Book excerpt: Leveraging the Private Sector offers the first sustained analysis of public and private sector initiatives designed to encourage firms and industries to use their own management expertise to improve their environmental performance. Cary Coglianese and Jennifer Nash bring together original empirical studies by the nation?s leading experts on recent public and private sector experiments. Do management-based strategies lead to improved environmental outcomes? What kinds of strategies hold the most promise? Leveraging the Private Sector addresses these questions through studies of state pollution prevention planning laws, private sector purchasing requirements, and federal risk management regulations, among others. The contributors show that efforts to leverage private sector experience and knowledge can have a distinctive contribution in the future of environmental protection. Ultimately, a firm's broader management practices shape its environmental performance. Public and private sector strategies that seek to influence these practices directly can help bring about further environmental improvements. This book breaks new ground by investigating a new and promising approach for advancing the economy and the environment.