Green Options » towels

Holiday Stuff #2 - Organic Cotton

John Simonetta — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 13:35:20 +0000

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.

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

Our first blog was on BAMBOO. Now let us move to ORGANIC COTTON.

1) Organic Cotton Towels - Unbelievably soft and absorbent with natural colors like Stone Green, White and Natural Tan, these towels make great gifts. Embroidered with your company or organization’s logo expect to pay around $24 per unit. Towels work because they will end up in the home of your customer and likely be used for a long, long time. Organic cotton towels and robes also make good employee gifts.

2) Organic Market Bag Set - These heavy duty organic cotton bags look and feel great, so they have a high perceived-value but an honest price at $16 for the set, including placement of your logo. Employees and customers will use the bags for a long, long time and they use them in public so each time your customer uses the bag in public your company or organization is on display. We also like the large print area on these bags. This is a lot of space to display your message and/or contact information. This market set helps the environment by reducing the need for plastic or paper shopping bags with this beautiful organic cotton set. The set includes a storage tote and 2 full-size grocery totes.

Looking For Eco Customer Gifts? Try Bamboo

John Simonetta — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 17:56:42 +0000

A number of clients and readers have asked us about ideas for eco-friendly customer gifts - it’s the season after all. 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 this blog into categories so I will start out with BAMBOO.

Top 3 Bamboo Ideas.

1) Flash Drives - Bamboo flash drives, along with their less green brethren in maple, cherry and walnut have been very popular as client gifts this year. At about $9.50 for a 1GB drive with your company or organization’s logo they are a low cost high perceived-value gift. Some clients have gotten very creative and recorded greetings or short videos to their customers and placed them directly on the drives. Again, no one ever throws away a flash drive, they are very useful for office and home, business and recreation.

Paper or Hot Air? Bring Your Own Hand Towel

Jeff McIntire-Strasburg — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 15:10:58 +0000

Editor’s note: No, not paper or plastic… we’ve been there. David Shaw takes a look at the environmental impact of hand-washing, and finds there’s a better way… even better than “Press button. Rub hands under warm air. Wipe hands on pants.” David originally published this post to Professor Simran Sethi’s Media and the Environment course blog on Wednesday, March 5, 2008.

I drink at least a liter of water a day, which means I end up using the restroom at least five times a day. In the bathroom at work, we have the fairly standard stack of single sheet paper towels that you pull from the holder one at a time (although sometimes a clump comes out, if they’re packed too tightly). It takes two paper towels to dry my hands thoroughly.

So, on a daily basis I use at least 10 paper towels, or 50 paper towels a week, or 200 paper towels a month, or 2,400 paper towels a year! That is a lot of paper. But, I have to wash my hands and I have to dry them. Yet, every time I grab the paper towels, I feel a tinge of guilt. So, I started trying to find ways to conserve paper towels.

First, I decided to cut down to just one paper towel. Yeah, my hands were still a little damp when I left the restroom, but they air dried within a minute or two. Still, with one paper towel per hand washing, I was using at least 1,200 paper towels a year. Not good enough.

Tip o’ the Day: Green Hotel Detectives

Rebecca Carter — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 15:27:55 +0000

We do it for business, we do it for pleasure - when travelling, a hotel stay is usually a must. Often, we have many choices to choose from, and we make our decision based on cost and assumed quality. There is, of course, a new factor coming into the picture, and it's green-ness. Today we'll tell you how you can green your hotel stays.

As Jess Sand recently covered here on Green Options, there are ways to green your travel. When considering hotels for your next trip, you might want to jump online and visit the Green Hotels Association site to check out their list of member hotels. You might also want to swing by Environmentally Friendly Hotels, a site that rates the green-ness of a hotel based on user submitted information. (That means that some of the info might need to be verified by you before accepting it as correct.) Some states even have their own certification programs.

But let's face it - you just might not be able to stay in one of these hotels, be it for price, location, or availability. So what else can you do? Most hotels these days have implemented some sort of green policies such as not washing the towels and sheets everyday for guests staying multiple days. We recommend that you test them on whatever policies they have committed themselves to.

If the hotel tells you that if you hang up your towel to dry, they will not wash it - try it. Hang up that towel and see what happens. We've seen it work, and we've seen it fail horribly. If the hotel isn't even following the very basic water & energy saving practices that they have posted in the rooms, call them on it. Complain to the manager, write letters, make a stink. You might also want to send them some recommended guidelines on how to go green. Of course, one option would be to keep that "Privacy Please" sign on your door - maybe that would save even more energy.

Finally, don't forget to be green in your actions, as well. Make sure to shut off all of the lights and a/c (or raise the temperature, at least) when you leave the room. Keep your showers short, just as you would at home. Don't over use just because you won't get the utility bill!

Rebecca says: I stayed in a hotel this weekend and tried the ol' hang up the towels trick. It worked! I shouldn't sound so surprised, but I had a bad experience last year where my towels were washed. A month an a half after sending in my complaint I received a call from the hotel telling me that I was the first person they'd ever spoken to that was mad because my room was cleaned. They told me, however, that they would review the green policies with their cleaning staff and hope that it wouldn't happen again.