Heating Up For A Good Cause

We've selected this article as part of our "Blogs by B Corps" series. Matt Kopac is the Corporate Responsibility Manager for iContact. iContact is an industry-leading email marketing software company. iContact focuses on its customers, while also caring about its employees and community. Their vision is to, "Build a great global company based here in North Carolina for our customers, employees and community."

The dog days of summer are upon us at iContact’s headquarters in North Carolina with temperatures creeping up over 100 degrees. While some are complaining about the hot summer weather, we welcome the heat and the sunshine at iContact as they are key elements to help further the efforts of CalSolAgua.

CalSolAgua developed a clean and inexpensive solar water heating system capable of addressing the hot water needs for families across the globe. Middle-class households in developing countries often face undesirable energy options. CalSolAgua’s solar water heating system can deliver the hot water needs for bathing and laundry at one quarter of the price of competing water tank heaters, while reducing household energy bills and carbon emissions.

For its work in using groundbreaking technology to effect positive social and environmental change, CalSolAqua was recognized as a TechSpring winner. TechSpring is a joint initiative of Singlebrook Technology and Unreasonable Institute, and is an innovative program designed to provide a free package of marketing and technology services to budding social entrepreneurs like CalSolAgua. iContact is proud to be a participating TechSpring service partner and will offer CalSolAgua free email marketing and social media consulting services, plus free email marketing for one year up to 10,000 subscribers. Other participating TechSpring service partners include CoLab Coop, Communications4Good, CSRwire, PROVOC, See3 Communications, and Topography Marketing & Communications.

TechSpring 2011 is iContact’s first formal partnership with Singlebrook Technology and the Unreasonable Institute. iContact was introduced to Singlebrook through the B Corporation network, as both companies are certified B Corps. iContact is one of a number of B Corporations and other sustainable companies that are partnering with TechSpring to support the Unreasonable Institute winner to get this powerful idea off the ground.

As a certified B Corp, iContact has taken many actions with respect to social, environmental, and economic value creation across all of its stakeholders. We salute CalSolAgua’s work to develop technology that will have a positive impact on the environment. At iContact, we strive to be an environmentally responsible company and have a number of environmental goals for 2011 including:

  • Assume full control of our energy consumption by amending our lease and sub-metering our space
  • Install lighting sensors and publicly display our energy usage on company monitors
  • Flatline our energy use in 2011 at 2010 levels
  • Achieve carbon neutrality for U.S. operations
  • Reduce landfill waste and move toward 100% environmentally sustainable materials for operations

Read more about additional goals in our 2010 corporate social responsibility report. We will be focusing on several environmental initiatives later this fall. Stay tuned to learn more about activities we have planned to help reduce iContact’s carbon footprint!