Green Options

I bought the very last copy of Mc Sweeney’s 33rd quarterly issue, San Francisco Panorama, earlier today at 826 Valencia in the Mission. It is easy to understand why the publication is so hugely popular. The hefty newspaper format is a glorious celebration of everything that is wonderful about the print medium; it is bursting with well-written local news probing the Bay Bridge project, book reviews, intelligent political insight, war reporting, a relevant food section, sixteen pages of big colorful comics, as well as information on art, music, international issues, sports and more. It is everything that your basic wretched and vapid Sunday SF Chronicle is not.

Every local vendor that I visited in San Francisco was sold out of San Francisco Panorama by 1pm today; but the beautiful broadsheet can also be ordered directly from Mc Sweeney’s online.

I have been testing out the HP Officejet Pro 8500, a brand new wireless printer from HP. This is the first time I have actually seen jet printer provide photo quality output. Given that this printer is significantly cheaper than laser printers, this “All-In-One” machine might just be the perfect solution for small businesses.

Here’s another great example of good design, craftiness and a nod to the environment, all in a small card.

The Baltimore Center for Design has a utilitarian goal, one that will bring together the city’s designers for the purpose of discussion, and to provide community members a valuable resource. As an up and comer, the Center for Design is all volunteer run, with little to no budget. Though this is a challenge it has not stopped them from moving foward with all the things that a resource like this needs, all with an environmental bent.

Their business cards are made from the extra runs that a print shop uses to get their press set. These test sheets usually end up as waste, but not in this instance. Working with their local printer they were able to source these test prints for free!

To personalize the cards, the Center for Design used label paper and printed up their url and attached the labels to the cards. The result is a simple and easy way to make buisness cards.

It’s been quite a year here on Crafting a Green World. We’ve learned so much about crafting, reuse, upcycling and how and where to find environmentally friendly supplies. In this column we’ve highlighted some of the leaders in the organic textile movement and found a myriad of fabric options for your eco-friendly crafting needs.

I’d thought I would take a look back over the past year and round up all the great fabric finds for your easy reading pleasure. We discussed why there aren’t more men in organic and sustainable fibers, pondered why bamboo, isn’t so fabulous, and jumped up and down over the prospect that Spoonflower was considering offering organic cotton.

We also reviewed what mainstream stores offer in the way of organic and earth friendly textiles, swore that fabric made from cassette tapes, was not an April fools joke, and learned how to dye fabric with a recipe for natural, non-toxic dye.

We plan to continue to dig up the best in fabulous eco-fabrics for you in 2009, so stay tuned in the new year. Now, on to our textile discoveries from 2008!

It’s great to see that more and more textile companies are coming around to the term green. For some, they dip their toe in the water, for others it’s complete immersion. GreenSTYLE by Robert Kaufman is a nice wade into environmental waters with the green shore on the horizon.

This line of green fabric is organic, sustainable and uses low-impact dyes. The company recognizes that it is just the beginning of their journey into eco-friendly but their commitment to greener fabrics extends beyond production and procurement and into the office itself. The company is taking steps “to reduce paper waste, recycle and conserve energy.”

The GreenSTYLE line offers up many different fabrics including a nice selection of canvas, Linen and organic cotton.

Last night I got an email from the HarmonyArt Organic Design mailing list, and WHOA MAMA! Here are two of the four new fabrics they’re releasing, called Garden and Space Cowboy.  Space Cowboy also comes in a red and green colorway.  The final fabric is Fields of Honey.  I’d been looking forward to that last one for quite a while.

All fabrics are 110″ wide organic cotton sateen that’s fair trade certified. Individual yards of all of these prints can be bought directly from Organic Cotton Plus, or Garden and Fields of Honey can be bought directly from our favorite online shop NearSea Naturals.  It’s $20-30 per yard, but take into account the 110″ width when you’re comparing the price to regular 45″ wide fabric.

The email also announced three new colors of 110″ wide cotton sateen solids: scarlet, chocolate brown, and moonless black, and 60″ wide white organic cotton sateen.

The always-progressive Capital Times of Madison, Wisconsin, has once again offered a worthy — and green — lesson to its print media counterparts across the U.S.

That’s because, as of this week, the daily newspaper is being distributed exclusively online. The Capital Times’ last daily print edition went out on Saturday, April 26.

A Monday article in The Washington Post notes the Madison newspaper, like almost every traditional print paper across the country, has seen a steep drop in circulation over past decades. The switch to an exclusively online edition (outside of a free weekly insert in The Wisconsin State Journal)  also comes with a deep cut in employees  — from about 60 to 40, but the paper promises to continue delivering local and breaking news seven days a week.

Today we're going to ask you to think twice, or even thrice before clicking that little print button. When you see a good Tip o' the Day, is your first instinct to print it so that you can look at it later? And when later comes, just how long do you look at that paper before you toss it, file it, or start doodling on it?