“Inspired by Faith, Committed to Action” is the greeting that awaits you enter ICCR’s offices on the 18th floor overlooking the Hudson River on NYC’s Upper West Side. Quite literally, ICCR was the genesis of corporate responsibility and accountability & we were there this past week to learn about ICCR’s past and present initiatives, as well as to discuss BetterWork concepts and how that might help ICCR and its members deliver on their long-held commitment...

The BetterWorld train this week pulled into the Bronx to visit our long-time and valued customer, Sustainable South Bronx. A pioneer in the truest sense, SSBX has been at the forefront of urban sustainability, education and inspiration since its founding in 2001 by lifelong Bronx resident and leader, Majora Carter. Sustainable South Bronx (SSBx) is a community organization dedicated to Environmental Justice solutions through innovative, economically sustainable projects that are informed by community needs....

Late last week, many of us from the Washington, D.C. area BetterWorld team gathered in Scott’s Run Nature Preserve just outside of D.C. to continue our work ridding the area of non native species in the general George Washington Parkway National Park area. We have been working in this area with TNC for almost four years and, over the period have cleared considerable acreage....

JP and I had the pleasure of meeting Benjamin Eliasoph, Technology Partnering Officer, at the beautiful Embassy of Canada in D.C. & we arrived to a full presentation by the Canadian Color Guard (pictured), who happened to be in town for some events. The Canadian Embassy is embarking on a months-long effort to explore how they can make the lead embassy and U....

This week, we had the great fortune to descend on the bucolic valley of Carnation, Washington and home to one of the largest organic community supported agriculture operations in the country. We are excited to have Full Circle Farm as a new BetterWorld customer and look forward to helping them continue their amazing story forward as they expand the grow their operation....

This week I visited esteemed Bastyr University with our Seattle Affiliate, Gina Diamond. We were hosted by Bastyr Development Relations Coordinator, Kathy Coffey pictured with Gina below and with great directional help from fellow Hoosier, Greg Goode, who is Chief of Staff to the President. Bastyr is a leading institution in the world, focused on natural health and applied behavioral sciences and the main campus just north of Seattle, is truly beautiful, set in a state park & within an old monastery....

We were in Portland yesterday and had the good fortune to meet with Desiree Williams-Rajee (who helped author the BGI-BetterWorld BetterWork white paper) with the City of Portland Bureau of Planning and Sustainability. It’s amazing to see first-hand the level of commitment that the City of Portland is making to many areas of sustainability, going far beyond the lip service that many municipalities are paying to the area of sustainability, administering mature programs from recycling to compositing, energy efficiency and weatherization....

We just finished an incredible two days at TechSoup’s Netsquared event N2Y4. The conference at Cisco in San Jose boasted numerous creative social entrepeneurs and visionaries who are using mobile technology to tackle the world’s most challenging problems. The main event was a competition for 50 thousand in grant prizes, between 14 amazing projects tackling issues from getting appropriate and timely info via SMS text on phones for rural farmers in Cameroon (AMISProject ) to empowering everyday citizens to report and fix the problems in their local community – like pot holes and graffiti (SeeClickFix)....

Over 300 folks have packed it in for Day One of the national Business Alliance for Local Living Economies' conference. First off, Colorado is rocking on local living economies, there are so many networks and great things happening here. Entrepreneurs and network leaders from Vancouver to Santa Fe, all over New England down to Charleston and all the way to France have descended on Denver for our conference!...

Orlando was green in more than one way today as the BetterWorld Train rolled into town. In addition the spring monsoon passing through central Florida, GreenCities Orlando is the first installment in the GreenCities Tour (www.greencities.com), orchestrated by BetterWorld friend, customer and partner, Seven Star Productions. There was a great turnout and the kickoff event set the tone for sure as it turns to Huntsville, AL and New York City later in the year....

BetterWorld was out at the Soundry this past Monday along with the Sustainable Business Network of Washington to support a showcase of local artist talent and foster sustainable collaboration. The innovative space of the Soundry, a former auto body shop now converted into a public coffee shop, art gallery, and shared studio space for local artists and musicians provided a rich backdrop for the opening of their “Green is Beautiful” Sustainable Artwork show....

Congratulations and a special shout out to our Action Learning Project (ALP) team from the Bainbridge Graduate Institute, Manan Shukla, Desiree Williams-Rajee, Stephen Yogi Rueff, and Libby Johnson McKee – for their efforts over the past 9 months to conceive and build the case for BetterWorld’s new corporate chapter, BetterWork: A New Strategy for Work....

The BetterWorld train stopped off in Seattle yesterday and its always a pleasure to get together with the amazing team from Climate Solutions. They have a couple HUGE events coming up next week, check ‘em out if you are in or around the Emerald City: EPA Rally: On May 21 at noon, the EPA will be holding a day-long hearing in Seattle – one of only two in the nation – on their recent proposed finding that global warming pollution is a threat to public health and the environment....

Brower Center BetterWorld Telecom is partnering with East Bay Green Tours and the Sustainable Business Alliance to sponsor a space in the Sustainable Enterprise Cluster at the brand new David Brower Center in downtown Berkeley, CA. The grand opening event this past Sunday had hundreds of locals and nonprofit professionals exploring this inspiring new facility, named in honor of the legendary environmentalist David Brower....

Last Thursday, I attended a uniquely inspired event, the Green Business Camp. Orchestrated by Bill Baren and Patrick Dominguez, this was the first “unconference” of its kind. Besides an incredible opening address by Paul Hawken, one of the strongest leaders and thinkers in the sustainability movement, there were no other slated speakers....

Matt and I recently became members of Full Circle Fund, an engaged philanthropy organization cultivating the next generation of community leaders and driving lasting social change in the Bay Area and beyond. I attended their annual member retreat in Monterey last weekend to dive right in. It was a wonderful retreat with an incredibly dynamic and talented group of motivated individuals....

We were fortunate this week to meet with Tom Kemper, founder at President of Dolphin Blue, at their offices in the Deep Ellum area of downtown Dallas. Tom is a visionary, having started Dolphin Blue way ahead of the curve in 1993 in Dallas on the belief that we all can all be responsible in what we use....

The excitement is growing for this year’s upcoming annual conference for the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) May 21st-23rd, with Denver being the lucky host city for 2009. If you are one of the millions of regular readers to the BetterBlog, you know how passionate we are about BALLE and everything it stands for, and it all started at the 2006 Annual Conference in Burlington, VT!...

The Sustainable Business Network of Washington (D.C.) keeeps on growing and growing its impact in the Washington, D.C. area and beyond. Formed a number of years ago (BetterWorld participated at the board level early on), SBNOW and its truly fearless leader Pamela Skarda, have now amassed hundreds of businesses, organizations and individuals as members and most recently, as part of Earth Week’s celebration, SB NOW announced that two companies; WGL Holdings, Inc....

We are excited for BetterWorld to make the WorldBlu List of Most Democratic Workplaces™ 2009 list for the third year running! This year, forty companies are the annual winners of the WorldBlu List sponsored by WorldBlu, an Austin-based non-profit specializing in organizational democracy. The announcement came as part of the third annual Democracy in the Workplace Day on April 14th, sponsored by the WorldBlu organization....

Last week we were fortunate to meet with Sara and Jeff at Build It Green, a non-profit membership organization in Berkeley whose mission is to promote healthy, energy- and resource-efficient building practices in California. BIG provides education to builders, developers, and homeowners through extensive tools and resources, training, workshops, and events....

Thanks so much to the team at Bionavitas for the great tour of their facility late last week in Redmond, WA – – it was truly an eye-opening and huge learning experience. What Bionavitas is accomplishing, to the layman (me), is nothing short of miraculous – developing a way that algae (the foundation of life on our planet) can be effectively grown and harvested for a number of applications, including biofuels, nutraceuticals, and bio-remediation....

While the telecom carrier segment is slow to adopt a true & meaningful green agenda – – which is astounding to us given the massive opportunity – – there continues to be progress and the Green Telecom Summit at the CTIA / Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association convention last week was further proof that things are gaining steam....

We were fortunate yesterday to visit with UNFI (formerly United Natural Foods, Inc.) in beautiful Northeast Connecticut. UNFI is the leading independent national distributor of natural, organic and specialty foods and related products including nutritional supplements, personal care items and organic produce, in the United States. As the leading natural and organic foods distributor in the U....

What if you could reduce your organization’s carbon footprint by more than 20 percent, lower operational costs, and improve employee retention and satisfaction? Sound too good to be true? Well, these are just some of the conclusions reached in the report just issued from our Bainbridge Graduate Institute team, titled The Time Clock Revolution....