Green Options

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This is a guest post by John Simonetta, owner of ProformaGreen, an eco-friendly promotional items consultancy. John’s blogs are designed to keep us up to date on the “greening” of his industry.

OK, the name is a little cheesy but these signs are a great idea for businesses that need eco-friendly signage which still shows a professional edge.

Primarily constructed of bamboo, the Panda Stand is an environmentally friendly retractable banner stand for the exhibit, display and graphics markets. The unit is made from 90% renewable resources (bamboo casing and pole) and designed to maximize visual impact.

The Panda Stand’s eco-friendly style helps to emphasize your message while contributing to a greener planet for us all. In fact I would say the stand itself contributes to your message.

The manufacturer - Megagraphix - is working on using a 100% recycled solution for the banner itself as well as printing the unit using 100% vegetable based dyes.

This sturdy and premium portable display unit offers the same high performance attributes as other retractable displays. Its precision-engineered retraction system makes it easy and quick to set up virtually anywhere - simply unwind the graphic stored in the bamboo base and insert the support pole.

This is a guest post by John Simonetta, owner of ProformaGreen, an eco-friendly promotional items consultancy. John’s blogs are designed to keep us up to date on the “greening” of his industry.

The Verve line of organic cotton promotional t-shirts from Vantage Apparel seems to be going for the title of most green t-shirt available.

Like many other organic shirts in the promotional items industry Vantage starts with a non-bleached t-shirt made from organic cotton (i.e. no pesticides or petroleum fertilizers used to grow the cotton). At this point the shirt is similar to other organic shirts, like the AnvilOrganic line from Anvil Knit Wear (which by the way does come in different colors than just “natural”).

This is a guest post by John Simonetta, owner of ProformaGreen, an eco-friendly promotional items consultancy. John’s blogs are designed to keep us up to date on the “greening” of his industry.

Independent Printing has started a blog at www.designed2print.wordpress.com, which has a number of good articles on the changes in the printing industry. The site covers how Independent Printing is staying ahead of the curve by offering not only Forest Stewardship Council paper and vegetable based inks, but also switching to green energy for their plants.

Our number one seller from Independent Printing is their Enviro-binder.

This is a guest post by John Simonetta, owner of ProformaGreen, an eco-friendly promotional items consultancy. John’s blogs are designed to keep us up to date on the “greening” of his industry.

Leed’s is teaming up with AmericanForests.org. “Leed’s makes a donation to American Forest’s Global ReLeaf program for every EcoSmart imprint order we produce”.

The thing I like about this new deal is that you don’t have to do anything extra. If the client purchases Leed’s EcoSmart promotional items the donation is automatically made.

Simple. But….

This is a guest post by John Simonetta, owner of ProformaGreen, an eco-friendly promotional items consultancy. John’s blogs are designed to keep us up to date on the “greening” of his industry.

There has been a growing conversation in the promotional items market about items made from corn plastic.

For us this conversation normally comes up when clients debate the pros and cons of corn plastic mugs like those offered by the manufacturer QuickPoint.

The argument normally goes like this.

Pro: Corn plastic mugs are safe and sturdy. They cost less than mugs of similar weight made from petroleum plastic. The QuickPoint products and others are union-made in the U.S.A from U.S. corn, therefore they are not shipped from overseas, which reduces their footprint, and are made by workers making U.S. wages. They are biodegradable.
Con: Using corn for plastic is believed to reduce the amount of corn in the global food chain. Contributing to a variety of social ills including food shortages and when combined with the increasing use of corn for ethanol, driving up the price of all sorts of goods. of

This is a guest post by John Simonetta, owner of ProformaGreen, an eco-friendly promotional items consultancy. John’s blogs are designed to keep us up to date on the “greening” of his industry.

From leather to leader is how Leed’s explains it on their website. How about from bottles to briefcases? That might be a better description for Leeds line of 100% recycled promotional items made from water bottles and other recycled everyday items.

Leed’s Owl line of bags and other items made from recycled water bottles has added a new product to their list of made from 100% post-consumer recycled material (product label affirms this claim).

This is a guest post by John Simonetta owner of ProformaGreen an eco-friendly promotional items consultancy. John’s blogs are designed to keep us up to date on the “greening” of his industry.

Jetline has entered the Nonwoven bag market with a 100% recylable 80 GSM Nonwoven Polypropylene tote. Their large tote runs $1.49 at EQP with one color imprint with their standard tote running at $1.28.

Jetline has been a good producer in the past so I am curious to see how these bags work out for them.

A reminder, nonwoven bags are made from structures bonded together by entangling fiber mechanically. They are flat and porous sheets that are made directly from separate (often recycled) fibers. They are not made by weaving or knitting and do not require converting the fibers to yarn. Nonwoven products are often made from recycled material AND are often biodegradable.

This is a guest post by John Simonetta, owner of ProformaGreen, an eco-friendly promotional items consultancy. John’s blogs are designed to keep us up to date on the “greening” of his industry.

To capture as much information on new ideas and products coming from the convention as I could I went out and got a video camera and recorded a number of vendors talking about thier products.

The videos are on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/proformagreen.

If you are a green entrepreneur I strongly suggest you take a look at these pitches, using them as a learning tool to avoid the Six Sins of Green Washing (see www.terrachoice.com).

TerraChoice lists the sins as

Sin of the Hidden Trade-Off - e.g. paper (including household tissue, paper towel and copy paper): “Okay, this product comes from a sustainably harvested forest, but what are the impacts of its milling and transportation? Is the manufacturer also trying to reduce those impacts?” Emphasizing one environmental issue isn’t a problem (indeed, it often makes for better communications). The problem arises when hiding a trade-off between environmental issues.

This is a guest post by John Simonetta, owner of ProformaGreen, an eco-friendly promotional items consultancy. John’s blogs are designed to keep us up to date on the “greening” of his industry.

I now understand that my attempt at blogging from our convention was a little bit of a pipe dream. There were simply so many green products and conversations going on that I was nearly overwhelmed.

Two big take-aways:

1) The industry is certain that green is going to stick this time around. A few vendors placed green (by their use of the word at the time) at 8-12% of the business and with a growth to 20% in the next few years seeming very likely. Ash City is looking for 50% by 2010.

2) This is the interesting point for Ecopreneurs: suppliers are having trouble keeping up with demand in the marketplace, even at the low levels of current business. Problems are at every level of the supply chain, so if you have a green idea, GET IT OUT THERE.

This is a guest post by John Simonetta, owner of ProformaGreen, an eco-friendly promotional items consultancy. John’s blogs are designed to keep us up to date on the “greening” of his industry. This week John is writing about his experiences at his national convention…

I am at the Proforma national convention this week, a gathering of our sales folks in Orlando, Florida. It is a once a year chance to meet one-on-one with most of the top manufacturers in the promotional items and print industry. While here I hope to give short daily updates on what is going on from an Ecopreneurist perspective.

Green is certainly a strong theme at this year’s meeting with many vendors bringing new green items to the event. The Proforma event bag this year was even green - each member of the convention was given a Recycled Owl Deluxe Backpack made from 100% post-consumer recycled material- to hold our event training materials. These bags are made by Leed’s and are part of their Owl line of bags made from recycled water bottles and yogurt containers.