Agents of change and fortune: the path toward innovation and profits includes embracing sustainability.

• Position: 2010 SUSTAINABLE OPPORTUNITIES SUMMIT

Jared Diamond, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning "Guns, Germs and Steel" and other books, says some businesses deserve every bit of their tarnished reputations. But his work in recent years has led him to conclude that others are "among the world's strongest positive forces for environmental sustainability."

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Writing in the New York Times in December, he reported that "the embrace of environmental concerns by chief executives has accelerated recently for several reasons. Lower consumption of environmental resources saves money in the short run. Maintaining sustainable resource levels and not polluting saves money in the long run. And a clean image--one attained by, say, avoiding oil spills and other environmental disasters--reduces criticism from employees, consumers and government."

He hit the story on the head. And while he cited the case of Wal-Mart, Coca-Cola and Chevron to back up his argument, he could just as easily have named ProLogis, the Denver-based developer and manager of distribution facilities in North America, Europe and Asia.

From its headquarters along Interstate 70, the company has steadily set higher bars in the belief that lessening the demand for water, energy and other resources in its buildings can benefit both ProLogis and its customers.

By late 2010, the company aims to reduce water use needed for landscaping at its new projects by 50 percent. It also has set a goal of using at least 20 percent recycled content in construction of new buildings, and diverting 75 percent of construction waste from landfills and incinerators.

Two years ago, ProLogis also embraced the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) standards for buildings in the United States, and similar building-standard programs for its facilities in Europe and Japan.

Sarah Martinez, the sustainability analyst for ProLogis, says meeting the LEED standards increases building costs 1 percent to 3 percent. Part of that cost is documentation. It is, however, money well spent. "There's high value in that third-party certification," she says.

The bottom line is implicit in this LEED certification. Part of what it can do is guide installation of systems that use less energy. ProLogis doesn't pay those bills; tenants do. But lower operating costs make properties worth more. For similar reasons, ProLogis has worked at retrofitting lighting--the single largest consumer of electricity at its 35 million square feet of green-rated...