Last night I had the opportunity to attend the EcoTuesday monthly meeting in San Francisco. EcoTuesday is celebrating its third anniversary and has expanded to several cites across the United States in that time.

Perhaps taking a cue from Oprah’s Book Club, the folks at Triple Pundit are running a contest to create a “must read” list for sustainability professionals of all stripes. Looking over the nominations, I noted several titles on my bookshelf I’ve read, including: Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things by Bill McDonough and Michael Braungart, Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution by Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins and Hunter Lovins,

Yesterday I was lucky enough to tour the San Jose Environmental Business Cluster (EBC) at their monthly open house. The EBC is a “non-profit clean energy and environmental technology commercialization center in San Jose, California (that) assists emerging clean energy and environmental technology companies in reaching the market.”

Sustainability professionals know the very definition of the word “sustainability” can be interpreted in many ways, and the most often cited reference is the work of the UN Brundtland Commission who defined it as business development that “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” That being said, we know there is another step beyond sustainability, and that is environmental restoration.

This week I attended an all day forum entitled Value-Based Sustainability: The Business Case for Green, Clean & Lean produced by The Executive Council, a global cross-industry innovation network. The opening keynote was given by Adam Werbach, CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi S and well known as an advisor to Walmart in their sustainability efforts.

I served on a K-8 school board for many years. As a result of that experience, I would note that most schools have the phrase "life long learners" tucked in their mission statement somewhere. For people in the world of sustainability, I think that is definitely true, we are indeed life long learners. Two examples for you to consider:

Small is Beautiful: Economics As if People Mattered by E. F. Schumacher was first published in 1973, and brought to light many of the issues we are all now addressing some 40 years later in implementing sustainable business development. For the moment much of the publicity around the greening of the world economy focuses on the environmental and social impact of large corporations.

As I look back on 2009, I am humbled by the many leading lights in business, politics, and academia who have made themselves available to the public at large at conferences, webinars and the like to share their lessons learned about sustainable business development and provide a vision for the future of green. Here are some of the "giants" I was lucky enough to hear speak in 2009: