To meet growing consumer demand for greener products, digital media storage firm Fabrik turned to Stuart Karten Design, a Los Angeles-based industrial design consultancy, to design greener hard drives for its SimpleTech brand. Here's how they did it.

Creating universal standards for sustainable products may not be the sexiest topic, but the stakes are high for brands eager to break into the fast-growing green market. At a recent industry event, U.S. Green Building Council founder Mike Italiano unveiled a new certification standard that he’s positioning as LEED for the LOHAS segment. By John Marshall Roberts

The Designers Accord - a kind of brain trust for the latest thinking on green design - is rapidly gaining steam, encouraging designers of all disciplines to collaborate on sustainability. By Emily Rabin Cowan

Design pioneer Dr. Paul Polak says 90% of the designers in the world create products for the 10% of the people who have a lot of money. From a purely business perspective, this makes perfect sense - but a growing number of designers are joining Dr. Polak in challenging the status quo. By Cheryl Heller, Heller Communication Design

Green design innovation can sprout up in some unexpected places. Take Formula One racing and the Automotive X Prize - both are operating outside the auto industry to encourage carmakers to push beyond incremental improvement in automotive design.

Savvy companies seeking a template for greener manufacturing need look no further than Earth's own biosphere, argues Gregory C. Unruh of the Thunderbird School of Global Management. Writing in the Harvard Business Review, Unruh outlines how the "basic principles that account for Earth's sustainability" can be applied to building greener products.