Green Options

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

On April 21, 2009 Drinking With Benefits held their latest open house event at the State and Allen Lounge in downtown Dallas.

The goal of Drinking With Benefits is to “develop an awareness and call to action for local communities through businesses that implement the ideals of an eco-friendly community, thereby creating an active ‘go green’ network of lounges, bar and nightclubs”. Part of their education and advocacy outreach is recognition by Drinking With Benefits of those businesses who recycle their waste—in particular glass, which has the most connection to the patrons of these businesses.

As part of their program Drinking With Benefits needs to get their message out by identifying the bars that are members of their organization. Enter the Dakota Burl plaque from Norwood. This plaque is made entirely of sunflower husks and when laser etched really looks very elegant. Each new member of Drinking With Benefits is now presented with a Dakota Burl plaque to place in their establishment to show their participation in the program and to help promote it. That was part of the reason for the April 21st event.

In the run up to Earth Day bags and water bottle orders seem to become the main topic for the promotional products industry. For our office the bag that we are selling the most of is the Debco NW4300. The reason seems to always come down to cost and imprint size.

Norwood has just released their new virtual catalog for their green and eco-friendly promotional items at http://norwood.digicatalog.com/green/.

Finding the right tote is always a bit of a hassle for marketing teams, and with convention season and indeed Earth Day right around the corner, many Ecopreneurists want to make sure their bags stand out in the crowds.

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

Huffermen has now introduced two sizes of sports bottles which they claim will biodegrade in 1 - 5 years in a managed landfill. The 20oz ECO20 and 28oz ECO28 bottles are made of HDPE.  They contain an additive to the resin that makes them biodegradable in a normal landfill situation.  The cap is also biodegradable.

Well we often get questions about the source of this cotton and other organic cotton used in our industry so we decided to ask Gemline for some answers. Clif Jordan the Regional Manager (South West) for Gemline was nice enough to send some answers.

It looks like Norwood had such a success with their ECOL brand of recycled paper (barrel) pens that in 2009 they decided to break out into color with their new line called ECOL BRITE.

Take a look at this crazy use of recycled fabric that Norwood is now selling. Yes, that is a Wilson lightweight golf bag made from 100% recycled fabric. Norwood’s website boasts “eco-conscious golfers can feel confident with their game while helping the environment”.

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

Debco now offers a number of lunchtime totes made from at least 25% recycled content. These bags demonstrate the growing trend to make practical, green items available to marketers.

And with the slowing economy I would remind Ecopreneurists that there is likely a much wider audience for these bags as more and more folks are bringing lunch to the office both for economic (it is cheaper than eating out) and health (bringing in healthy foods and avoiding fast foods) reasons.

Simple non woven insulated lunch coolers like the Debco Bag #NW4517 are EQP $3.04 with a one color imprint. The Debco Bag #NW6915 (a square shape designed) are EQP $3.42.  Available in black, red, lime green and royal blue, the bag we seem to be having the most success with is the Debco Bag #NW4694 non woven 100 gram polypropylene insulated cooler pictured to the right. All these bags are made from 25% recycled material, and Debco lists them as biodegradable on the Debco website.

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.

Norwood has launched two new tumblers under their Evolve line, the Evolve(TM) Traveler Mug - 16 oz and the Evolve(TM) Infinity Tumbler - 16 oz.

Both units come in a variety of colors, both are Prop 65 compliant, both are top rack dishwater safe, both are microwave safe, and both are packaged in eco-friendly packaging for shipment.

The Evolve line is also made in the US and is “designed to biodegrade within 1-5 years in a managed landfill” according to the Norwood website. With one color imprint the units both run under $2.75.

I wanted to write about the Norwood Evolve line because, if you look again at the bullet points offered in the sales material, it seems Norwood developed these mugs to specifically address issues that Ecopreneurist has raised regarding eco-friendly promotional items.

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 have written before about the great eco-friendly products from Leed’s. Their EcoSmart brand covers a lot of territory from totes to notebooks using both post-consumer [...]