are paying the price for our environmental obesity by being slow in the uptake of new, green processes. Our loss.