Green Options

In their ongoing efforts to achieve a more environmentally friendly image, the Coca-Cola Co. announced earlier this month that they will be launching new biobased plastic bottles for their Dasani water line later this year and vitaminwater next year. They’re calling their new packaging the “PlantBottleTM.”

I’m on the fence about this yarn and not so sure that it is “yearn worthy” but felt that a good discussion about it was.

Caron yarns has a new entry into our yarn vernacular called Simply Soft Eco. Simply Soft Eco is similar to Caron’s other yarns made from acrylic, but contains 20% of recycled PET content.

If you recall PET is plastic water or soda bottles and is popping up in recycled form in various places such as EcoFelt, fabric blends, clothing, bags, and even boats! What I find really wonderful about this yarn is that it has recycled content, a huge selection of colors and that it is available in big box stores - great for when you don’t have access to a small indie shop.

Department store giant Sears is jumping on the green bandwagon by announcing plans to offer “green” clothing in May - suits made from recycled PET bottles with NO petroleum used in the manufacturing process. Made in partnership with the US arm of Japan based Teijin Fibers Limited, each suit will be 54% recycled polyester, 42% wool, and 4% spandex, and will be fully machine washable.

You’ve seen plastic bottles turned into lovely felt. Check out this awesome hemp blend that’s 45% fiber from plastic soda bottles!

[Creative Commons photo by Kevin Wong]
This cool fabric comes in five different colors right now: cantaloupe, mint, blueberry, guava, and banana. Each piece helps keep plastic bottles out of the waste stream! You can snag it by the yard over at Green Depot’s shop.

The last time you went to a Japanese restaurant, did you use your chopsticks? Maybe, maybe not. But if they were on the table, they got thrown away after you’d paid your bill and walked out the door, and most likely you thought nothing of it.

In the U.S., disposable wooden chopsticks are not very common — except in the occasional restaurant serving some type of Asian cuisine — but in Japan, they throw away 68.5 million pairs of disposable, wooden [...]

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.

Quick note. Did you here that. As I mentioned earlier we have been expecting the price of flash drives - both traditional and eco-friendly PET, Recycled PVC, WoodenBamboo - to drop because of the glut of flash memory coming to market as the sale of retail electronics is hit by the economic downturn.

Well just in time for the holidays here comes the drop. Basic drives with one color logo are now going EQP $6.50 for 1GB drives or less, EQP $8.25 for 2GB and EQP $13.51 for 4GB from most suppliers. If you have been thinking about drives for your 2008 year end gifts or for 2009 1st quarter marketing projects now is the time to contact your friendly neighborhood promotional items company. US Flash, US Modular, PNY, FlashDirect,  Hirsch Gift (great green drives) you name the company and they are running sales, the bottom is slipping out of the market.

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

A number of clients and readers have asked us about ideas for eco-friendly customer gifts and I wanted to write a couple of posts talking about items that have done well in the past for clients or that are new for this year and doing well so far.

I also wanted to break these articles into categories so this blog will cover PET (yes items made from recycled water bottles for the holidays). PET may be a boring material but it is being used in some neat products.

1) Eco 100% Recycled Owl Laptop Sleeve - Made from 100% post-consumer recycled material (product label affirms this claim), holding a standard 15″ laptop and with a very clean line design, these bags have been very popular as both employee and customer gifts. At about $15 including a one color imprint of your logo or message, these bags are very popular with hip eco companies and road warriors. The gift is also practical, for one thing it makes accessing your laptop at the airport a heck of a lot easier, and of course it does provide basic protection from bumps, nicks and

This summer, I have become addicted to taking pictures - now that you can view and share them without ever having to drive to the camera shop, drop off your film, drive back and pick them up, then choose the ones you like and send them out…you get the point…life is much easier since we have all gone digital.

You can snap a pic, plug in to your laptop and upload or upload directly to a photo sharing service like Flickr from your mobile.

© Mtomczak | Dreamstime.com

While accompanying me on a trip to the more scary storage area of our house, my three-year-old spied an old “yard art” statue of a Rottweiler that belonged to my spouse. (The movers would not accept a bribe to, uh, lose a few items during the move).

Later that evening, she remarked to my husband, “Daddy, we need a real dog, not a plastic dog.” Between this plea and having to stop and ask to pet every, every, single dog we encounter in public, I set about the task of getting my spouse to agree to add a new member to the family.

It was not easy. He was heartbroken after losing his last dog, and pretty set against a puppy. This does not mean no — it just means choosing your moment wisely.

“Oh, I’ve got a dog for you. Chocolate Lab. I’ll spay her and everything,” my brother, a vet, offered. We were out for a family dinner. My husband was deep into his second beer. I gauged my opportunity. The moment looked right, or my husband looked a bit drunk. Either way, works for me.