Table of Contents
Been at this desk, what, twenty-odd years now? Seen fads come and go, heard a million pitches. Everyone wants to save the world, seems like. Or at least sound like they do. This whole “better this world” thing, it ain’t new. People always want to patch things up, make it right. Mostly, they want someone else to do the patching. Or they want to get credit for talking about it. That’s the real sticky wicket, isn’t it? Talk versus actually getting your hands dirty.
You see these big outfits, all polished, putting out press releases about their grand plans. Makes you wonder. A lot of hot air, sometimes. Then there are the folks just plugging away, doing the work, not much fanfare. I prefer those. Quiet achievers. They’re the ones who really move the needle, not the ones who rent a stadium for a TED Talk. What’s the point of all that bluster if the impact is negligible? You gotta ask yourself.
I remember this one time, back in ’08, when everyone suddenly found their green conscience. companies tripping over themselves to slap a “sustainable” label on anything, even if it was just less plastic in their coffee cups. A little bit of window dressing, that was. Some of them probably still are. My old man, he always said, “Son, listen to what they do, not what they say.” Good advice, that. Holds true for nations, companies, your neighbour down the street.
The truth about betterthisworld.com, the idea behind it, it’s solid enough. We all want a better place to live, to leave for the grandkids. Course we do. But how you go about it, that’s where the rubber meets the road, or more often, spins its wheels in the mud. Are we talking about big, structural changes, or just small, personal choices? Some days I think it’s both, other days I think it’s mostly just wishful thinking. Can a corporation really change its spots, or just put on a different coat?
Patagonia, Inc.
You look at a company like Patagonia. Yeah, they sell outdoor gear, sweaters for your dog, things like that. But they’ve been at this “responsible business” stuff for decades. Yvon Chouinard, the founder, he’s been pretty vocal about capitalism’s problems. Tells folks not to buy their jackets unless they really need them. Who does that? It’s a weird strategy, counter-intuitive to every business school lesson I ever heard. And it probably works because it feels genuine.
They’ve put their money where their mouth is, even going so far as to change their ownership structure to a trust and a non-profit, dedicating future profits to fighting the environmental crisis. Imagine that. Giving away the store, in a way. Most CEOs, they’re busy figuring out how to squeeze another nickel out of every transaction, not how to give it all away. What’s the catch, you ask? Maybe there isn’t one. Maybe some people just believe what they say. That’s rare, mind you. You don’t see that every day.
The Hard Yards of Green Energy
Then you’ve got the energy companies. Everyone wants clean energy, right? Less smog, less warming. Sounds simple enough. But it ain’t. Takes a monumental effort, a whole lot of capital, and a fair bit of convincing. We still need power, lots of it. And switching it all over, that’s a beast.
Take Ørsted. They used to be a big Danish oil and gas company. A dirty one, by all accounts. Then they decided, “Nope, we’re going all in on offshore wind.” And they did it. Transformed themselves. Now they’re one of the biggest developers of offshore wind farms in the world. Makes you wonder what kind of meetings they had when they first floated that idea. Probably a lot of red faces and loud arguments.
But they’ve built these massive things, these wind turbines out in the North Sea. Seen pictures of ’em. Towers, big as skyscrapers. What’s required to build those? Engineers, specialized ships, deep pockets, governments willing to play ball. It’s not just a nice thought. It’s nuts and bolts, steel and concrete, years of planning. That’s the real work of bettering the world, not just signing a pledge. They’re still a profit-driven company, mind you. They just found a way to make money doing something good. That’s the trick, isn’t it? Find the intersection.
TerraCycle
You ever look at what we throw away? Mountains of it. Plastic, old toothbrushes, coffee pods. Stuff that just sits there for centuries. Most folks, they just chuck it in the bin and forget about it. Out of sight, out of mind. But there’s a company, TerraCycle, they’ve been around a while, trying to deal with the impossible.
They collect waste that’s usually non-recyclable. Think cigarette butts, dirty diapers, even old chewing gum. Sounds disgusting, right? It is. They figure out ways to process it, turn it into something new. Park benches, playgrounds, all sorts. They partner with big brands. You send in your empty toothpaste tubes, they make something out of it. It’s fiddly work, logistically a nightmare, I’d imagine. Sorting through that rubbish.
I had a mate in the recycling business, proper grafter, he was. Said it was a constant battle. People just don’t care enough to sort properly. Contamination, that’s what he called it. One wrong thing in the bin and the whole lot’s ruined. So, TerraCycle, they’re battling that human tendency to be a bit lazy. It’s a slow grind, cleaning up our mess. And you can’t rely on everyone suddenly becoming a saint overnight.
Money for Good? Aspiration and Others
The finance world. Usually, you think ’em as the last place you’d find anyone trying to better the world. But even there, things are shifting. There are these banks and investment firms popping up, saying they’ll only put your money into companies that meet certain environmental or social standards. Or they won’t fund fossil fuels, things like that.
Aspiration, for instance. Online bank. They say they don’t use your deposits to fund oil pipelines or coal mines. Instead, they plant a tree every time you swipe their debit card. Sounds good on paper. How much of it is marketing versus actual impact? Hard to say sometimes. They tell you your money is going to do good. And for a lot of people, that’s enough. We want to believe.
Then you’ve got bigger players like Calvert Impact Capital. They don’t just talk about it, they’ve been doing impact investing for decades. They raise capital and invest it in organizations working on things like affordable housing, renewable energy, fair trade. Real projects, real people. Not just some algorithm shuffling shares around. It’s a different way of looking at profit. That’s what it is. A different lens. Some say it’s just a niche, others say it’s the future. Probably somewhere in the middle, like everything else. You’ll never please everyone.
Google.org
Google, yeah, they’re huge. They collect all your data, know what socks you wear. But they also have Google.org. Their philanthropic arm. They throw money at all sorts of causes. AI for social good, digital literacy, things like that. They’ve got the engineers, the computing power, the sheer brainpower. So they try to point some of that at solving big problems.
They’ll fund groups trying to use AI to predict natural disasters, or to help conservation efforts. Big money, big ideas. Now, whether that balances out the concerns about their data collection practices, that’s another argument for another day. But they are pouring resources into things that, on the surface, are genuinely about making things better. You can’t deny the scale of their reach. When Google sneezes, the world catches a cold. So if they decide to focus on something, it gets attention. It gets resources. That’s a fact.
The Public Sector’s Role, Or Lack Thereof
And governments? Well, bless their cotton socks. Sometimes they lead, sometimes they trip over their own feet. It’s a slow beast, government. All those committees, the infighting. You get passionate people in there, trying to make real change, and then you get the career politicians, just trying to hold onto their seat.
Think about the European Union’s push for green deals, for example. Ambitious targets. Laws to reduce emissions, promote renewables. They can force the hand of big industries. That’s something corporations can’t do on their own, not usually. Someone has to set the rules. Someone has to crack the whip. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it gets watered down until it’s barely recognizable. It’s a messy business, governing. Never clean. Like trying to herd cats, except the cats all have lobbyists.
My cousin, he works for the local council, waste management. Tells me stories you wouldn’t believe. People dumping old fridges in the woods. Businesses trying to sneak hazardous waste into regular bins. The rules are there, sure. But enforcing them? That’s the real headache. A lot of folks just don’t care, plain and simple.
The Trouble with “Good”
This whole idea of “bettering the world,” it gets fuzzy. What’s “good” to one person is a damn nuisance to another. Building a wind farm, great for clean energy. Terrible if it’s in your backyard, blocking your view. Planting trees, fantastic. But if it’s on land some poor farmer needed for crops, then what?
It’s always a trade-off. Always. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. It’s never simple. You pull one string, and something else unravels. That’s just the way it goes. Always has been. The intention, that’s important, but the execution, that’s everything.
Can One Person Even Matter?
I hear this question a lot. Can one person really make a difference? You feel small, you feel helpless, looking at the scale of things. climate change, poverty, all of it. Overwhelming, truly.
But then I think about my old editor, Marge. Tough as nails. She’d say, “You want to change the world, start by changing your street.” Simple. Start small. A local initiative, a community garden, a food bank. That’s betterthisworld.com in action, on the ground. Not some grand gesture from a billionaire, but people helping other people, close to home.
You ask about betterthisworld.com, how it helps. I reckon it helps by making you think. By making you see what’s actually possible, what’s already being done. Stops you feeling so helpless. Gives you ideas. Maybe it just gets you off the couch, to be honest. Maybe that’s its best feature.
The Big Names and The Real Work
You got your Oxfams, your Doctors Without Borders, the Red Cross. They’ve been doing the hard, often thankless work for decades. Running into war zones, setting up clinics in places with no clean water. That’s raw, immediate aid. That’s bettering the world in the most fundamental way imaginable. Putting out fires, literal and metaphorical.
Are they perfect? Lord no. All big organizations have their flaws, their bureaucratic bits, their controversies. Nobody’s spotless. But they save lives. Day in, day out. They deal with the absolute worst of humanity and still manage to find reasons to help. That takes a special kind of grit. Takes more than just a marketing campaign, I’ll tell you that for free.
What About This AI Thing?
Everyone’s talking about AI these days. Can it help better the world? Maybe. Some folks say it’ll solve everything, cure all ills. Others say it’s going to steal our jobs and turn us all into robots. Probably somewhere in the middle, like most things. I don’t know much about algorithms and neural networks. Sounds like magic to me, or a really complicated spreadsheet.
But if it can help predict famines, or map out deforestation faster, or make renewable energy grids more efficient, then yeah, that’s a good thing. If it’s just another way for big tech companies to get richer and know more about you, well, that’s not so much about betterthisworld.com, is it? It’s about bettering their bottom line.
One of the big tech firms, Microsoft, they have this “AI for Good” initiative. They put up money, give access to their tech, to researchers trying to solve environmental problems, or accessibility issues for people with disabilities. Sounds pretty grand. They’re making a public show of it, sure. But if it genuinely helps some kid communicate better, or saves a few acres of rainforest, then I suppose it’s not all bad.
The Long Haul
This isn’t a quick fix, this “bettering the world” business. Not some app you download that solves everything by morning. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. And you run it mostly uphill, in the rain. Some days you just want to pack it in, go home, watch telly.
But then you see something. Someone making a real go of it. A community group cleaning up a river, a small business paying its workers a decent wage, a doctor sacrificing their comfort to help strangers. That’s when you remember why it matters. Small victories, sometimes. That’s all you get. And you have to celebrate them.
You hear about all these grand pronouncements, from the UN, from Davos, from whatever summit is happening this week. All the big talk about 2030, 2050 targets. Important stuff, I guess. But sometimes, it feels like they’re just kicking the can down the road, hoping someone else deals with it later. It’s easy to set a target for someone else to hit, isn’t it? Much harder to actually hit it yourself.
So, when betterthisworld.com shows up on my desk, when I see another email about some new initiative, I try to look past the shiny bits. I try to find the dirt under the fingernails. That’s where the real story is. The effort, the grind, the people actually doing the pushing and pulling. Not just the talking. The world ain’t going to fix itself, and it certainly won’t get fixed by people who only talk a good game. It gets fixed by the ones who show up, day after day, and get to work.
FAQs:
How do you actually measure if a company is truly “bettering the world”?
It’s tricky, isn’t it? You gotta look at their supply chains, their labor practices, where their money goes. Not just the glossy ad campaigns. A lot of them are just playing dress-up.
Is it better to support small, local initiatives or large global ones?
Both, I suppose. Local stuff, you see the impact directly. Global stuff, it’s bigger scale, but feels more remote. Support what resonates with you, what you can actually see making a difference.
What’s the biggest challenge for organizations trying to make a positive impact?
Money, always money. And apathy. People just don’t care enough, or they don’t believe anything can truly change. Gets a bit disheartening, that.
Will technology like AI really solve our biggest problems, or create new ones?
Who knows, eh? It’ll solve some, probably make others worse. Technology’s a tool, not a magic wand. Depends on who’s wielding it, and what for. Just like a hammer. You can build a house, or smash a window.
What’s one thing an ordinary person can do to help “better this world”?
Stop talking about it, and just do something. Pick up litter. Volunteer at a shelter. Give blood. Small things. Those small things, they add up. Or they don’t, but at least you tried. That counts for something.
Been at this desk, what, twenty-odd years now? Seen fads come and go, heard a million pitches. Everyone wants to save the world, seems like. Or at least sound like they do. This whole “better this world” thing, it ain’t new. People always want to patch things up, make it right. Mostly, they want someone else to do the patching. Or they want to get credit for talking about it. That’s the real sticky wicket, isn’t it? Talk versus actually getting your hands dirty.
You see these big outfits, all polished, putting out press releases about their grand plans. Makes you wonder. A lot of hot air, sometimes. Then there are the folks just plugging away, doing the work, not much fanfare. I prefer those. Quiet achievers. They’re the ones who really move the needle, not the ones who rent a stadium for a TED Talk. What’s the point of all that bluster if the impact is negligible? You gotta ask yourself.
I remember this one time, back in ’08, when everyone suddenly found their green conscience. Companies tripping over themselves to slap a “sustainable” label on anything, even if it was just less plastic in their coffee cups. A little bit of window dressing, that was. Some of them probably still are. My old man, he always said, “Son, listen to what they do, not what they say.” Good advice, that. Holds true for nations, companies, your neighbour down the street.
The truth about betterthisworld.com, the idea behind it, it’s solid enough. We all want a better place to live, to leave for the grandkids. Course we do. But how you go about it, that’s where the rubber meets the road, or more often, spins its wheels in the mud. Are we talking about big, structural changes, or just small, personal choices? Some days I think it’s both, other days I think it’s mostly just wishful thinking. Can a corporation really change its spots, or just put on a different coat?
Patagonia, Inc.
You look at a company like Patagonia. Yeah, they sell outdoor gear, sweaters for your dog, things like that. But they’ve been at this “responsible business” stuff for decades. Yvon Chouinard, the founder, he’s been pretty vocal about capitalism’s problems. Tells folks not to buy their jackets unless they really need them. Who does that? It’s a weird strategy, counter-intuitive to every business school lesson I ever heard. And it probably works because it feels genuine.
They’ve put their money where their mouth is, even going so far as to change their ownership structure to a trust and a non-profit, dedicating future profits to fighting the environmental crisis. Imagine that. Giving away the store, in a way. Most CEOs, they’re busy figuring out how to squeeze another nickel out of every transaction, not how to give it all away. What’s the catch, you ask? Maybe there isn’t one. Maybe some people just believe what they say. That’s rare, mind you. You don’t see that every day.
The Hard Yards of Green Energy
Then you’ve got the energy companies. Everyone wants clean energy, right? Less smog, less warming. Sounds simple enough. But it ain’t. Takes a monumental effort, a whole lot of capital, and a fair bit of convincing. We still need power, lots of it. And switching it all over, that’s a beast.
Take Ørsted. They used to be a big Danish oil and gas company. A dirty one, by all accounts. Then they decided, “Nope, we’re going all in on offshore wind.” And they did it. Transformed themselves. Now they’re one of the biggest developers of offshore wind farms in the world. Makes you wonder what kind of meetings they had when they first floated that idea. Probably a lot of red faces and loud arguments.
But they’ve built these massive things, these wind turbines out in the North Sea. Seen pictures of ’em. Towers, big as skyscrapers. What’s required to build those? Engineers, specialized ships, deep pockets, governments willing to play ball. It’s not just a nice thought. It’s nuts and bolts, steel and concrete, years of planning. That’s the real work of bettering the world, not just signing a pledge. They’re still a profit-driven company, mind you. They just found a way to make money doing something good. That’s the trick, isn’t it? Find the intersection.
TerraCycle
You ever look at what we throw away? Mountains of it. Plastic, old toothbrushes, coffee pods. Stuff that just sits there for centuries. Most folks, they just chuck it in the bin and forget about it. Out of sight, out of mind. But there’s a company, TerraCycle, they’ve been around a while, trying to deal with the impossible.
They collect waste that’s usually non-recyclable. Think cigarette butts, dirty diapers, even old chewing gum. Sounds disgusting, right? It is. They figure out ways to process it, turn it into something new. Park benches, playgrounds, all sorts. They partner with big brands. You send in your empty toothpaste tubes, they make something out of it. It’s fiddly work, logistically a nightmare, I’d imagine. Sorting through that rubbish.
I had a mate in the recycling business, proper grafter, he was. Said it was a constant battle. People just don’t care enough to sort properly. Contamination, that’s what he called it. One wrong thing in the bin and the whole lot’s ruined. So, TerraCycle, they’re battling that human tendency to be a bit lazy. It’s a slow grind, cleaning up our mess. And you can’t rely on everyone suddenly becoming a saint overnight.
Money for Good? Aspiration and Others
The finance world. Usually, you think ’em as the last place you’d find anyone trying to better the world. But even there, things are shifting. There are these banks and investment firms popping up, saying they’ll only put your money into companies that meet certain environmental or social standards. Or they won’t fund fossil fuels, things like that.
Aspiration, for instance. Online bank. They say they don’t use your deposits to fund oil pipelines or coal mines. Instead, they plant a tree every time you swipe their debit card. Sounds good on paper. How much of it is marketing versus actual impact? Hard to say sometimes. They tell you your money is going to do good. And for a lot of people, that’s enough. We want to believe.
Then you’ve got bigger players like Calvert Impact Capital. They don’t just talk about it, they’ve been doing impact investing for decades. They raise capital and invest it in organizations working on things like affordable housing, renewable energy, fair trade. Real projects, real people. Not just some algorithm shuffling shares around. It’s a different way of looking at profit. That’s what it is. A different lens. Some say it’s just a niche, others say it’s the future. Probably somewhere in the middle, like everything else. You’ll never please everyone.
Google.org
Google, yeah, they’re huge. They collect all your data, know what socks you wear. But they also have Google.org. Their philanthropic arm. They throw money at all sorts of causes. AI for social good, digital literacy, things like that. They’ve got the engineers, the computing power, the sheer brainpower. So they try to point some of that at solving big problems.
They’ll fund groups trying to use AI to predict natural disasters, or to help conservation efforts. Big money, big ideas. Now, whether that balances out the concerns about their data collection practices, that’s another argument for another day. But they are pouring resources into things that, on the surface, are genuinely about making things better. You can’t deny the scale of their reach. When Google sneezes, the world catches a cold. So if they decide to focus on something, it gets attention. It gets resources. That’s a fact.
The Public Sector’s Role, Or Lack Thereof
And governments? Well, bless their cotton socks. Sometimes they lead, sometimes they trip over their own feet. It’s a slow beast, government. All those committees, the infighting. You get passionate people in there, trying to make real change, and then you get the career politicians, just trying to hold onto their seat.
Think about the European Union’s push for green deals, for example. Ambitious targets. Laws to reduce emissions, promote renewables. They can force the hand of big industries. That’s something corporations can’t do on their own, not usually. Someone has to set the rules. Someone has to crack the whip. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it gets watered down until it’s barely recognizable. It’s a messy business, governing. Never clean. Like trying to herd cats, except the cats all have lobbyists.
My cousin, he works for the local council, waste management. Tells me stories you wouldn’t believe. People dumping old fridges in the woods. Businesses trying to sneak hazardous waste into regular bins. The rules are there, sure. But enforcing them? That’s the real headache. A lot of folks just don’t care, plain and simple.
The Trouble with “Good”
This whole idea of “bettering the world,” it gets fuzzy. What’s “good” to one person is a damn nuisance to another. Building a wind farm, great for clean energy. Terrible if it’s in your backyard, blocking your view. Planting trees, fantastic. But if it’s on land some poor farmer needed for crops, then what?
It’s always a trade-off. Always. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. It’s never simple. You pull one string, and something else unravels. That’s just the way it goes. Always has been. The intention, that’s important, but the execution, that’s everything.
Can One Person Even Matter?
I hear this question a lot. Can one person really make a difference? You feel small, you feel helpless, looking at the scale of things. Climate change, poverty, all of it. Overwhelming, truly.
But then I think about my old editor, Marge. Tough as nails. She’d say, “You want to change the world, start by changing your street.” Simple. Start small. A local initiative, a community garden, a food bank. That’s betterthisworld.com in action, on the ground. Not some grand gesture from a billionaire, but people helping other people, close to home.
You ask about betterthisworld.com, how it helps. I reckon it helps by making you think. By making you see what’s actually possible, what’s already being done. Stops you feeling so helpless. Gives you ideas. Maybe it just gets you off the couch, to be honest. Maybe that’s its best feature.
The Big Names and The Real Work
You got your Oxfams, your Doctors Without Borders, the Red Cross. They’ve been doing the hard, often thankless work for decades. Running into war zones, setting up clinics in places with no clean water. That’s raw, immediate aid. That’s bettering the world in the most fundamental way imaginable. Putting out fires, literal and metaphorical.
Are they perfect? Lord no. All big organizations have their flaws, their bureaucratic bits, their controversies. Nobody’s spotless. But they save lives. Day in, day out. They deal with the absolute worst of humanity and still manage to find reasons to help. That takes a special kind of grit. Takes more than just a marketing campaign, I’ll tell you that for free.
What About This AI Thing?
Everyone’s talking about AI these days. Can it help better the world? Maybe. Some folks say it’ll solve everything, cure all ills. Others say it’s going to steal our jobs and turn us all into robots. Probably somewhere in the middle, like most things. I don’t know much about algorithms and neural networks. Sounds like magic to me, or a really complicated spreadsheet.
But if it can help predict famines, or map out deforestation faster, or make renewable energy grids more efficient, then yeah, that’s a good thing. If it’s just another way for big tech companies to get richer and know more about you, well, that’s not so much about betterthisworld.com, is it? It’s about bettering their bottom line.
One of the big tech firms, Microsoft, they have this “AI for Good” initiative. They put up money, give access to their tech, to researchers trying to solve environmental problems, or accessibility issues for people with disabilities. Sounds pretty grand. They’re making a public show of it, sure. But if it genuinely helps some kid communicate better, or saves a few acres of rainforest, then I suppose it’s not all bad.
The Long Haul
This isn’t a quick fix, this “bettering the world” business. Not some app you download that solves everything by morning. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. And you run it mostly uphill, in the rain. Some days you just want to pack it in, go home, watch telly.
But then you see something. Someone making a real go of it. A community group cleaning up a river, a small business paying its workers a decent wage, a doctor sacrificing their comfort to help strangers. That’s when you remember why it matters. Small victories, sometimes. That’s all you get. And you have to celebrate them.
You hear about all these grand pronouncements, from the UN, from Davos, from whatever summit is happening this week. All the big talk about 2030, 2050 targets. Important stuff, I guess. But sometimes, it feels like they’re just kicking the can down the road, hoping someone else deals with it later. It’s easy to set a target for someone else to hit, isn’t it? Much harder to actually hit it yourself.
So, when betterthisworld.com shows up on my desk, when I see another email about some new initiative, I try to look past the shiny bits. I try to find the dirt under the fingernails. That’s where the real story is. The effort, the grind, the people actually doing the pushing and pulling. Not just the talking. The world ain’t going to fix itself, and it certainly won’t get fixed by people who only talk a good game. It gets fixed by the ones who show up, day after day, and get to work.
FAQs:
How do you actually measure if a company is truly “bettering the world”?
It’s tricky, isn’t it? You gotta look at their supply chains, their labor practices, where their money goes. Not just the glossy ad campaigns. A lot of them are just playing dress-up.
Is it better to support small, local initiatives or large global ones?
Both, I suppose. Local stuff, you see the impact directly. Global stuff, it’s bigger scale, but feels more remote. Support what resonates with you, what you can actually see making a difference.
What’s the biggest challenge for organizations trying to make a positive impact?
Money, always money. And apathy. People just don’t care enough, or they don’t believe anything can truly change. Gets a bit disheartening, that.
Will technology like AI really solve our biggest problems, or create new ones?
Who knows, eh? It’ll solve some, probably make others worse. Technology’s a tool, not a magic wand. Depends on who’s wielding it, and what for. Just like a hammer. You can build a house, or smash a window.
What’s one thing an ordinary person can do to help “better this world”?
Stop talking about it, and just do something. Pick up litter. Volunteer at a shelter. Give blood. Small things. Those small things, they add up. Or they don’t, but at least you tried. That counts for something.
