I'd like to think that I have a pretty clear sense of ethics. There's no gray when it comes to wrong and right. It’s all black and white. When you do something wrong, it's wrong. If you try to rationalize it, we've got a problem. Let me explain.

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James Gustave Speth, co-founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council, a Yale University dean, and a former White House advisor, has written <

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Is Joel Makower right?

No, he’s wrong. Greenwashing is bad and it’s getting worse.

First, let me provide some context. In a column for GreenBiz.com, Joel, a frequent commentator on green business issues, asks, "What, exactly, is a 'socially and environmentally destructive' corporation? Is that nomenclature reserved for the worst of the worst, or do most big companies qualify?"

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That’s the headline of Melanie Warner’s story in this month’s issue of Fast Company. The story takes Procter & Gamble to task on a number of issues:

"...none of P&G's sustainability initiatives address what's arguably its most fundamental environmental challenge: ‘green chemistry,’ or finding ways to make products without chemicals that are hazardous to human health and the environment."

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In February of 2008, on a trip to London for the Natural & Organic Products Exhibition, I stopped by to visit John Elkington, the founder of SustainAbility and an old friend. John has worked in the environmental and sustainable development fields since 1972. In 2004, BusinessWeek called him, "a dean of the corporate responsibility movement for three decades," an apt description.

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"Judge King wrote that Ms. Braun had recounted the humiliating experience of soiling herself while at work because she had not been permitted time to use the restroom."

I'm hoping that the recent ruling by a Minnesota state judge, who found that Wal-Mart violated state laws on wages more than two million times, marks the end of a culture that put profits ahead of people.

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Over the years, I have frequently spoken out against companies that preach a "we're-all-in-this-together" ethos while tolerating Austrian-Afghanistan disparities in executive-employee pay. But I have offered little in the way of a real-world solution to such hypocrisy.

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Last year, we drank our way through three billion cases of bottled water — an increase of 14 percent over 2006, according to Beverage Digest. Most of that bottled water is treated with chlorine and shipped insanely long distances; too many of the plastic bottles end up in landfills. In most cases, the quality of the bottled water is not even better than the water flowing out of the tap.

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We simply buy too much stuff. I have more t-shirts in my closet than I could wear in several lifetimes. Yet someone always wants to give me another one. I have an iPhone, but the newest upgrade looks almost irresistible. In fact, so does the MacBook Air. Shoes, cars, cameras, and clothes almost never wear out before we replace them. We are painfully addicted to buying new stuff.

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It takes a lot for Americans to be truly shocked by the Austrian-Afghanistan disparities in executive-employee pay. Perhaps, when we read that the hedge-fund manager John Paulson was paid an estimated $3.7 billion last year, we might raise an eyebrow in surprise.

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