It used to be that caring for the environment was considered something of a luxury. You know -- a "nice to have" thing that everyone wished for, but which few people were willing (or even able) to foot the bill for in order to attain.

Recently, however, there has been a dramatic shift in that attitude. Thanks in part to last year's spike in energy prices, minding the environment has become an important part of minding a company's bottom line.

Cash and the planet can work together
That transformation has been made possible through some tremendous work in research and development into greener technologies. In addition, industrial titans have given environmentally friendly technologies a taste of the economies of scale. One of the most well-known ecological initiatives to leverage a giant company's scale is General Electric 's (NYSE: GE) "ecomagination" campaign. GE's not alone, though -- even Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) is ramping up its environmental initiatives and seeing business benefits by taking care of the planet.

These days, even profit-hungry companies like GE and Wal-Mart realize that there's both money to be saved in being energy efficient and money to be made in helping others get there. And the economies of scale that those giants bring have been a huge factor in enabling economic and environmental stewardship to work together gracefully.

There's a reason why the list of the Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations in the World includes well-known firms like these:

Companies

Sample Environmental Initiatives

Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) and AMD (NYSE: AMD)

"Performance per Watt" standard for energy-efficient computing.

United Technologies (NYSE: UTX)

Energy-efficient elevators that use regenerative braking.

Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO)

World's largest bottle-to-bottle recycling plant.

Toyota (NYSE: TM) Continued...