By Lucille Chi •
August 28, 2008
For those of you looking to re-upholster that charming antique love seat set or chaise lounge, and want to do it right, try Rubie Green upholstery fabrics.
Rubie Green (homepage images above) is an eco-upholstery fabric company with the creative philosophy:
“It’s a barefoot walk in the sand; it’s a lazy afternoon nap, and it’s your first sight of the Mediterranean coast. It’s life at its simplest, and nature in its wordless beauty. Here at Rubie Green, our mission is to dress your surroundings in fabrics that represent vitality, energy, comfort and style, all while maintaining respect to the environment by using only 100% organic cotton. We believe in classic designs that are familiar to every decade, re-vitalized in an eco-friendly manner. We know that natural does not mean boring, and that interiors make a house a home.”
By Olga Orda •
July 26, 2008
This week, greenwash fatigued bloggers (Gawker describes it as improbable a real news item as ‘the hot dog industry going vegetarian’) and non-profit spokespersons turned a skeptical eye on a group of direct marketing companies called the Green Marketing Coalition (GMC). Corporate clients, including Microsoft, Washington Mutual and OptimaHealth, are also in on the initiative.
GMC’s goal? Altruistic enough. According to the New York Times article “Direct marketing goes green. No, really”, these marketers are joining hands and taking small, albeit very conservative, steps to make an inherently unsustainable practice (i.e. sending wads of personal junk mail) at least a little bit greener. We have already written about junk mail solutions and naughty, catalogue-sending companies before and so we were curious about what best practices the industry funded group came up with.
By Olga Orda •
July 16, 2008
A Green Printer dispatch.
According to Patricia Calkins, Xerox vice-president for Environment, Health and Safety, being smarter about paper use is a win for the environment and for the bottom line, so it is no surprise businesses would zero in on improving their performance in that area.
While long an “evangelist” for greener operations, Xerox is, at its core, a global document management company, which manufactures and sells a range of color and black-and-white printers, multifunction systems, digital production printing presses, and related consulting services and supplies.
And so, the question that Jeff McIntire-Strasburg asked in April still hovers: “can a company that manufactures copy machines, and sells more paper than any other single brand, really walk the talk on sustainable business practices?”
By Olga Orda •
July 10, 2008
What does a leader in business that moves us “far, fast” towards our sustainability goals look like? It’s a relevant question to our pressing need for solutions and Nicola Acutt, Ph.D. writes a “bang on” response to it.
Borrowing from a recent Al Gore speech, Accult asserts that “as people grasp the magnitude and speed of change needed to address the environmental, social and economic issues that we face, there is a growing need for leaders who take us ‘far, fast’”.
By Olga Orda •
June 28, 2008
You’ve started a green team and seven weeks later, your once ecstatic committee of cubicle warriors by day, green champions by night (a.k.a your green employees) begin to dwindle in numbers. Even the most eager employees look like they would prefer to be idling in traffic than be here listening to your green pitch.
Preston Koerner wrote a valuable article in Green Biz on how to prevent “green fatigue” and separate it from the “green noise” amongst customers in response to a recent commentary on eco-overload in the New York Times.
By Olga Orda •
June 6, 2008
Image source: it all skyrocketed with Gutenberg’s printing press…
A Green Printer dispatch.
Ever wondered how much energy and thought it took to produce that shiny brochure your marketing staff handed to you this week? And no, it’s not just the brand and visual design genius we’re talking about.
Let’s face it: making a few pieces of paper look pretty takes up some pretty hefty resources and the paper and pulp industry is there [...]
By Olga Orda •
April 15, 2008
We’ve come this far in our exasperation with junk mail-apalooza and now people are luring us with cold, hard cash (or the beauty of planting a tree) to get us to stop receiving virgin-forest-eating junk mail.
By Olga Orda •
March 29, 2008
Image source: http://timblair.net | Lights out for Sydney, Australia 2007
An http://greenprinteronline.com dispatch.
Earth Hour is tonight, March 29th from 8 to 9 pm. The idea is to turn off the lights as a symbolic gesture that us citizens, business owners, uber-corporations (hello, Google’s black screen, hello McDonalds in Toronto saving 10 000 kilowatt hours) local governments and non-profit groups are taking climate change seriously.
Despite gripes that Earth Hour falls on the NCAA basketball regional, it’s lights out for over 23 major cities worldwide like Toronto and Bangkok.
By Olga Orda •
March 17, 2008
Image source | www.jiinjoo.com
An http://greenprinteronline.com dispatch.
When asked: how “green” are you, the brains behind accounting, IT and architectural firms who, kudos to them – both the closet greens or eco-warriors who proudly bear their eco-badge on their sleeve – jump up to say that they are helping their clients drive sustainability solutions.
Even lawyers are realizing their impact on their environment. No seriously, lawyers are sharp enough to know that using all that virgin paper cannot be good to the environment.
But when it comes to driving internal sustainability initiatives? Many still respond by: “we recycle”. Period.
By Olga Orda •
March 3, 2008
Photos by Chris Jordan | “Intolerable Beauty: Portraits of American Mass Consumption”
Design Goes Green - The first of a series of articles by Green Printer on the cross-section between the environment, business and the creative communications industry.
According to the federal Environmental Protection Agency, used or unwanted electronics amounted to 1.9 to 2.2 million tons in 2005, with most of that ending up in landfills. We did a post earlier on the how the chemicals that seep into the soil, even decades later, can have harmful human health effects and the fact that heaps of the stuff are often left abandoned in developing countries.
By Olga Orda •
February 16, 2008
Image Source: http://www.replate.org
We ask design guru Nate Burgos, named Fast Company’s debut “Fast 50 Champions of Innovation“, to reflect on how the Internet changed how designers ‘make connections’ and why government and ‘big business’ should care about environmental sustainability and design activism.
Our take: major organizations should take a cue from the incredibly creative and nimble ways designers (who often, historically speaking, have a pulse on how online mediums work faster than business) are using the Internet and multi-media platforms to attract highly engaged users - not to mention high web traffic rates.
Here are nine websites to watch and more on what the ever quotable Burgos said on design activism, the Internet and sustainability…
