Welcome!

When Tom Kee and I founded Better World and set out to create the Better World^SM site in February of this year, we set lofty goals for ourselves. We wanted to create a company that was not only an effective vehicle for helping humans solve human problems, but a company that had soul. Tom Chappell's book The Soul of a Business was a great inspiration, as was The Republic of Tea, a book by the founders of that company.

But we also grappled with the economic realities of fitting those goals to the World Wide Web--an uncertain and ever-changing environment with unclear marketing strategies. In that jungle of chaff and grain, our solution was to apply the tried and true standards of quality editorials and journalism, coupled with effective marketing of environmentally and socially responsible businesses, in a format that was fresh, clear, and above all, effective in helping its readers build a better world through individual action. In short, the Better World Zine, BWZ.

In this issue

Few people are surprised anymore when a corporate giant is found to have fallen short of its environmental responsibilities and social aspirations. But when Business Ethics magazine published Jon Entine's exposé of The Body Shop, "Shattered Image," in September of last year, it seemed to set everyone in the social responsibility camp back on their heels, where they then had a long and lively discussion. It was as though the bubble of feeling good about the SRB (socially responsible business) movement had suddenly burst. Since then, Entine's coverage of Ben & Jerry's performance against their own claims has engendered further controversy and press coverage. For the first issue of BWZ, we felt that Jon Entine's lead story, "The Messy Reality of Socially Responsible Business," provided a pragmatic counterpoint to the optimism of the other lead story, Jim Morrison's "Corporate Soul", and helped to point up the main horns of the dilemma in green industry. We hope that those two points of view converge in your mind into a single, clearer understanding of what "social responsibility" is.

We are pleased to have the opportunity to run Entine's complete "Social and Environmental Audit of The Body Shop," on which the aforementioned articles were based. It's long, heavily annotated, and detailed. If there's enough interest, we'll run it in an upcoming issue. What do you think?

The four Feature areas--Products, Acting, Learning, and Exploring for a Better World--will run every month, bringing you useful information in each area while presenting an overall editorial "conceptual continuity." So, in honor of the holiday season and the continuing battle over the fate of trees (an especially sensitive issue here in the Great Northwest) we've focused this issue on trees, giving you the latest scoop on environmentally friendly papers, some background information on the problems with bleached paper, a look at how Portland is incorporating trees into their city planning, and a hope-inspiring story on the comeback of New England's woods. And in honor of the holiday season, Barry Harrington gives his point of view on the cut trees vs. live trees question.

We hope you enjoy our new publication. If you do--and especially if you don't--please drop us a line about it. And why not take a moment to subscribe, so we can keep you up-to-date on important information, and let you know when the new issues of BWZ come out.

If you would like to join us by donating your information, time, or talent, please write me. Building a better world is a big tent; there's plenty of room for more.

Chris Nelder
Editor