Last night the Sustainable Business Network of Washington (SB NOW) held a great, well attended event at Hotel Rouge aimed at spurring the participation of DC-area businesses sourcing their supply chain with green suppliers. Area leaders were in attendence, including Clean Currents, Ecoprint, Community IT Innovators and alongside BetterWorld. SBNOW continues to build its membership, now over 100 businesses, and has really become a force in DC for the sustainability movement....

My apologies for the blog gap, but a combination of our busiest summer to date and late summer vaca led to a few week gap in the blog – so I thought I’d bring a real doozy for the first one back. We have been meeting and in discussions with the Nature Conservancy on a number of fronts over the summer (in addition to our regular volunteering that we do with them in the DC area) and I can’t help be excited about their new Atlantic Forest project....

In the past month, BetterWorld completed its evaluation and program implementation with Zerofootprint (www.zerofootprint.net), making BetterWorld the first Carbon Neutral Telecom Carrier in North America. In addition, to our other initiatives we have now achieved our Environmental Impact goals for 2007 and are embarking on Phase Two of our plan, which will be completed in stages by 2012....

It was so hot yesterday in DC that you could fry eggs on the hood, but our team braved the heat to deliver meals to those in need along with the amazing Food & Friends organization. This was our first volunteer day with Food & Friends and I must say of all the many volunteer activities that we have done, I have not been more impacted and touched…seeing the faces, smiles, frowns of those stricken with debilitating disease makes you really count your blessings....

Today we announced our partnership with Bethesda, MD-based Clean Currents (www.cleancurrents.com) – this creates a very powerful value proposition as we can now bring organizations in the DC metro area and other parts of the country both green telecom AND electric power – look for us to expand this to other parts of the country!...

I was fortunate to attend the National Conference on Volunteering and Service this past week in Philadelphia. The theme this year was “The Power of We” and was convened by the Corporation for National & Community Service and the Points of Light Foundation, the conference highlighted many corporate leaders large and small, making giving back and community service a top priority in their organizations....

In a word, WOW! We stopped by the other night for dinner at our new customer, restaurant Locanda, and walked away feeling like we just dined in Italy. Founder and proprietor Aykan Demiroglu, has created a festive, modern atomsphere and combined it with an amazing menu that delivers from top to bottom....

Yesterday, many of the BetterWorld team spent the day helping build a new townhouse in Fairfax, VA, outside of Washington, DC. We all now have a much greater appreciation for the difficulties of hanging drywall on ceilings, as that is how we spent much of the day – this wasn’t our first Habitat volunteer day, but most definitely the one most fraught with trial and error!...

Great Article on today’s GreenBiz.Com – even though it is UK-centric (also, if you haven’t seen it, check out the Eden Project mentioned in the article, it is truly amazing) – this article gets to the heart of what we are doing at BetterWorld in the US though, greening the supply chain through telecom and IT....

It was just about 3 1/2 years ago, on a dark & cold night outside of Philly, Jim and I met Jay Coen Gilbert (then with AND1), Ben Bingham (now of Benchmark Capital), and others for a dinner to discuss the beginning ideas around the B (for Benefit) Corporation concept – how to take the idea of social and environmental corporate responsibility & add some teeth, structure, guidance, and support for companies choosing to take that path....

Business as the lever of change in society was the topic du jour today as the Sustainable Business Network of Washington (SBNOW) held its 4th Annual Symposium. Representatives from Dupont, Sodexho, Calvert and a host of sustainable organizations, as well as local and regional government representatives, educators, and non profits were on hand at George Washington University (my alma mater, MBA 2000) for an amazing day of discussion and discourse....

BetterWorld Team attended and exhibited at the Fair Trade Conference from June 1-3, 2007 in Washington, DC. this year’s conference, Changing Hands: The Work of Fair Trade, was held at American University and brought together more than 200 FTF members, partners, and friends with a hand in positively changing the lives of those living in poverty....

Probably the best part of our work at BetterWorld is that we get to meet daily and weekly so many amazing leaders and organizations affecting change in the world – – well, John Clay and the California Autism Foundation are definitely one example. While out at the BALLE conference, I had the fortunate opportunity to visit John’s operation (had met him at SVN in Maine a few weeks back) up in Richmond, CA....

Hundreds of community leaders from all corners of the US have descended on the University of California, Berkeley for the 5th Annual Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) conference, titled “Leading the Evolution of Local Living Economies.” The first day’s focus is on enabling the local chapter leaders on local first campaigns, fundraising, and organizational tactics for growing their BALLE chapters – – there are now over 50 chapters nationwide and the movement is quickly growing, a concept whose time has come!...

Set in bucolic Prospect Park (Brooklynites like to say that Olmstead practiced first on Central Park before perfecting his design techniques in Prospect Park) , the Brooklyn Center for the Urban Environment (BCUE) has, for nearly three decades, educated and informed urbanites of all ages about their built and natural environments....

Today was our regular visit to nature where every few months, the BetterWorld team dons their outergear and gloves to tackle non-native plant species in the George Washington Memorial Parkway, located just outside Washington, DC in Northern Virginia. Led by our fearless leader Mary Travaglini of the Nature Conservancy, BetterWorld has unofficially adopted a stretch of national park in Northern Virginia, helping to ensure proper growth and preservation of a beautiful forest running along the Potomac River just west of Washington, DC....

The EcoFestival at Druid Hill Park kicked off the 4th Annual Baltimore Green Week – businesses and organizations from all over the Baltimore area were out in a beautiful park setting in downtown Baltimore. The crowds were great and mother nature cooperated for the most part – – a full week of events is planned & I will be speaking on a an entrepreneurial panel Wed....

The weekend was filled with endless amazing sessions and conversations – here are three that we found to be highlights for us: GrameenPhone and Iqbal Quadir: Once and awhile you see and hear something that is off the charts, listening to Iqbal Quadir and his story founding the growing GrameenPhone is one of those stories....

Optimism and energy are the keywords kicking off this year’s Social Venture Network conference in rainy coastal Maine. This morning was led by Bernie Glassman talking about his inspirational story of creating the Greyston Mandala (Greyston Bakery, Greyston Foundation), which has transformed the community of Yonkers in New York from the inside out....

What a great site to look out over huge McCormick Place, see it teeming with attendees and so many BetterWorld customers displaying the great things they are doing to make it a better world – SustainLane, the Green Festival Premier sponsor, just launched their new website & are occupying center stage at the Festival....

The inuagural Chicago Green Festival is off and running – events kicked off this morning with a speech from Mayor Richard Daley & a host of other dignitaries from the city. McCormick Place hall is packed on this wonderful spring day in Chicago. The city is definitely abuzz with all things green and sustainable....

Welcome to the new BetterWorld Telecom website and the new BetterBlog! As we head into our fifth year of operation at BetterWorld, we are excited on so many fronts – with national and international forces for positive change like Patagonia, Greenpeace and Green Mountain Energy all using BetterWorld as their primary communications partner, and affiliates that include the Social Venture Network, One Percent for the Planet and the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies – we are inspired on a daily basis with the amazing change they are affecting in the world....

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