This weekend, I attended the inaugural Sustainable Business Summit, which was held at the University of Texas at Austin campus. The purpose of the conference was to bring awareness and create dialogue between attendees and representatives of business who place a large importance on sustainability and ecological responsibility.

I got to interact with executives from companies like Whole Foods, GE, New Belgium, frog design, Citi Group, Starbucks, IBM, Dell, Sweet Leaf and HEB/Central Market, not to mention incredible UT Austin faculty and local Austin business leaders, entrepreneurs, students and concerned citizens.

There were some great topics and some great concerns raised. I think what impressed me the most was the fact that even large corporations do have concerns about their ecological footprint and are finding new and innovative ways of either drastically reducing that footprint or getting rid of it altogether. I look forward to next year’s summit!