As we come to the final moments of 2008 and the first of 2009, its always a great time to take inventory and give thanks. Even though the BetterBlog is generally reserved for stories about our customers, partners, events and inspiration that we encounter, we always like to create a signpost of the year past and look out across the horizon to where we are going in the next year and beyond.
First, on behalf of the BetterWorld team, we would like to thank our customers and partners for putting your faith in us and supporting us as we continue to forge new ground in the telecommunications industry – as we often say, it is the inspiration that we get from you and the amazing things you all are doing to make the world a better place that is the best part of our job. Some highlights this year included our new work with the Obama-Biden Campaign for Change, Whole Foods, World of Good, Cassidy Pinkard Colliers, the Ella Baker Center, and Trillium Asset Management Corp. – just a few wonderful additions to our growing base of positive impact organizations.
2008 was a breakthrough year for us in many ways but most importantly we finally came to and truly understand our raison d’etre, helping organizations across the U.S. reduce their costs AND carbon footprints by implementing sustainable communications strategies. As we move our process to begin implementing solutions that optimize cost, ROI and carbon mitigation strategies all at the same time for organizations we work with, we are finding that telecom carrier solutions can be the lowest cost, highest ROI, highest carbon impact solutions available to businesses today. The true “ah ha” in our process has been to change our thinking from not focusing on 2.5% of total carbon output footprint that is produced by the ICT (Information & Communications Technology) industry, but how we can proactively impact the other 97.5% of the world’s output, which is largely due to buildings and transportation, two things that telecoms can drastically help to reduce, starting to get it? Unfortunately, or fortunately for BetterWorld, most of the ICT industry is focused on the 2.5%, we have committed to change this starting ‘09, stay tuned!
Critical to our early development of this area and findings has been our MBA team from the Bainbridge Graduate Institute, whom we have partnered with to study the effects of organizations implementing proactive telecom strategies, the study will be complete in May 2009 – thanks to them and BGI for their amazing work and for the truly unique and groundbreaking program that has been created on Bainbridge Island.
In 2008, BetterWorld continued to make strides with our own footprint, not resting on our laurels as the first and only certified carbon neutral telecom carrier in the U.S., we enhanced our program by recertifying with BeGreen, a division of Green Mountain Energy. In addition to our own corporate footprint, we have started our personal offset program, whereby BetterWorld covers 75% of each employees personal home/auto/travel offsets, as an add on to our health program and other benefits. In addition, we are finalizing the calculations with BeGreen to offset all of our customer’s network usage in Q1 ‘09, which will complete the circle and strengthen our our carbon neutral stance. We continue to reduce our paper billing (now less than 20% of our total billing, down from 100% 5 years ago) and look for new ways to physically reduce our footprint, which will be detailed in our upcoming 2008 Corporate Citizenship Report.
This past year, we continued to grow our support and focus for local, living economies, as we see this as a perfect dovetail with our sustainable communications strategies – focusing on creating locally-based, healthy, living economies and using communications to reduce travel, commuting, need for centralized work environments – keeping everyone closer to their communities day to day, while not sacrificing the engine of commerce, which needs to be strong locally FIRST, then globally or, well, we now see what happens when it tilts the wrong way. In 2007, BetterWorld helped start a Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) chapter in the Southeast called Lowcountry Local First and the impact has already been amazing and the organization continued to grow and start impacting the economy and agriculture in a positive way – the goal is to shift 10% of the economy and agriculture towards locally owned and operated businesses by 2012. I have been fortunate to be asked to join the national BALLE board and will be starting my duties there this month at a point when the local living economy movement is growing out of control, with now over 60 BALLE chapters and 25,000 business members across North America – very exciting indeed.
What would a signpost be without a quote? I’ve been slowly digesting a great book over the holidays titled the Puritan Gift, which I highly recommend – – in it is one of the best descriptions of what a company should hold true and was actually taught be the “three wise men” who were critical to training and inspiring Japan to rebuild and subsequently become a global powerhouse after WWII: “The business enterprise must be founded on a sense of responsibility to the public and to its employees. Service to its customer, the wellbeing of its employees, good citizenship in the communities in which it operates – these are cardinal principles fundamental to any business. They provide the platform upon which a profitable company is built.” No truer words ever spoken…
In 2008 we continued and grew our corporate donations and volunteering programs as well, plus a number of other new initiatives, which I will reserve for our Corporate Citizenship Report to be published this April. Finally, I would like close with a quick shout out to the BetterWorld team, in over 20 years in a variety of corporate and non-profit settings, I have never worked with such a committed, caring and giving group of people. Thank you all for your continued dedication and we look forward to significantly growing the BetterWorld family in 2009, but more on that soon. Happy New Year to all!
Matt
Posted in: General Blog
