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about me
I'm William Azaroff. I direct Online Strategy & Community Engagement at Vancity, Canada's largest credit union.
My opinions and views are just that, and don't reflect the views of my employer (or, perhaps, anyone else).
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Vancity's Choose Green videos on YouTube.
A recent Choose Green campaign at Vancity included a series of videos with helpful tips about living a more sustainable lifestyle.I just put all six videos on YouTube. Take a look and let me know what you think.
Here's a sample below...
Labels: environment, vancity, vancouver, video, youtube
posted on Saturday, May 31, 2008
Why are we still using paper cups?
My friend Ruben has a very insightful article in The Tyee today about the destructive force of paper cups called The 50-Million-Tree Slurp. Well worth a read!Labels: environment, rubenanderson, thetyee
posted on Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Celebrate Vancity's carbon neutrality.
Here's a video from the celebration on Wednesday when Vancity announced it became the first North American financial institution to achieve being carbon neutral.Enjoy!
Labels: banking, climate change, corporate responsibility, credit union, environment, innovation, social media, vancity, vancouver, video, youtube
posted on Friday, April 11, 2008
Vancity is carbon neutral.
There are so many reasons why I love working at Vancity, and now I have another really big one.
We announced today, after having it externally audited and verified, that as of December 31, 2007 Vancity is offically carbon neutral. In fact, we are the first North American financial institution to become carbon neutral.
So what does that mean?
It means we've tracked our footprint to assess the amount of carbon we emit.
Then we focused on reducing our emissions as much as we possibly could.
And finally, whatever carbon emissions we could not reduce, we purchased high quality local offsets to bring us to carbon neutrality.
This is a huge accomplishment and has been a major focus of the company for quite some time. In fact, we achieved our goal a full two years ahead of schedule by getting our employees across the organization involved and engaged in the issue.
A truly great announcement, and I imagine we'll garner quite a bit of press coverage about it.
I especially love our new limited-time carbon neutral logo on the website.Labels: corporate responsibility, credit union, environment, innovation, news, vancity
posted on Wednesday, April 09, 2008
What does Vancity do in the community anyway?
A major project I've been working on for the past few months is spearheading the re-architecting and rewriting of all the content in the community area of vancity.com. It's been a massive project because, well, frankly we never expained the myriad ways we do good things in our community everyday. A little gap I think.In other words, the very reason I wanted to work at Vancity, and the main thing that keeps me excited to come to work everyday was almost entirely absent from our website. It's a long story.
So, I'm so extraordinarily pleased to share with you our new MyCommunity area.
Inside you'll find out about our four pillars of community leadership (Acting on Climate Change, Facing Poverty, Growing the Social Economy and Being Accountable), what we do in our communities, why we do what we do, what financial products we have that help create positive change, how we help the not-for-profit sector in our local economy, what grants we give out and whole lot more. This project has been absolutely amazing, and I'm really excited about sharing it with you.
I'd love to hear what you all think, especially other CU folks.
Labels: banking, corporate responsibility, credit union, design, environment, microcredit, poverty, social economy, underbanked, vancity
posted on Wednesday, April 02, 2008
WWF Canada nails social marketing.
This ad hits social marketing out of the park. Funny and accessible, it brings those "change-ready" consumers along for the ride, without dumbing down the message for the hard core base.Nicely done, and really funny!
Labels: environment, funny, social marketing, video
posted on Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Update on community platform.
I want to update my earlier post on using the social web as a community platform.This morning we launched the Vancity Bike Share. In a nutshell...
Vancity Bike Share wants to see you to get on a bike, share it with others and spread the word about cycling. It is a chance to try alternative transportation, increase your daily exercise and share with your community.
We used ChangeEverything.ca as our platform to engage people and drive them to find out more and register. We ask participants to use the site to blog about their experiences with the bike, and also to find the person they want to pass the bike to after they've been riding it for three weeks. In addition to ChangeEverything.ca, we also used Facebook as a way to get the word out.
To be honest I wasn't sure how it would go. Would people use these online tools to get involved? Could we use the social web to get people to take action? I hoped so, but I wasn't sure.
But this event proves the power of a social network site. Within a week we had 23 applications to get a bike through the site, and the media attention has driven more people to the site to register and take part in the discussion.
Vancity has two factors working in our favour here: One is that we are local and deeply involved with the local community so the relevance factor is high. We tapped into issues (bike sharing and eco-friendly transportation) that Vancouverites care about and therefore the discussions on the site are meaningful to them. Second is that the values of Vancity, which are well known locally, fit with this initiative. People see it as genuine and trust the process. It doesn't seem like 'marketing'.
Asking some of the people who took one of the 40 bikes this morning, four told me they heard about it on Facebook. Amazing that at least 10% came from leveraging this social utility for free.
Read the bike share blog posts on ChangeEverything.ca.
Powerful stuff.
PS: I also need to say that Kate is my new favourite person!
Labels: banking, blogging, changeeverything, corporate responsibility, credit union, environment, facebook, innovation, technology, vancity, vancouver, web 2.0
posted on Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Environmental sustainability as commoditizition insurance.
Wow, that title is a mouthful.I've been thinking about Bank of America a bit lately. As most readers of an FI blog will undoubtedly know, they are making a $20 Billion investment in environmental sustainability over the next 10 years. The money will go to many different things: A big chunk of the money will go to lending to businesses looking to create a more sustainable enterprise. They will also take a more environmentally friendly approach to their own business operations. And lastly, and to me most interestingly, they are rolling out products that have an environmental focus like a WorldPoints Rewards for the Environment (credit card), The Green Mortgage Program and Environmental Home Equity Program.
Sound familiar? It sounds a lot like the things that Vancity, the company I am contracting at does. They have a Clean Air Auto Loan, a Climate Change Mortgage, a Bright Ideas Home Reno Loan and an enviroVISA. Why would BofA do this? I am going to assume that this is a genuine move. I can't imagine that a company would commit $20 Billion into something they didn't believe in from both a values and business point of view.
In a vertical where it's nearly impossible to differentiate yourself based on products, this is a very smart move. If accounts, credit cards, mortgages etc are simply commodities at this point, no different at bank A than at Bank B, then BofA knows that it's not going to keep or grow its market share by staying the course. It has to stand for something and have a brand that is different from the rest of the players on the marketplace. It will become the green bank, and make a big enough investment into that aspect of its business, that it can truly define its place in the market based, in part, on that.
It must have looked into the future and decided that the environment was going to become a critical issue for consumers over the next ten years and they wanted to get out front early and lead the way. It's gutsy and brave at this point when so many Americans are still tuned out on the issue. It also has interesting repercussions for a company like Vancity. Granted, Vancity's a regional player in a different country, but if, say, TD Canada Trust follows suit and does something similar, what would make Vancity unique in the eyes of the consumer? I had never guessed that a big company could compete with a credit union on these types of initiatives.
Now, to be fair, Vancity does all sorts of things around the underbanked and underserved and helping those in poverty start to build asset. But from a consumer point of view, they're primarily known for their green initiatives. How long will that perception of leading the "green" way last, I wonder. It's going to be a challenge for the business, but hopefully one that is very good for the environment. It's especially a challenge that Credit Unions are going to have to start dealing with sooner rather than later.
Labels: bank of america, banking, climate change, corporate responsibility, credit union, environment, usa, vancity, web 2.0
posted on Wednesday, May 16, 2007
ePaper at hand
South Korea's LG Philips LCD has developed the world's first A4-sized colour electronic-paper.Labels: design, environment, technology
posted on Monday, May 14, 2007
Kids furniture from cardboard
Make your own kids furniture out of cardboard at foldschool.Labels: design, environment, odd
posted on Sunday, April 29, 2007
Flood Map of Vancouver
Here's an amazing Google Map mashup. See what a 7 meter rise in sea level will do to any part of the globe. Scary stuff: here's a view of Vancouver with a 7 meter rise in sea level.Labels: canada, climate change, environment, vancouver, web 2.0
posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2007
The Climate Change Mortgage
Here's a great project I've been working on the last little while. Today at Vancity, we introduced a Climate Change Mortgage. Who better to speak about this than our CEO, Dave Mowat?Check out all the details at ClimateChangeMortgage.com.
Labels: azaroff, canada, changeeverything, climate change, corporate responsibility, environment, vancity, vancouver, video, web
posted on Tuesday, February 27, 2007
The only Oscar I cared about.
So happy Al Gore won!Labels: climate change, environment, media, politics, video
posted on Sunday, February 25, 2007
What does your car say about you?
Here's a great video from Greenpeace UK.Labels: climate change, environment, funny, web
posted on Wednesday, February 07, 2007
Mandatory recycling in Vancouver?
Friends in Seattle told me recently that their city has mandatory recycling, and that those in violation are fined. The city performs random inspections of people's garbage to check.On that note, there's a poll this week on ChangeEverything.ca about mandatory recycling in Vancouver. If the results are strongly in favour, we're taking our case to city hall. Cast your vote now.
Labels: azaroff, canada, changeeverything, climate change, corporate responsibility, environment, media, politics, vancity, web
posted on Monday, February 05, 2007
Try the BBC Climate Change Game.
Labels: climate change, environment, media, politics, web
posted on Wednesday, January 31, 2007
DoTheRightThing.com
A new social networking site where people can rank companies based on their social performance: DoTheRightThing.comLabels: corporate responsibility, environment, media, web
posted on Sunday, January 28, 2007
An Inconvenient Truth Mashup
An Inconvenient Truth and MalphunktionLabels: canada, climate change, environment, politics, vancity
posted on Friday, January 26, 2007
Global warming: the final verdict
A study by the world's leading experts says global warming will happen faster and be more devastating than previously thought.We are like alcoholics who have got as far as admitting there is a problem. It is a start. Now we have got to start drying out - which means reducing our carbon output.
The report is devastating.
Labels: climate change, environment, politics
posted on Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Search Engine Optimization Meets Climate Change
Labels: climate change, environment, web
posted on Thursday, January 18, 2007
Reporting on the environment
I recently read the Globe and Mail article Vancity CEO becomes climate warrior and was frustrated by part of the article.The article is about Dave Mowat, the CEO of Vancity (where I work) and his experience getting the Inconvenient Truth training from Al Gore in Tennessee. The article goes over the training and what's involved. Fine and good. But then there's this part...
Marlo Lewis, a senior fellow at the conservative think tank Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington and a persistent critic of Mr. Gore's environmental views, said he's concerned that "misleading" information in the movie and lectures will be spread further by those taking the training program.I was floored by this and wrote the following letter to the editor of the Globe:
Mr. Gore's ideas include "an enormous number of distortions," Mr. Lewis said. The presentation is a "one-sided lawyers' brief for a leftwing, very partisan agenda." He said he thinks Mr. Gore's real agenda is to soften up the U.S. public for another run at the presidency.
I read your article "Vancity CEO becomes climate warrior" and enjoyed finding out more about the kinds of people taking the Inconvenient Truth training. I was, however, deeply disappointed by the inclusion of Marlo Lewis from the Competitive Enterprise Institute in the article. Nowhere in the article does it explain the views or policies of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, nor does it explain why Mr. Lewis is such a "persistent critic" of the former Vice President.Not sure if they'll print my letter, but this kind of shoddy journalism has always bugged me.
It always amazes me when the heavily researched and scientifically endorsed views of someone like Mr. Gore can be instantly discredited by someone who needs not present any facts nor competing scientific research. Simply presenting two opposing sides, especially when only one side is so rigourously documented and researched, does not make the cut as journalism.
William Azaroff
Vancouver, BC
PS: In the interest of full disclosure, I am a Vancity employee.
Labels: azaroff, environment, vancity
posted on Sunday, January 14, 2007
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