By Joseph Gizzi

As American sales of green technology edge to nearly $104 billion this year and global leaders like Samsung and Toshiba receive accolades from GreenPeace for their environmental efforts, everyone is finding out that there is a lot of green to be made off being eco-friendly. But how can we ensure that the environmental movement has a lasting and positive impact?

Changing the social mindset has to be foremost priority — and it can’t be a fad. Recent CEA research has actually shown a drastic increase in recyclingover the past few years, and interestingly enough, not because people want recognition for doing the right thing. Habits are actually changing, and this gives the movement staying power.

Unfortunately, we’re progressing so fast that we often don’t know how to deal with mass leftovers of our innovation. This year’s Greener Gadgets conference illustrated the scale of the electronics industry’s footprint, pointing out more than 426,000 cell phones are ‘retired’ in the U.S. every day. There are so many options to recycle what’s known as electronic or e-waste, but the enormity is still daunting.

The green movement is changing the way Americans look at consumption, and not just where their electronics are concerned. As we see current (and environmentally harmful) forms of energy becoming a limited commodity, people are rethinking their living spaces. Small changes, like lighting and energy management controls, are already becoming commonplace. But as cities become crowded, we will look to new technologies to help us rework the infrastructure of urban life as we know it.

Some of the technology is already there. My alma mater just built a LEED certified dormitory, and plenty of schools and businesses across the U.S. following suit. With growing interest in renewable energy, it’s no surprise that Intel and IBM are highly invested in solar power development.

Architects like Michelle Kaufmann are striving to answer the call for more innovative minimalist living by designing ‘zero energy’ housing, or, even better, houses that put energy back on the grid. Even the agriculture industry is starting to think about inevitable urbanization and the prospect of vertical farming, which would allow city dwellers to produce and eat locally, without need for preservatives and other processing that goes into transporting our food across the country.

We don’t know for certain how quickly our resources will run out – or how soon we can develop alternatives to replace them. The 20th century seemed to measure success by space and materials we owned and occupied (just watch MTV Cribs). And whether or not you believe the doom-and-gloomers, this century has already shown the lessons of reaching our planet’s saturation point. We have a choice to either fight over our limited resources in hopes of maintaining our current lifestyles, or working as an innovative community to coexist through reasonable consumption, and, most importantly, restoration. If not, who knows? We may end up living on lily pads.

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