And the Center for Environmental Leadership in Business's efforts appear to be making some strides on the greener side.
In China and Madagascar, it has designed programs to sequester carbon, a method of offsetting carbon dioxide emissions by capturing and storing or absorbing it in trees or soil.
With a $3 million grant from manufacturing conglomerate 3M, the Center for Environmental Leadership in Business hopes to sequester a million tons of carbon and restore three million hectares (7.4 million acres) of degraded forest in China's Hunan and Sichuan provinces.
Those are ambitious goals, but David Skelly, an ecology professor at Yale University's School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, said they are right on target.
"These plans that seem improbable are happening," Skelly told AFP, adding that planning small would not pay off environmentally.
Working with oil companies BP, Shell, Chevron and Norway's Statoil, the Center for Environmental Leadership in Business also developed guidelines for incorporating biodiversity protection into oil exploration and drilling activities. The guidelines were eventually adopted by industry associations as the new industry-wide standard.
The Center for Environmental Leadership in Business and coffee powerhouse Starbucks also teamed up to brew CAFE, or Coffee and Farmer Equity, a program that gives coffee growers an incentive to employ environmentally sound practices and pay farm workers better.
The center also has partnered with the U.S. forestry industry to create a voluntary standard for protecting biodiversity in 34 areas designated as "biodiversity hotspots" by Conservation International.
