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How can a leader stop green fatigue from stymieing the ongoing efforts of its staff? Here are the five S’s to keep sustainability flourishing from the inside out: 1. Shake things up; 2. Show honesty; 3. Scintillating conversation and; 4. Step down.

"Paper is a tremendously resource-intensive product to produce," explains project manager Victoria Mills, "and the decomposition of paper in landfills generates methane, a greenhouse gas with 23 times the heat-trapping power of carbon dioxide."

For all those days when you believe your green values aren’t aligned with your workplace but you can’t - or don’t want to - make the eco-entrepreneur step, here are some immediate action steps to try out at the office this Monday.

Remember: while many green teams start from humble beginnings, they can grow exponentially - pent up passion for green amongst employees can be powerful driving force.

This week, Green Meeting Guide publishers and The Innovolve Group identified nearly 1,000 qualified suppliers in 10 distinct categories located in 7 major markets in Canada (I suspect it won’t be long until a similar directory emerges in the U.S.), making the Green Event Guide the most comprehensive reference document on “green” practioners in the hospitality sector.

Ever wondered how much energy and thought it took to produce that shiny brochure your marketing staff handed to you this week? And no, it’s not just the brand and visual design genius we’re talking about.

If you’re the latter or if you are a green procurer, you probably want to streamline the “boom!

A short, weekly “school of hard knocks” history of why paper supply chain management is not as easy as it looks - but can be. A Green Printer dispatch.

Deforestation hurts. Just ask Harrison Ford - he waxed his chest and demonstrated just how close forests are to his heart.

It was a serious two hour talk on climate change realities. And, what did we eat for lunch: steak. A large chunk of medium rare cow meat in tepid gravy. Sauce and solemn speech aside, I found the plat du jour ironic. Here we were, serious business people (some even part of the “sustainability task force”), earnest as heck about doing our part to learn about the adapt prong of the two-pronged “mitigate and adapt” prong to tackle climate change.

The big names cannot help but pump out more sustainable paper products on an almost weekly basis. From biology college textbooks gone green to carbon friendly greeting cards, we’ve rounded up the top ten green papier goods that caught our eye.

We’ve come this far in our exasperation with junk mail-apalooza and now people are luring us with cold, hard cash (or the beauty of planting a tree) to get us to stop receiving virgin-forest-eating junk mail.

The bean counters in the crowd ask about share dilution to which both MacDonald and fellow panelist Richard MacKellar, former CEO of Brightside Technologies (bought by Dell Inc.) answer “significant” and “don’t expect to get majority ownership in the renewable energy business - it’s just not possible.”

From the back, a keen, 20-something engineering Ph.D candidate piques with the question to the former MIT professor, “where do you see renewable energy going?”

Even lawyers are realizing their impact on their environment. No seriously, lawyers are sharp enough to know that using all that virgin paper cannot be good to the environment. But when it comes to driving internal sustainability initiatives? Many still respond by: "we recycle". Period.

To give an idea of how far we have progressed since the original advocates pressed for electronic recycling programs, Wal-Mart is calling for more uniform U.S. guidelines regarding consumer electronics, energy consumption and recycling.

Warning: so, as the video and Oprah ’s darling du jour and guerrilla closet warrior Peter Walsh so clearly outlines, our pack-rat habits are making us chubby. They can also be a barrier to us going green. We share fast, eco-friendly de-clutter tips for busy lives..

We ask design guru Nate Burgos, named Fast Company’s debut "Fast 50 Champions of Innovation", to reflect on how the Internet changed how designers 'make connections' and why government and 'big business' should care about environmental sustainability and design activism. Here's what the ever quotable Burgos said...