Social responsibility in business: Ice cream and more!

It's not all about the $$$$ anymore

In todays world owning a business is not just about the bottom line anymore. Or at least, at the bottom line, it's not just dollars being counted. Environmental impact, social treatment of your stakeholders and providing opportunities for personal growth to your staff are counted equally as much when you're company is rated for social responsibility.

Creative names for icecream: Chocolate Therapy

Two Scoops

It all started I guess with Ben & Jerry's icecream. Two idealist hippies who didn't set out to change the world really, it just happened that they were doing what needed to be done. What they were about is not just making a buck, but actually helping their community. Getting their brownies from local ladies and making sure their chocolate wasn't harvested by child-slaves was a matter of course to them as well as making the best tasting icecream in the world. Somehow, against all odds, these two idealist created a multimillion dollar brand.

It's not just about the flavor

Sure, the icecream is good, some of the best ever, but only some off. That oddly named Haagen Dazs is at least equal in taste and well 31 flavors have some really good icecream as well. The thing that makes people buy B&J's icecream is the fact that they get to feel like they are making a contribution to something good in the world. For a couple of dollars they get to feel like they're saving the rainforest, promoting peace and helping a third world child go to college. What they're selling is not icecream, it's a whole new way of looking at the world.

Now, business has forever changed under the influence of these and others such hippies (think Google and don't be evil) and if you're going to promote your brand name you must do so in a way that reflects your brands responsible and environmentally concious way of doing things. A gift bag from Holden Bags might be just the way to communicate that. These bags are durable and when imprinted with your logo they say: This business cares about the environment enough to give durable stuff instead of less than useful plastic items that fill our wastebaskets.

Wine tote

Making the world a little better

For tradeshows or festive occasions, buying these tote bags bulk is made easy by the quick service at Holden Bags. Your design can be uploaded at their website and you can get a quote from them in under 15 minutes. One of my favorite bags is the cooler-bag, a supermarket necessity if you don't live real close to the store. It keeps your frozen items frozen untill you get home. Giving that away with some Chunky Monkey or Cherry Garcia icecream in it would be a great parting gift after a long day at a tradeshow. Or perhaps the wine-tote is the better choice, of course stocked with some fine California organic wine, red and white please.

Now, I'm not comparing the impact of reusable tote bags to the impact of Ben & Jerries icecream, but not all of us are meant to change the world so profoundly as those two did. Instead, we get to do our little bit for the environment and for social responsibility. We get to eat the icecream instead of making it and we get to choose environmentally friendly, reusable totebags for our next event. We do our part in making this world just a little better, one scoop or one bag at a time.