elephant journal is proud to be the official new media partner with LOHAS Forum. Click here for our ongoing LOHAS coverage, and be sure to follow our live coverage on Twitter. [Our editor Waylon Lewis is honored to serve on two panels during this event.]

I’m super excited to be here, in my home town of Boulder, Colorado, to attend the annual LOHAS conference. As much as I’m averse to the unsexy acronym — LOHAS – (couldn’t we have come up with something that rolls off the tongue a bit better?), I’m proud to be representing elephantjournal’s perspective on this year’s LOHAS conference. Boulder is, after all, America’s hub for the sustainability, natural products, and alternative health industries. It may be a republic. But it’s the hippest, greenest, most innovative republic out there!

I’ve just left the press conference led by Ted Ning, the Conference Director, and was struck by his enthusiasm for what this conference represents. How is this conference different from all the others? We’ve all been to events over the years, where it seems same ‘ole, same ‘ole… talking heads, peeps patting themselves on the back for what a great job they’re doing in their respective industries. But this one really does feel different. It seems to promote and offer a new way of working together; a new way of doing business together; a new way to learn from and teach one another… which, in my opinion, is the wave of the future… collaboration.

The “Us vs. Them” paradigm is over. In fact, companies that continue on the path of cutthroat competition will be left in the dust. Triple bottom line economics is what will drive the future of sustainable business. Thanks to the annual LOHAS conference, conscious consumers and companies have an opportunity to network with scores of other, like-minded green businesses in pursuit of three bottom lines: financial, environmental, and social. Get ready world. We’re here. And the world is a changin’ as we speak.

Collaboration. It’s the new competition.

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