What do you think of when you hear Deloitte? You might think of a professional services firm or Big Four auditor. Today, the company has also put a big green stake in the ground, both looking internally to green its operations and as an offering in its consulting practice. Two aspects of this work are worth noting: Deloitte’s internal green team, working to engage employees in sustainability, and its Green Sync™ tool. I had the chance to have an e-mail exchange with Thomas Dekar, vice chairman of Deloitte LLP, regional managing principal of the North Central Region and corporate responsibility officer for the Deloitte U.S. Firms. He shed some light on the origins of Deloitte’s programs and offerings. Read on to learn about Deloitte’s best green business practices for engaging employees in sustainability.

Communicating why biodiversity loss matters for people is essential for reversing it. The failed UN climate talks in Copenhagen in December could hardly have been a less promising prelude to the International Year of Biodiversity, which opened last month (January). As with climate change, the threat of large-scale biodiversity loss — and the need for global political action to stop it — is growing every day. At a meeting about biodiversity organised by the British government in London in January, Robert Watson, former head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), warned that damage to the natural environment was approaching "a point of no return", a familiar phrase in the climate change debate.