Prudential Real Estate Investors, the Parsippany-based real estate management and investment firm, appointed its first Global Sustainability Officer in August, creating a vice-president level position to replace one that had handled sustainability issues two rungs lower in the company.

Verizon's sustainability effort was diffused through several lower level positions until a year ago, when the company created a single position responsible for overseeing supply chain operations and sustainability.

"We had been green before," said James J. Gowen, Verizon's chief sustainability officer. "Each business unit was doing great things in their areas to become more energy-efficient."

But they "weren't putting our efforts together," he said. The company figured it needed a single person who could "start telling our story consistently from one area of the business," to customers, suppliers and employees alike, he said.

Although the focus varies from company to company, sustainability officers generally focus on energy conservation, protecting the environment and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Michael Lenox, a business professor at Darden School of Business in Virginia and director of the Alliance for Research on Corporate Sustainability, said corporate America has gotten increasingly interested in sustainability topics over the past five years.

"It's a recognition that you ignore these issues at your peril," he said. "And having someone in a high level able to influence practice and strategies is critical."

The shift is partly fueled by public demand and partly by a corporate belief that by taking voluntary action now the company can get brownie points on issues that the government will likely regulate in the future anyway, he said.

Some companies act out of fear of a scandal — hoping to preempt the kind of public relations disaster facing BP after its oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Lenox added. And others see it as a chance to tap market interest in green products, he said.

Corporate efforts to focus on green issues have historically engendered suspicion, and sometimes criticism of "greenwashing" – or merely pursuing a public relations strategy designed more to gain community or market support than to make substantial change in corporate activities.

But several North Jersey companies say their creation of a high-level sustainability officer position reflects the belief that green can be good for the bottom line, too, and sends a clear message of corporate priorities inside and outside the company. Learn more