As we ramp up for our Hollywood Goes Green conference on  Dec. 11, I’ll be reserving growing space in my blog for comments and interviews about the entertainment industry and environmental issues. 

If you’re looking to enhance your company’s green profile, you might start with Business for Social Responsibility, a San Francisco-based non-profit group which helps its 250 member companies integrate sustainability into business strategy and operations through consulting, research and conferences. It also serves many entertainment and media companies, including NBC Universal, Time Warner, Disney and Viacom.

iHollywood Forum President Zahava Stroud recently attended BSR’s annual conference in San Francisco, She interviewed BSR Managing Director Kara Hartness Hurst, who oversees the group’s efforts to get media and entertainment companies to integrate corporate responsibility and environmental principles into their business strategies and operations.

Take products that use licensed content from films and TV shows. Studios can can require vendors to demonstrate ethical environmental  practices — just as they already require vendors to comply with fair 

labor practices and safe working conditions, she said.

They can also develop or refine their supply chain policies policies to address hazardous materials, water use, water quality and other environmental issues. 

Environmental issues fit neatly into existing entertainment industry initiatives such as  MTV’s new Think MTV community, which seek to promote youth acitivism.

MTV encourages members to upload content on the site and organize themselves around specific issues.

“This is an example of how to use new technology to motivate social activism among youth in safe and responsible manner," Hurst said.

See Also

• Hollywood Goes Green

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The music industry is broken. Any business whose main product is stolen far more than it’s bought can’t be considered anything else.

But how to fix it? Online and mobile music sales are still in their infancy; and it’s still unclear whether the vast  majority of people will be willing to buy songs for

their iPods they can simply download from their friends’ hard drives.

That’s why ad-supported music deserves a look.

The very idea probably seems heretical to music purists. But how obtrusive is putting banner ads on a music site? Even putting short ads in front of songs is not as unseemly as we might think; that, after all, is essentially what radio is.

Imeem, a fast-growing social community built around music, video and other media offers a hint of what music’s future might look like.

You can stream as much copyrighted music as you want for free. Banner ads by Discover, Microsoft Live Search and other advertisers help cover the royalties Imeem pays every time someone listens to a copyrighted track.

The concept has taken Imeem from zero to 18 million unique visitors a month since March 2006.

"We’ve signed three out of the four major and stream their entire catalogs," says Director of Business Development Ethan Applen, who is speaking Tuesday at iHollywood @ AFM in Santa Monica. "Our entire business model is built around given them a share of the ad revenue."

Users who wish to download music are directed to iTunes or Amazon to buy; Imeem gets a percentage of the revenue.

Labels or studios may also choose to pay for ads themselves to call attention to an act or movie. Members can also place their own material for free on the site. If enough users enjoy it, Imeem posts ads on the page and gives the content creators a share of the ad revenue, too.

Undoubtedly, you could poke plenty of holes in Imeem’s business model. But isn’t it nice to find someone in the music industry besides Apple who actually has one?

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