“Eats, Shoots and Leaves”

Have you ever heard of a book called Eats, Shoots and Leaves?
The premise of the book, by author Lynne Truss, is to “remind readers of the importance of punctuation.”
The book’s title comes from a (potentially bad) joke on punctuation:
A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and [...]

Sustainability Across the U.S.

This time last year I was just starting a week-long intensive MBA course on Global Sustainability.
The class – which covered everything from green technology innovation to social entrepreneurship – really focused on three distinct environmental challenges: Food, Water and Energy.
If there was one major takeaway from that week of class, it’s that these three issues are inextricably linked. [...]

Moving Sustainably

Things have been a little light on The Changebase recently, as I’ve traded my school books and CSR projects for cardboard boxes and packing tape.
Yep, the Jablows are leaving Boston and heading back to the San Francisco Bay Area, where we’ll both be based while we look for jobs and get settled again on the [...]

The Challenge of Translating Sustainability

Let’s face it: sustainability can be a challenging topic for many people to understand.
For example, when you hear someone on the news or in business talk about alternative energy or cap and trade policy, can you honestly say you understand it all?
I’ll go out on a limb and admit that when I hear the word [...]

The Basics of Fair Trade

How many of you have heard of Fair Trade? I’d imagine many of you have.
But how many could actually define it, or discuss it, or even promote it? My guess is not as many.
That was the case for me until recently. Recognizing that I’d heard a lot about Fair Trade but that I couldn’t actually [...]

Eating Seasonal (and Sustainable)

I’ve written before on The Changebase about my own journey to find sustainable, local food – including this post on defining what local food really is.
The big conclusion I reached after trying to define “local” was that what I really meant was eating seasonal.
By eating seasonally, we get a couple of benefits:

Food tastes better: Anyone [...]

Micro-Actions for Change

When it comes to the crisis of Global Warming (what author and New York Times columnist Tom Friedman says should actually be called “Global Weirding”), things can get pretty overwhelming fast.
Animal extinction, water scarcity, rainforest destruction – these are all pretty heavy topics requiring big picture thinking and action.
And if world governments can’t even build [...]

What Yoga Can Teach Us About Sustainability

After a brief hiatus, I’ve recently taken up yoga again as way to inject a little clarity and exercise into my otherwise crazy daily routine.
For those of you not familiar with yoga, let me say first that it’s not just about stretching (although that’s a part of it). In fact, what we Westerners think of [...]

CSR from the Inside

Recently I had the opportunity to interview Marcus Chung, director of corporate citizenship at McKesson (To learn more about Marcus, check out his blog and follow him on Twitter).
My purpose for sitting down with Marcus was twofold. First, I wanted to get his take on corporate social responsibility and sustainability efforts at McKesson, as well [...]

A Tale of Two (Green?) Cities

We’ve all heard the saying, “You are what you eat.”

When it comes to green living, could we stretch that and say, “You are where you live?”
That is to say, is where you live a determinant of how you live?
Plenty of research and evidence exists to confirm that yes, the city you live in has a [...]