With a couple week hitaus in the rearview mirror, lots of blogging coming in the coming days – out in Seattle (actually blogging from the Bainbridge Island Ferry, love technology) for the first Seattle GreenFest, some great meetings with BGI, Teragren, egg and others – our 2007 Corporate Citizenship report just issued a few days ago, so lots of entries coming in the next few days for sure.
First, I’d like to highlight one of our first customers, Hal Taussig and Idyll/UnTours – Yes! Magazine (also a BetterWorld customer) had a great little piece on Hal in their latest issue and I had to include it, as we have so much respect and admiration for Hal, his son Brian, and the Idyll/UnTours team, all they stand for and all they’ve accomplished – here’s the article, oh if we all lived a little more like Hal, what a better world it would be:
CEO Lives the Simple Life
With 83 years behind him and an empty bank account, Hal Taussig seems an unlikely CEO. Taussig heads Untours, Inc., the cultural immersion tourism business he founded in 1992. Company profits and Taussig’s $6,000 annual salary are donated to the Untours Foundation, which provides loans to projects like low-income housing, fair trade enterprises, and farmland purchases for landless Brazilian families.
Taussig’s lifestyle transformed in the 1980s when he wrote a $20,000 check—everything in his bank account at the time—for a real estate deal. The exhilaration he felt at being free of money made a lasting impression, and Taussig has maintained a habit of giving away all of his money. Since 1999, Taussig has handed out more than $5 million.
“I think it’s false to define capitalism as selfish. Charity and taxes are not going to make a better world or a more just world, but businesses can take a lead in doing that.”
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