Green practices not only will survive in a slumping economy, they'll thrive, says Joel Makower, founder of GreenBiz.com in Oakland, Calif., and author of a new book, "Strategies for the Green Economy." Out of the spotlight, he says, corporate America is cutting pollution, resource use, and toxic inputs to become more efficient. The result is that, unwittingly, consumers are becoming greener, too. The Monitor's Laurent Belsie sat down with Mr. Makower recently to talk about the future of green. Here's an edited version of their conversation. (The views expressed here are for informational purposes and do not represent an endorsement by The Christian Science Monitor.)

Do sustainable firms have an easier path in a downturn – or a rougher one?

Makower: If you're selling a premium-priced product to a consumer right now, you may be in for a rough ride. Consumers are pulling back. We're keeping our wallets in our pockets and we're not spending on discretionary or luxury kinds of things. But that's a very small part of what's going on in the world of green business. If you can think of an iceberg, the tip that's above water is what we see in marketing [products]. But below that is this mass of company practices that they don't even talk about. It has to do with squeezing out waste and inefficiency, the toxicity of products and services, the carbon intensity, and the material intensity. That makes for more affordable business practices that actually can thrive during tough times.

Being green in some ways is being more efficient.

Makower: Yeah, greener businesses at the end of the day – done right and not done for PR reasons – are better businesses. [But] one of the interesting things that's happened in the last few years is that we've gone from this era of doing the right thing – doing well by doing good, which was basically about companies improving their bottom line by new efficiencies ... to a new era, which is simply: How do you grow the top line? How does being green provide a foundation for innovation, new products and services, whole new business models in some cases? And that's where this gets exciting and [becomes] a real business opportunity in any economy.

Can we tell what green means?

Makower: It's actually a big challenge.... We know what it means to be a green building. There's the LEED green-building standard. We don't have the equivalent for companies. So we're a little bit in the Wild West where anybody can say they're a green business.

Let's talk about the tip of the iceberg for a moment – green products. Will sales be tougher in the next few years?

Makower: Well, it's never been easy. Twenty years ago, I wrote a book called "The Green Consumer" and looked at this notion that there was a growing market for green products and that there were, more importantly, millions of consumers – 90 percent of Americans – who said that they wanted to buy green products from good companies. Well, guess what? That never really materialized.... The irony is that we're a lot greener consumers than we used to be – in spite of ourselves – because a [beverage] manufacturer, for example, has squeezed out the aluminum, tens of millions of pounds cumulatively over the course of a year, from aluminum cans without reducing the volume.

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