• Anastas’ expertise in green chemistry
• A data-driven, quantifiable scorecard that companies can use or adopt to drive innovation, working on the principle that before you improve something, you have to measure it
• Emphasis on large corporations
• A proposed shift in the sustainability conversations at those corporations—from risk management to strategic opportunity (first introduced on page 14 and a theme throughout the book): “We can achieve superior performance, convenience, efficiency, and profitability not in spite of a focus on sustainability but because of it” (p. 28)

In my consulting, I personally don’t generally begin with the data, preferring to start with the vision and then figure out how the engineers can get us there—but I don’t think either approach precludes the other. And while I run a one-person business and don’t ever expect to be an employee of a huge corporation, I still found significant utility in this book. The writing is clear, and the data-driven outcomes are impressive. Small businesses and solopreneurs have to think differently about implementation, but can still draw many useful lessons.

Bhatnagar and Anastas design their whole-lifecycle scorecard around four principles: waste prevention, maximizing efficiency and performance, supply chain renewability, and safe degradation at the end of a product’s lifecycle—and measure three categories of impact: environmental, employee, and community (p. 16). One key takeaway is to design safety and end-of-life considerations in from the beginning—preferably by turning waste into monetizable inputs for other products (pp. 48-50, 81-83).

As a marketer, I find it odd that their scorecard aims for the lowest possible score: a zero in each metric. I would have designed it to give points for good initiatives so that a higher score provides companies with a clear and obvious marketing benefit. But even though it gives the book its name, the instrument is only a small portion of the content.

Much of the rest is examples of companies jumpstarting eco-friendly and socially just innovation. To list a few among many: design electronic chips WITHOUT generating 600 times the product weight in waste (p. 63); sequester not just whatever carbon you create but some of the backlog (p. 65); lower not just carbon footprint but water footprint (pp. 73-74); eliminate toxic chemical flame retardants by switching to non-flammable materials (p. 80); extract and recycle the water in human waste while turning urine into electricity (pp. 116, 118); replace forever chemicals including poisonous plasticizers such as phthalates with safe, degradable alternatives (p. 133) and chemical insecticides with yeast-grown non-toxic ones (p. 144); change pharmaceutical packaging so extra doses can be used instead of thrown away (p. 136); eliminate hunger by approaching food waste differently (pp. 147-149); extract and reuse materials like nickel and cobalt from used batteries (pp. 151-152); fund more expensive green and social justice initiatives through the savings in health care costs (p. 174)…

A few organizations get extended case studies, some including their full scorecards:

• Electronics giant Philips (pp. 106-112; 191-197) already generates 70 percent of revenue from green products and services and is aiming for 100 percent.
• Hospital system Gunderson Health (pp. 159-161) parlayed a $2MM investment into annual savings of $1.2MM—that’s an astounding 60 percent annual ROI— including slashing the cost of managing pharmaceutical waste from $151,000 to less than $10,000 per year.
• Janitorial products company Coastwide Laboratories (pp. 161-170; 177-185) re-engineered its product line to combine functions in fewer products, marketed its private-label solutions to some of the largest manufacturers in the country, and brought distribution in-house, allowing them to market honestly as the lowest cost solution even while increasing the product price (because the customer only needed one product to replace two or more).
• P2Science, maker of eco-friendly silicones for cosmetics and hair products, boosted yield to 95 percent while simplifying the production process.

The book is also full of sets of principles and steps that would be useful to companies of any size. And it has a terrific index, which I wish more publishers would model.