Green Options

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Looking to light a ‘green’ fire under your employees, partners, or potential funders? Need a little eco-inspiration of your own?

If a single picture is worth a thousand words, a compelling or amusing video presentation may be worth a turnaround in your small business culture, increased buy-in from partners, or the flow of funds from sponsors. Entrepreneurs must be well-versed in the art of persuasive presentations, yet finding appropriate images and video content to add to the mix can be challenging.

Enter the latest DVD release from Arnold Creek Productions entitled Naturally Successful: Entrepreneurship That Redefines the Bottom Line. Highlighting some of the sustainability movement’s most compelling speakers, this 78-minute video “features interviews with some of the country’s top business consultants, educators, authors and speakers who are inspiring entrepreneurs worldwide.” Consider emailing clips to your team to kick off a sustainability discussion or launching your next presentation with the words of leaders such as:

• Van Jones, President of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights
• Christopher Flavin, President of Worldwatch Institute
• Gil Friend, CEO of Natural Logic, Inc.
• Susan Anderson, Director of the Portland Office of Sustainable Development

View a preview and purchase the full-length feature, browse the Sustainability Shorts clips, and explore the full sustainability video series on Arnold Creek’s website.

Martin Fisher is an enthusiastic rulebreaker. And he’s on his way to making millions. Millions of products that help people in third world countries live a better life. In 1991 he co-founded ApproTEC (now KickStart.org) to develop and market new, appropriate technologies in Africa. He and his group have created over 29,000 new jobs, generating $37 million a year in new profits and wages — transforming subsistence farms into highly [...]

Product Categories for our Topics (next post) follow:

1. Essentials – air, water and food… products and processes for human survival.
2. Clothing —  what to wear!
3. Shelter — spaces and places for living and working. 
4. Energy — a power-full life. 
5. Health —  healing and feeling good.
6. Conversion — waste not, want not, have more… from composting to upcycling.
7. Materials — elemental building blocks: biological and technical.
8. Tools — making things easier.
9. Movement — getting there.
10. Connection — we are not alone: direct and indirect communication; knowledge; governance.
11. Play — having fun along the

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Another thing to consider when crafting with an environmental conscious are your tools and what they are made from. Tools made from recycled or sustainable materials are out there and available for use.

One of the first items on any crafter’s list is a good pair of scissors. Being able to splice thread and cut a mean line is of utmost importance. Scissors can make or break a project. Luckily there is nifty pair of craft scissors made with recycled plastic.

Kleen Earth’s Recycled Stainless Steel Scissors contain 70% post consumer content and come in several different lengths. Perfect for paper, yarn, thread and numerous other materials. They’re available off of Amazon or can be found at any office discount supply store.

If you sew, you know that a good pair of sharp shears is vital and if you already have a pair that you love, learn how to extend their life by sharpening them, reducing the need for a new pair.

Does this sound familiar? You are a business, and have been obsessive about finding as many ways as possible to do right while doing well. Your paper goods are on recycled paper, your office uses renewable energy, and you bike to work. Or some such combination of the many possibilities you’ve been able to find. Great, you’re doing a fine job being a part of the solution, and are doing business in a way that’s beneficial (and profitable!) all around.

Now what about you payment processing? What about it, you ask? In most cases, it’s some company that you send your money to each month to facilitate credit card and check payments. End of story. Not much action there. Hold on, friend, there is something else to consider. How about a company that donates a portion of their proceeds to causes of your choice? One that uses renewable energy to host their site? One that facilitates their payment processing through a green business, community focused bank? Does such a company exist? Yes, in fact. They’re called Dharma Merchant Services.

As a green business consultant, my radar is always out for tools to make the lives of my clients easier, their business greener, and save some money while they’re at it. So when, amongst all the hullabaloo at the recent Green Festival in November, I saw this company, I had to find out more.

This is another of our Guest Posts through our parent Green Options network. Elizabeth Redmond is a product designer currently based in Chicago. She writes about a range of design issues for Sustainablog.

With the portfolio of commercial and urban green building projects happening across the globe right now, how is it possible to see them all? For those of us who are construction fanatics we like to see them in person but flying to location is definitely not the most or even a sustainable way to do things. Well, as with so most everything these days, there is a solution. To increase our remote access to ongoing and completed green building projects nationwide, Building Green Inc. has teamed up with Google and the Department of Energy to bring us an interactive way to view these projects.

The information is presented in Google Earth (must be downloaded) through a layer called the High Performance Building Layer, which is something that you have to download as well. Once you have both of them, you can choose from the 96 different projects they have highlighted thus far through the collaboration. Most of the projects selected reside in the United States, but there are a couple others around the globe. The models are created in Sketch-up and are completed with a full project description. Each building in the High Performance Building Layer also provides links to detailed case studies on the buildings performance. These studies are located on the web through different databases- AIA, USGBC, Building Green…