The easy way to do corporate philanthropy is to write a little check to everyone who asks. Many companies operate this way–$5,000 to the Boy’s Club, $5,000 to the YMCA, $5,000 to the local cancer society or heart association. This is mostly a feel-good exercise, performed, it must be said, with other people’s money. Today’s Sustainability column at fortune.com and cnnmoney.com is about GE, and the company efforts to be strategic in its corporate giving. I met Bob Corcoran, who runs the GE Foundation, on a trip to Ghana in 2004, and had a chance to see GE’s health care initiative in action there—the company donated medical equipment, a generator, money and lots of expertise to a hospital in rural Ghana. Last week, Bob and I had a chance to catch up when he was in

Some exciting news today from Mars, the giant candy maker: The company is going to spend $10 million to decode the genome of the cacao tree. The goal is to guarantee the company a long-term supply of chocolate, improve the livelihood farmers and help preserve the environment in the tropics where cacao trees grow. “This is the dream of a lifetime for a plant breeder,” Howard Yana-Shapiro of Mars told me, over the phone from Rome, where he is attending a meeting of the Food and Agriculture Organization. “And especially for someone who’s interested in sustainability.” Howard spoke at FORTUNE’s Brainstorm: Green conference in April. If you were there, you noticed him—he was the friendly guy with the long white beard that stretched down to his belly. He’s a fascinating and

Who’s the most powerful person in the world of green business? It might be Jeff Immelt, ceo of General Electric, with its far-reaching eco-magination iniative. It might be Lee Scott, ceo of Wal-Mart, which is greening the world of consumer products. You could make an argument for John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins who with his pal and partner Al Gore aim to make Kleiner the leading venture capital firm for clean energy. Others have clout, too—Washington politicians, the leaders of the big environmental groups, pundit Tom Friedman of The Times. But the most powerful of all might turn out to be someone whose name you probably don’t know: Sultan Ahmed Al-Jaber. Al-Jaber is chief executive of the Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company (ADFEC), which was created by the government of Abu Dhabi

CEO Neville Isdell is an environmentalist, but making The Coca-Cola Co. sustainable is harder than it looks.