By Olga Orda •
August 19, 2008
INFORM does it again just as parents can once again embrace the “most wonderful time of the year- the Staples Inc. version“. In other words, it’s back to school time for the kids.
My assumption is that kids are already well ahead of their parents in terms of incorporating green living (with less fuss than adults) into their lives and those of their peers. In fact, kids often pressure parents to recycle, according to a study published in the BBC.
Still, raising children to be good citizens and those that can quickly make the link between paper usage, recycling, deforestation, government action and climate change later in their life (I coin these savvy “Forest Citizens”) is not easy but it is well worth it on many levels. Here is who we are watching to help us raise good Forest Citizens as we embark on the craziness of the school year:
By Olga Orda •
August 12, 2008
You run an sustainable organization, receive referrals from the Internet and want a brand that’s memorable. You also want to automate your web traffic.
Enter the green widget - a ‘brand confirming’ tool you can’t overlook. If you have a brand, says Stefan Juhl, a widget will only confirm (or make others more aware of) your brand values. So, what is a widget anyway? Erick Schonfeld explains and Max Gladwell defines the role of a widget as one of the many tools a social (change) media practitioner can employ.
By Olga Orda •
August 1, 2008
Myth no. 2: Buying recycled paper doesn’t really help anything, especially climate change. Far from it. Paper that ends ups in landfills instead of being recycled gives off methane which has a warming effect 23 times greater than carbon dioxide. According to an Environmental Protection Network (EPN) study, one-third of all waste in landfills is paper, and landfills account for 34 percent of human-related methane emissions. Even more to the point, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) identified paper decomposition as [...]
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 20, 2008
And, to take paper consumption a step further, with all the talk about buying post-consumer waste paper in order to reduce deforestation and CO2, it’s not clear whether forests can sustainably provide wood, paper and transportation fuel in the coming years. That is what a report, Trees in the Greenhouse: Why Climate Change Is Transforming the Forest Products Business, released by the World Resources Institute (WRI), stated in June 2008.
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 19, 2008
A few weeks back, I was writing about CO2-friendly supply chains and saw the hefty list of U.S. companies that the Environmental Defense Fund had helped switch to recycled content in a drive to reduce paper waste across the nation.
Now, paper is back under the public eye in fuller force than ever because of its significant climate change footprint.
“Paper is a tremendously resource-intensive product to produce,” explains project manager Victoria Mills, “and the decomposition of paper in landfills generates methane, a greenhouse gas with 23 times the heat-trapping power of carbon dioxide.”
By Olga Orda •
June 15, 2008
A www.greenprinteronline.com dispatch
For all those days when you believe your green values aren’t aligned with your workplace but you can’t - or don’t want to - make the eco-entrepreneur step, here are some immediate action steps to try out at the office this Monday.
Remember: while many green teams start from humble beginnings, they can grow exponentially - pent up passion for green amongst employees can be powerful driving force.
By Olga Orda •
December 5, 2007
Image source www2.slac.stanford.edu
A www.greenprinteronline.com dispatch.
Customers care about how many trees your company saves. And no, there is no need to trek your staff all the way out to Indonesia to show that you care about carbon offsetting via tree planing though we do not discourage such acts of corporate altruism.
