August is National Inventors Month and in celebration of this imaginative occasion, Altoids has partnered with HowStuffWorks.com to honor creative citizens they call “Tinnovators.” These inventors have found ingenious uses for their Altoids tins once the mints are gone.

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On the last day of the show (yesterday), Jeff Spies, Director of Training & Tradeshows of AEE Solar gave a half-day workshop called “Launch and Grow Your Solar Business”. Free to attendees of the Intersolar exhibits, the workshop covered everything from the qualifications needed to become a solar dealer to common configurations of residential and small commercial solar power installations to business strategies. And, if you would have signed up before early June, registration to the exhibit portion of the show would have been free (and after that point it was $100).

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How do you convince your property managers that greening the building is a financially sound investment?

Unfortunately, there is no silver bullet argument for this one. Like the majority of small businesses you probably lease your facilities. If you do, you’ll find that some greening strategies require the cooperation of your landlord.

You may also find that your landlord does not yet see the financial benefits to making efficiency-related capital improvements because, in a typical commercial lease the landlord pays for improvements but the tenants, who pay the utility bills, reap the benefits of the savings.

Don’t give up hope.The inclusion of environmental criteria into relevant lease clauses, such as requiring Energy Star appliances or providing recycling services, are becoming more commonplace. So, the best time to talk to your landlord about greening is when you are signing or renegotiating your lease.

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Three friends decided to find out. As they put it,

Mandy, Ryan and Brady are ‘bikepacking’ 12,000 miles to the East Coast and back to California, using solar-powered electronics and leg-powered bicycles.  The result is a feature-length documentary film that will present a realistic experience of seeking out and living in sustainable community.

Started October 2008 and 3800 miles into it as of this writing (with 209 PB&J’s consumed if you must know) they have been filming and Twittering their way across to country, giving a peek into what it looks, feels, and works like to live in sustainable, intentional community, the end result being a film called Within Reach.

It’s clear that these people are 21st century environmentalists - they don’t shun businesses supporting their venture, and in fact proudly list their sponsors on the front page, all of which bear relevance with what they’re doing. This project is Creative Commons licensed, and they are a non profit, allowing for people to support their journey and the making of it into a film afterwords.

So what have they found?

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My favorite thing about the D.I.Y. lifestyle is that it’s also a thrifty lifestyle. It’s inspiring to take an unwanted, perhaps even damaged material something that someone else might discard or donate, and turn it into something that’s beautiful and useful again.

Take those sweet, knitted or crocheted afghans that I’m always coming across in thrift stores or dumpster-diving, or that often get re-gifted to me because I like handmade stuff.

I respect the love and time that goes into the act of knitting and crocheting, and the dedication, especially, that it takes to create an entire afghan, but frankly, I have enough of my own already, and I don’t necessarily need another one, especially if it’s just so-so or (gasp!) ugly.

An entire afghan, though? That’s a nice, large swatch of material to work with. I’ve been sewing up a storm with my thrifted and re-gifted afghan stash, lately, making some simple summer dresses for my little girls. Here are some tips so that you, too, can sew with knitted or crocheted materials–it’s not as tricky as it seems:

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It’s one of the staple fabrics that, as a cloth diapering momma, I bought every time it was on sale. Only now? All my babies are toilet trained, and I still have, pardon my French, a butt-load of fleece.

One of the things that I like to do as an eco-friendly crafter and that I like to teach my children as a natural parent is to remember to have respect for our stuff. We should keep only what we can use or enjoy, and we should use and enjoy what we have. Thus I need to either use or lose my fleece stash, and that’s my goal this week.

Fortunately, the same qualities that make fleece an excellent material for cloth diapers also make it an excellent material for a light and comfortable matress pad. Additionally, it comes in a width that’s perfect for my queen-sized bed and workable for my daughters’ full-sized bed, and the sewing on it will be absolutely minimal because fleece doesn’t ravel–just cut it to shape, throw on some elastic, and we’ll be good to go. Here’s how:

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First up: my favorite pair of jeans. My dancing jeans. The jeans I hemmed with bias tape. The jeans that I wear most often when I carry my sketchbook around in my back pocket.

The jeans with the two huge, gaping holes in the back pocket.

Hurry and go dig out your favorite pair of jeans with the hole in the back pocket, because we are about to mend it.

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We recently celebrated my son’s second birthday which happens to be on Earth Day. Being an “Earth Birthday Boy” we naturally celebrate in an earth friendly fashion.

One of the many traditions in my family is to break open a pinata at a child’s birthday party. Pinatas are a hit (pun intended) with children because they usually contain treats. What kid doesn’t want a chance at breaking open a pinata! As kids we loved being blindfolded, spun in circles and pushed towards the swinging pinata for a strike.

I knew the tradition could carry on but not without a green twist, of course. The idea of this eco-friendly mission is to forgo the plastic and create a healthy and environmentally sound party which includes a pinata. Growing up we never thought about how much waste a pinata created. We just knew that when the pinata was punctured we’d get loads of candy and maybe a few plastic toys.

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Newspapers and magazines play a part, but with their shrinking staffs, it’s a smaller role by the day. Blogs? Definitely, it’s where people with the freedom and foresight to look broader, more critically, think more bravely share what they’re observing, researching, and wanting your feedback on. Microblogging sites such as Twitter take the time frame even more immediate, currently breaking.

But, you may be asking, where do I find the time to go to all these sources? A fair question, one which a tool like Feedly handily integrates all together in one place, allowing for you to easily interact with both your information and the people talking about it.

The next question you may have is, how do I even find what I need to keep track of in the first place amongst all this big swirling pot of information? And how do I know what’s best?

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A special guest post by Aaron Schoenberger for Green Printer’s ‘Design Goes Green’ series.

A common misconception, one that I’ve seen a thousand times, is the idea that simply printing on recycled mediums, with soy ink, will make one’s marketing materials green. In essence, it’s not only the printing that makes a company green, but also the research and time spent identifying target markets, concocting copy that’s both precise and somewhat vague at the same time, limiting the want to send promotional material to everyone on the planet, and a host of other factors that, if not done properly, will result in a slap on the wrist from good ole’ Mother Earth.

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Thank you to everyone who entered. We here at CAGW have been rejuvenated and inspired by all of your upcycling ideas! Don’t forget your other chances to win this beautiful book, you can find out where to enter here.

I know you’ve waited with bated breath so here it is, your chance to win a copy of Sewing Green, the latest and greatest book by Betz White, author of Warm Fuzzies.

Sewing Green offers 25 cute projects made from repurposed or organic materials. Learn how to make aprons and wallets from dress shirts, and sandwich wraps, and lounge pants from organic and thrifted fabrics. The projects are are direct and easy to follow even for this crafter who likes to skip ahead and tweak things. I especially like the sandwich wrap project and the use of PUL - a material that is not vinyl and one that I need to look into more.

White’s favorite project from the book is the woodland draft buster, a much more refined version of the draft catcher that I created a while back. This version looks like an adorable tree branch that helps you save money on your heating bill. White wanted everything in the book to have a good purpose without being preachy. She wanted everything to be fun and easy and show that any one can do these projects and be eco-friendly. “You don’t have to suffer,” she said. “Suffering is not involved.”

Continue reading to enter the contest!

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I am often asked to define “conservation photography.” The idea, of course, is nothing new, but the conceptualization behind it is still evolving. Perhaps the best way to define it is through actions, and not just words. Being a conservation photographer is not just about visualizing the issues or following interesting story lines. These are important, of course, but make no mistake, the real work of the conservation photographer begins after the last click of the shutter has been made. It is what happens with the images afterwards that matters most. Making wonderful pictures is important; being accomplished story-tellers is a must; following journalistic guidelines should be an automatic part of of our workflow, but what we do with our images to make sure conservation action takes place, is what defines our unique brand of photography.

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And then I thought, “Why do I hate vinyl so much?” Because it will basically never, ever decompose back into the earth.

Where, however, could such a quality ever be an asset?

In the garden, that’s where! No matter what happens between spring and fall–rain, sun, heck, the apocolypse could strike at any second–I am always going to know exactly where my chives are.

Here’s how you can transform your crap blinds into indestructable chives markers, too:

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Not only has the entire CraftyStylish blog declared March as button month in celebration of West Coast Crafty’s new book, Button it Up, but we here at Crafting a Green World are known to love our buttons, too–check out these vintage button monogram pillows, or the felted wool weekend projects that include button-topped flowers. Flowers!

So if you finish all those up and you’re STILL craving yourself some button crafting, check out five more crafty little projects that will let you get your button on:

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By Contributing Writer Melissa Chungfat | Part of Green Printer’s ‘Design Goes Green’ dispatch.

Thanks to blogs, websites, Facebook, and the ever-growing list of social media tools, people have the ability and power to educate themselves about anything they please. It is harder for companies to get away with lies about their products and misleading messages. People can easily look up “greenwashing” or “what is an organic product?” in a search engine and in a matter of seconds, they have a list of resources that cuts through the PR.

So how can companies who are taking sincere environmental initiatives market themselves credibly?

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Last week BusinessWeek published an article: 10 Ways To Cut Business Costs and I was pleased to see that four of the 10 were also green.

It gave me the idea to write about green ways to cut costs in these difficult times. Starting with the four cited in BW, here are some ideas:

Reduce energy use. Energy is the number one expense for almost one-third of small businesses, and whatever your industry, increasing energy efficiency and reducing energy costs is good for business. ENERGY STAR for Small Business has free information, resources and technical advice on hundreds of energy and cost-savings practices.

Telecommute. Telecommuting is often cited as one of the most valuable benefits to both employers and employees. Telecommuting has been credited with improving work/family balance, supervisor-staff relationships, job satisfaction, worker retention, productivity and career prospects, as well as reducing stress, absenteeism, recruiting, office space and parking costs. It may also be one of the most effective greening practices you can embrace: The American Consumer Institute projects that telecommuting alone will cut CO2 emissions by more than a half million tons over the next decade.  Best Work Places has great tools for implementing telecommuting and other commuter benefits program.

Curb travel expenses. Airplane travel, lodging and rental cars can consume almost one-quarter of a business’ carbon footprint and as much as 3% of its revenue. So, reducing the number of business trips you take is an excellent strategy for greening and reducing expenses. (A friend who is an senior exec at a global liquor company told me it cost them $12,000 every time they sent her overseas.) Taking fewer, longer trips is one solution. Web conferencing is another. Its a win for productivity, expense reduction and the environment because not traveling means not having to postpone regular office work, saving the expenses of travel and eliminating the carbon output from that travel.

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g Green Design Center may be just the ticket.

Begun in Massachusetts, they’ve now created a franchise program for the budding ecopreneurist, where someone with the passion can put the backing of someone already doing it, together with what will increasingly become a known name for such stores.

The flagship g store has a host of green building/design services from interior and architectural design to eco events.

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Traditional marketing terms are just words that have used for quite a long while to name different ways of accomplishing marketing goals.Though tactics may have changed from relying on newspapers to relying on television advertising to new interest in social media, the goals and what we want to accomplish in the end have remained the same. That’s why I find it odd that perfectly good words like “impressions” and “reach” are so often absent from the discussion on social media.

Let’s review.

In advertising terms, “impressions” means how many times a consumer sees your message. This is measured across media. A TV viewer may see your commercial 5 or more times before it registers or sparks their interest in your product. Media buyers calculate the number of times specific consumers see a commercial before making the buy.

“Reach” refers to the actual number of consumers who see your message once. Obviously the more of your target consumers you reach often, with lots of impressions, the greater the chances she’ll buy your product.

And, so I ask, why does this topic not come up in discussions of social media? Yes, people do talk about followers and friends and quality followers and friends and fans and number of followers on Twitter, Facebook, SU, Myspace, etc, etc. This does address the concept of “reach” – sort of.

But what about impressions? Especially on Twitter, we usually tweet a post or an interesting thought…once. And, of course, at least, I’d say 80-90% of our followers don’t even see the tweet…unless it is retweeted. Of course, that is often the goal, but, what about if we tweeted one message a number of times to ensure that all of our key target sees it? Would that be considered bad twettique? Is that abusing our followers? Would we rapidly have deluge of people “unfollowing”?

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