Dal LaMagna‘s career as a sustainability entrepreneur took a long and winding path before he became President and CEO of IceStone USA in 2011. A self-described “master at failing,” LaManga chronicles his rise to success in his book, Raising Eyebrows. Today, he runs a successful operation at IceStone, which makes stunning countertops out of recycled glass and cement.

“Most countertops are made with binders that have volatile organic compounds,” LaManga explains. “IceStone is a natural stone like granite, but not strip mined. If you want a natural environment to live in, you definitely want IceStone.”

P.J. Simmons, Chair of the Corporate Eco Forum and co-author of The Green to Gold Business Playbook, returns to the show to discuss the mainstreaming of sustainability in large U.S. companies. Simmons claims that nearly two-thirds of U.S. companies have a sustainability program in place — a figure that is up from only 38% in 2011.

“The conversation is changing among senior executives,” Simmons explains. “This is about benefits; it’s about cost reduction, risk reduction, growing revenues, innovating, protecting your brand, protecting your supply chain over time [and] protecting your business model over time. Over 80% of executives see sustainability as consistent with their profit mission.”

As Corporate Vice President of Sustainability at Ecolab, Emilio Tenuta oversees an always-growing ecological empire focused on water hygiene and energy technologies and services. Ecolab has more than 1 million customer locations around the world, spanning 44,000 facilities in 170+ countries. Maintaining natural resources in an effective manner is the company’s paramount concern.

“[Ecolab] saw that the food and beverage industry really was a pioneer in sustainability, mainly because of the public exposure they have to consumers and the impact they were making around managing natural resources,” Tenuta reveals. “Given the work we did in terms of helping them become more efficient in water and energy use transcended to what I wanted to do further in my career.”