By Andrea Newell (Grand Rapids, Michigan)

Every day, more organizations are recognizing the impact sustainability practices can have on their business and are implementing sustainable initiatives. However, sustainability can’t exist in silo, it should be integrated into all aspects of organization. To be authentic and effective, sustainability must be measured, then goals set, documented and shared. As companies try to meet their stated goals, they should track their progress and report on their successes and shortcomings. Without transparency, sustainability efforts ring hollow.

Sustainability initiatives can increase employee retention and satisfaction, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, streamline business processes, save money, enrich the community and benefit the bottom line.

In honor of Earth Day, here are 10 ways that executive women can leverage their influence to make a difference.

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By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

Last week, the Women’s Network for a Sustainable Future organized an event around new trends in sustainability reporting. With shareholders, regulating agencies, and the public increasingly interested in results, the quality of metrics around corporate sustainability has improved dramatically, as has awareness of the importance of benchmarking and reporting progress.

Ann Goodman, Executive Director of WNSF said, “Everyone from the SEC down and up is clamoring for disclosure.”

Moderated by Helle Jorgensen, US Sustainability Advisory Leader and member of the Global Sustainability Leadership Council, PwC, the panel included Margaret Lindeman, Sustainability Strategist, Lockheed Martin, Erica Matthews, Manager, Public Policy and Sustainability, Pepsico, and Mike Wallace, Director of Sustainability Reporting Framework, Global Reporting Initiative (GRI).

Corporate sustainability metrics matter to investors, consumers, and employees – and improving metrics around sustainability reporting will be critical to corporate success in the future.

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by Liz O’Donnell (Boston)

Green mutual funds might seem like the hottest new trends on Wall Street but women in this industry are adamant that green investing is not a passing fad. According to the Social Investment Forum, an association of socially responsible investing firms and professionals, socially responsible investing represents an estimated $2.71 trillion. From 2005 to 2007, this segment of the market grew at a rate of 18 percent.

“Green business is not a trend,” says Vicki Radden, Managing Director of the Capital Markets Partnership. “It’s a new way of approaching business that is not an option. It is a requirement.” The Capital Markets Partnership (“CMP”) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit coalition of investors, investment banks, insurers, city, state and federal government, countries, and NGOs creating a market shift toward sustainable investment. Says Radden, “The Capital Market Partnership provides advocacy for various financial products and pushes forward the agenda within the capital markets to drive financial entities to develop, support, invest and promote.”

Radden likens the so-called trend in sustainable investing to the dot com era in the early nineties. Back then, companies viewed adding a dot com to their names and creating an Internet presence as a “hot” idea and key differentiator. However, a few years later, it was standard operating procedure; a requirement for doing business.

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by Liz O’Donnell (Boston)

Even as traditional jobs are being cut, “green” jobs are opening up, creating hot new career opportunities for executive women.

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by Pamela Weinsaft (New York City)

At the beginning of her career, Joyce LaValle, a senior vice president with Interface Inc., the world’s largest manufacturer of modular carpet, never would have dreamed she’d be the impetus for a seismic shift in her employer’s business plan or that she’d become a spokesperson and advocate for sustainability.

LaValle began in a junior position as the DC showroom manager with Interface. Ultimately, the company seized upon her prior experience with an architectural firm to move her into a position selling to the design community. In 1994, she was actively pursuing a potential customer who was courting vendors for the most sustainable building at that time. LaValle realized she wasn’t even sure what sustainability was all about. Her daughter, who had earned a Master’s Degree in Environmental Studies and had voiced her concern about the harmful materials and production methods used in the carpet industry, gave her the book, “The Ecology of Commerce” by Paul Hawkins. The book, which talks in depth about the detrimental impact such methods were having on the environment “had a profound effect on me…I was pretty horrified that my daughter was so ashamed of what I was doing,” said LaValle.

LaValle summoned the courage to take it to the top of the company and had someone put the book on a corner of CEO Ray Anderson’s desk. “It was a little intimidating: he was two bosses above me. But because my daughter was so disappointed, I tried to do whatever I could to fix it.”

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