Via The Green Group, which I learned about via either Facebook or LinkedIn, comes a report on the future of green, as divined by Amsterdam-based trendwatching.com, which bills itself as "an independent and opinionated trend firm [that relies] on our network of 8,000+ spotters in more than 70 countries worldwide." Its focus for May is on the green.

To my taste, the strongest part of the report is its far-flung survey of green construction, goods, and services. They cite a dozen examples in the car market alone, including a good handful I'd not before seen. Overall, I can't say I love their presentation, because it took me a while to figure out what they were saying, but eventually I figured out that they're declaring three trends related to the field:

* "Eco-iconic," which it says is the next step up from eco-chic, and describes those products that proclaim the eco-cred of users to their peers.

* "Eco-embedded," which "will eventually render eco-inconic 1.0 obsolete." This describes a green wave that will come not because people opt for it, but because it becomes required. "In fact, the regulation part of eco-embedded has already been called the 'fourth R,'" after reduce, reuse, and recycle, the report says. An example is the shift from when some people bring cloth bags when they go shopping, to when plastic bags are either banned by law or have a levy placed on every one.

* "Eco-boosters," the writers' term for companies that will still be trying to stand above their competitors, once all companies are meeting the newly imposed green standards, by going even farther, "from planting more trees than is strictly required, to cleaning up not only [their] own mess, but someone else's, too."

As I say, there are tons of green examples, and a section at the end describes where opportunities lie if their prognosticating is prescient.