How do Brits like to be green, and what green behaviors do they still avoid?

That’s what a new survey by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER), and the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen) is showing us by examining the environmental actions and preferences of 100,000 British people from 40,000 households.

The findings presented below are the first from a new annual household survey in Britain named Understanding Society. The environmental topics are one subset of the whole survey, which also examines the “working lives, relationships, health, finances, neighbourhoods, education, transport and more” of Brits.

What are the main findings thus far?

Read more of this story »

Everyone knows the dark and dangerous side of the tobacco industry. The ill effects of cigarettes on the health of smokers, non-smokers, and the environment are well established. So is it fair or ethical for such a heinous and disgusting product to promote eco-friendly improvements to its packaging?

This is precisely what has happened recently with one of Canada’s leading cigarette brands, du Maurier. Du Maurier is using a more sustainable grade of paper for the outer cardboard packaging and they have removed the traditional inside foil liners with ones made of paper. To promote these green initiatives, du Maurier invested in a full-page color advertisement in a major Canadian magazine.

While it seems laughable that a tobacco company would be trying to paint itself with a shade of green, does this constitute greenwashing?

Gideon Forman of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment said: “Is it green washing? Yes.” According to the ‘Seven Sins of Greenwashing’, the closest sin that du Maurier might be guilty of is the Sin of Lesser of Two Evils. This is where an environmental claim makes consumers feel ‘green’ about a product that is lacking in environmental benefits.

Obviously cigarettes are lacking in environmental benefits. But was the intent of the advertisement to trick people into thinking they were improving the environment by smoking du Maurier cigarettes? Doubtful. My guess is that they are trying to convince existing smokers to try their brand because of their green actions, basically saying ‘if you are going to partake in this senseless habit you might as well use one with green packaging’. Maybe they did some research and found there are enough smokers out there with an environmental conscience to warrant this advertisement.

If they truly are just promoting their recent green packaging without trying to pass off cigarettes as a green product, the greenwashing angle might be unfounded. Yet all of these issues may soon become irrelevant, as wheels are in motion to close the Canadian tobacco advertising loophole that allows ads like this to continue to be published.

Image: SuperFantastic at flickr under a CC License

Stephen Boles is co-founder of Kuzuka, a marketplace website that brings a new level of convenience and confidence to carbon offset customers and provide consulting services to organizations that want to assess and reduce their carbon footprint.

As you probably know, that convenience comes at an environmental and social price: documentaries such as FLOW and Thirst, organizations such as the Sierra Club and Environmental Defense Fund, and even a few of us lowly bloggers, have reported on the costs created by water’s transformation from a freely-available resource to a multi-billion dollar commodity. That bottle of water you buy now contributes to the world’s third-largest industry.

Read more of this story »

Read more of this story »

Read more of this story »

Read more of this story »

Read more of this story »

Between Thanksgiving and New Years Day, Americans throw away an additional 25% of waste. That’s over 25 million tons of trash for the holiday season. Greeting cards, envelopes, gift wrap, cardboard boxes and all the trimmings that make our holidays festive really add up in the landfill.

Thankfully, there are plenty of ways to be festive and green at the same time. Ecopreneurs preparing their holiday marketing promotions can learn a thing or two from creative business owners like Von Glitschka, an independent graphic designer and illustrator in Salem, Oregon. Instead of sending a printed holiday mailing, Von created a fun promotion and made it available as a PDF file online. That way his recipients could choose to print and assemble the “4th Not So Wiseman” at home, or just enjoy it online without printing a thing. Not only do online promotions like this save a bundle on printing and postage costs, but they eliminate envelopes and paper cards, and thus, waste.

Von’s Not So Wiseman also comes along with a green message and a cute story by Kristen Fischer. The Not So Wiseman is not so popular because he brought coal as a gift for baby Jesus, but “Jesus just wasn’t down” with coal’s production of greenhouse gases. Now the 4th Wiseman serves as a reminder to be green and kind to the earth, because if you don’t, you deserve nothing more than coal for Christmas! You can download and create your very own 4th Not So Wiseman at Von’s blog, Art Backwash. Don’t forget to print him out on recycled paper!

Read more of this story »

Amazon.com has launched a new initiative aimed at combating Wrap Rage. In their effort to simplify packaging for the consumer, they’re also helping to reduce wasteful over-packaging. Details after the jump!

Read more of this story »

Okay, so maybe foam peanuts and the other demons in the legion of packaging materials are not the creations of some sinister mad hatter, some oily oligarch, some short-sighted sorcerer’s apprentice, some wizard hiding in a city that is decidedly not emerald green. Nevertheless, the foam peanuts are steadily spreading with every package sent by air, sea, or ground. And this fact begs the question: Can they be stopped???

Take heart, my fellow Earthlings, for we do have an easy and eco-friendly way to say “YES!” to this question: Bubbla.

Although it may not have the name of a saving knight in shining green armor, Bubbla offers just about anyone–from large businesses shipping countless packages per day to the lone house dweller sending birthday gifts to family–a way to put a stop to the rampaging horde of foam peanuts. (Besides, how silly does “foam peanuts” sound?!)

Bubbla is an “on-demand” air-inflated packaging system produced for over 12 years now by Bubbla, Inc., a company in Canoga Park, California. (Believe it or not, the owner of Bubbla actually invented air-pillow packaging material, and the company owns four patents in this area. Obviously they know their stuff!)

Whenever you need some packaging material, you just make it using either the tabletop or freestanding Bubbla machine, both of which are easy to operate (with touch-screen controls), small (about 25” tall by 15” deep), and can be plugged in to a good old electric wall outlet. The machine quickly cranks out a supply of air-inflated packaging in one design or another (e.g., diamond wrap or long cells) to meet your demand. Make as much as you need, when you need. No fuss, no muss.

Read more of this story »

I really love milk, so I was very happy to hear about this new great idea that is coming from the UK: a milk bottle that is made mainly of recycled paper and can be recycled again. In one word: Greenbottle.

Greenbottle (http://www.greenbottle.com) has developed a much greener solution which can replace plastic milk bottles. The outer shell is made from recycled paper which can then be further recycled, or if left it will just decompose within a matter of weeks. The inner liner, which takes up less than 0.5% of the space of a plastic bottle if dumped in a landfill, prevents liquid from contaminating the paper outer.

The GreenBottle, according to their website, consumes about a third of the energy required to make a plastic bottle and has a carbon footprint that is 48% lower than plastic.

The Telegraph reported last month that Asda, the big supermarkets chain, is stocking its Lowestoft store in Suffolk with the Greenbottle after a successful trial in a move that could herald the demise of the plastic bottle. According to the article the supermarket chain hopes to agree a roll-out of the packaging to stores across the east of England, with the potential to take it nationwide further down the line. Sounds like great news to all the UK green milk lovers!

Just to give you an idea what this bottle can save - according to the article, Britons drink around 180 million pints of milk every week, of which around two-thirds is bought in plastic bottles.More than 100,000 tons end up in landfill each year - equal to 260 jumbo jets. They take 500 years to decompose.

One last fact that made me fall in love with Greenbottle - Its inventor, Martin Myerscough, came up with the idea in the pub. You can never be wrong with such ideas of course, later on he worked on it for 18 months before Asda started a ‘concept’ trial last year.

Kudos to Martin and Greenbottle. This is the kind of innovation we need to move the green revolution forward. I hope to see these bottles very soon on the shelves of the supermarkets here in the U.S. (and actually everywhere) as well.

Only 1.3% of imported food is inspected by the FDA, and of that small fraction, many hazardous items are confiscated. The average American consumes an estimated 260 pounds of imported food every year, which is roughly 13% of their diet. Food safety will always be a concern. Arming consumers with the knowledge of where their food comes from will not only help with everyday shopping, but also help in the case of a recall of a food from a specific region (like jalapeños from Mexico). While the new law has some benefits, many recent examples of food contamination and safety concerns show that it won’t do enough.

Read more of this story »

Read more of this story »

According to Environmental Leader, the new report titled “Getting From Green To Gold: Retail Success Factors and Outcomes” lists the six key focus areas for retailers:

• Adopt enterprise-wide policies for green sourcing/procurement (59%)
• Institute eco-friendly mandates for waste management (54%)
• Institute eco-friendly mandates around packaging (48%)
• Redesign the retail supply chain to align with green/responsible mandates (41%)
• Offer eco-friendly end-of-life product programs to customers (41%)
• Redesign store facilities and infrastructure around sustainability goals (35%)

Read more of this story »

I found a contender: Ecovative Design has come up with a number of products for packaging, building insulation, foam core (think: surfboards) and ye olde beer cooler that do away with styrofoam, using agricultural waste. And, making this even better, the ingredients for the product will come from local sources, whichever is the most prevalent in the area that it’s made.

So rather than trucking the same ag waste 1000s of miles to other regional factories, they have come up with a product that can flex what it contains without compromising the quality or integrity. For example, cellulose pulp from areas with lots of paper mills, and rice hulls in Texas, where a lot of rice is processed.

And it’s compostable, biodegradable, and if sent back to Ecovative, recyclable. Take that, styrofoam!

Read more of this story »

The magical cleaning agent in your bar of hygiene is likely cow fat or oil from, say, coconut. At the manufacturing plant, a chemical process removes the valuable glycerin in the fats and oils to be used in other products. The leftovers are mixed with sodium hydroxide and then blasted dry to form soap pellets, which are then mixed with the colorants, fragrances and other ingredients that allow a humble soap to go by the name of Carribean Breeze or Lilac Meadow.

While the production of soap—or anything, really—has environmental repercussions all its own, the pretty smells in our personal care products are, perhaps, the issue most worth examining here. Many of the chemicals producing fine aromas have been linked to not-so-fine human ailments or tested on animals, and their disposal—down your shower drain in a sudsy stream—fills our water system with chemicals that do not readily biodegrade (or breakdown).

Now, how about a shave?

Read more of this story »

Read more of this story »

But we consumers are used to slick packaging and cool bags, boxes and wrappers. Designers are now challenged to come up with high-concept packaging that doesn’t waste resources.

It’s like Project Runway for everyday products. And here are some of the pioneering entrants in the less-weight, recyclable, biodegradable packaging challenge.

Three Thieves sells their Bandit wine in TetraPaks.

It’s different. It’s recyclable. Although a TetraPak not so unique, given that soymilk is packaged similarly, Three Thieves is definitely going against the grain in the wine industry.

Another wine company so believes in the power of its packaging that it devotes a significant part of its website to its TetraPak packaging, diving into the various layers in the package to describe how it is made and why they like it.

Read more of this story »

She got me thinking. Since recycling has been on my radar lately, I have been more aware of my habits and the habits of the people around me. I noticed that I am much more diligent in getting my plastic and glass bottles in the correct place for recycling than I am with all my paper products. It wasn’t until I attended the lecture that I realized how much less of a guessing game paper recycling is, just how important it really is — more important than the resin code mystery in my last post — and how much I neglect the privilege. According to Samantha Macbride, if you want to make a difference, recycle more paper. She explained to us that paper is the most under recycled material. According to the EPA, 35% of total U.S. municipal solid waste generated in 2006 was paper and paperboard (graph source: EPA report).

Read more of this story »

Well a recent graduate of Central St Martins’ Masters Industrial Design Program, Tom Ballhatchet, decided to use the guild in a constructive way. Instead of throwing away all this stamped foam packaging from his new flat-screen TV, Tom decided to construct an entertainment stand. It makes us think of the form of these extruded or stamped packaging part, oftentimes they are the same shape and size or have nice crevices that can serve as storage. My only wish in this project is that he found a way to incorporate the gigantic box and plastic wrap.

With this trend of Zero waste design and seeing packaging as superfluous, we are beginning to see even more products out there that use their packaging in the fully constructed form. Lite2Go’s packaging doubles as the actual lampshade leaving very little waste (the label and instructions for assembly). Designed by Knoed (i.e. know no-end), Lite2go is a good example of their mission statement- “taking into consideration the full life cycle of materials going into the products they design”. The packaging/shade is made of recyclable polypropylene plastic; and the electric cord and bulb can be recycled at the appropriate centers.

The interesting thing about this design is that it is just plain practical. One doesn’t have to be an eco-conscious consumer to see this. Why create extra packaging when it is unnecessary? Although the light is marketed as a green product, it could be marketed just as a light with a fun DIY surprise.

With this trend of cutting down on emissions and waste, we need to think beyond recycling. As recycling requires energy to break materials down into a new usable source, reusing materials for a new purpose is much more energy efficient. I challenge you to get creative with your waste and repurpose some of it at least once before you get rid of it.