In the past I’ve written about how you can save money by reducing the amount of paper you use and the 7 basics of green procurement (which includes defining office supplies standards). Now, let’s talk about basic office supplies that are great, green and cheap.

It’s easier to buy green office products than ever before. The three largest office supply retailers, Staples, Office Depot and Office Max each carry thousands of reasonably priced products with recycled content and other environmental attributes.

Some even innovate. Take Office Max, they were one of the first national retailers to carry TerraCycle products and they now sell a range of their products from notebooks made from used potato chip bags to juice pouch pencil cases.

There are also a number of green office suppliers online such as Green Line Paper.com, TheGreenOffice.com or Green Apple School Supply that offer thousands of eco-friendly products. And green promotional item companies like John Simonetta’s ProformaGreen.com and EcoPromotionsOnline.com are also good places to find green office supplies.

I found ten awesome green office supply products under $10 because no matter how small every single purchase has an impact on the environment. Whether you’re buying copy paper or forklifts, that purchasing decision is an environmental decision. So, if you want to start with some small stuff, basic office supplies are a great place to start.  Here are my favorite cheap, green office supplies:

#1. on my list is reasonably priced private-label recycled content copy paper from office supply retailers. A scan of websites today (July 2, 2009) revealed the following prices for a 10 ream case (5,000 sheets) of 30% PCW 20 lb. 8.5″ x 11′ copy paper:

Office Depot: $3.30/ream (for a limited time until stock lasts; regularly $4.00/ream)

Office Max: $4.00/ream

Staples: $4.10/ream

2. & 3. The TerraCycle E-Waste Recycling Can is made from 100% e-waste (such as crushed computers and fax machines) that would otherwise have ended up in landfills. It comes in both blue and green, holds 28 quarts and costs $9.99 (www.officemax.com).  For a more funky and slightly smaller version, the TerraCycle 12″ Urban Art Recycled Trash Bin (its that groovy one above) also costs $9.99 (ShopOnlyGreen.com).

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“Empower people in the US to realize that they have power to influence the global economy through their purchasing choices.” That isn’t some pie-in-the-sky wistful, unrealistic dream. That inspiring vision forms the Earth Mission, that driving force behind World of Good as they aim to transform how we shop by connecting us directly that individual who made our product, even if they are half-way around the globe.

Fostering an economy based on social and economic justice, World of Good, launched by co-founders Priya Haji and Siddharth Sanghvi — just after they graduated from University of California Berkeley Business School — features unique gifts and handcrafts from artisan communities around the world. By selling through an ever-expanding distribution network of retailers nationwide, they are building a whole new economy based on Fair Trade.

Ten percent of their profits get funneled to their sister non-profit organization, The World of Good Development Organization, which helps support artisan communities and works to strengthen international fair wage standards.

“Our aim is to make it easy to help customers make a good choice — not to buy more, but to buy differently,” explains Priya. “They can expect quality, convenience and style — yet the products can be made in a way that actually helps the people who make them. Right now, our products are women’s accessories and housewares. As World of Good grows, our aim is to make the choice for people-positive products easy to find in every category of daily life. We want every human-made product to be a tool of relationship and empowerment for the person who crafted it. Imagine every product not as a material thing but as a bridge of connection and transformation.” Read the rest of this entry »

The path recycling has taken over the past couple of decades has been a promising one.  Inroads into the consumer market have been tremendously successful with recycling programs in many cities across the country.  For one of the country’s largest industries however, the construction industry, there is a lot of room for improvement.

Construction projects routinely over-order material to avoid shortfalls and keep projects on time.  In many cases, this excess material is regularly thrown away because there is no need for it.

One company is setting out to change all that.

CMDepot.com is a website that helps construction companies “visualize” their excess material.  By being able to see what excess material they have, companies can better utilize it.  Today, most projects within a company do not know what excess material is available outside of their own project.  CMDepot is changing that.  By cataloging their excess material using CMDepot.com, companies can quickly look for material across all of their projects in a region.  If excess material is available that fits their needs, they can pull from it and save money.

While recycling is a green practice, even greener yet is reuse.

Clint Eastwood’s iconic Dirty Harry character uttered “A man’s got to know his limitations” but can say the same thing about the Green progress of a company? In the case of the smaller and less capitalized Lake Tahoe ski resort Sierra-at-Tahoe Resort we looked at skied, snowboarded, walked, and peeked around at what Green goings on here at this resort. Like all ski reports they should be concerned about their carbon footprint and global warming because with no snow they have no business.

Sierra, unlike some of the larger resorts like Heavenly, don’t have as much capital to spend on LEED certified buildings, high output photovoltaic systems or biodiesal powered snow-cats but then again they have a smaller footprint in terms of actual buildings (LEED or otherwise) or the amount of high energy snow making machines. Read the rest of this entry »

These days it seems everybody has some sort of recycled/eco friendly paper offering. So what’s the big deal about a Swedish offering making its US debut on Earth Day this year?

White Lines factory reuses their carbon emissions in a closed loop, making for zero CO2 emissions, for one. Then they offset what they can’t reuse (transportation, etc) via planting trees in Africa, as coordinated by environmental consultancy U&W (interestingly pronounced “You & We” in Swedish) The wood used for the paper comes from locally sourced, sustainably managed forests, and woodchip waste from sawmills. And every package tells you the precise carbon footprint, the materials traced back to the source.

And then it gets interesting.

This is a guest post by John Simonetta, owner of Proforma Simonetta Freelance, 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.

Ok, so bamboo shirts, e.c.o fleece jackets made from recycled water bottles, soy flax polos and organic cotton t-shirts. We all have seen the great environmentally sustainable and sustaining apparel products that are now available to help promote your business. If you are an Ecopreneurist running a green business then eco-friendly apparel for your promotional items and uniforms is pretty much a given.

Last year the race was on to figure out the best, safest and most sustainable printing methods for t-shirts and caps. Is it water based inks or veg/soy based dyes, or another option? That debate is still out there.

Well Docufinish is one of the companies in the middle of figuring out how to make the “greenest” production shirts possible and today they sent our office a box of samples of shirts they ran for us with water based ink for the City of Plano which included the letter on the right.

What caught my eye in the letter however is the statement in the second paragraph, “Please also keep in mind that we just recently got the ability to produce green embroidered apparel with 100% Organic Rayon thread made from tree pulp.”

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My editor asked me to post a few more ideas on what an Ecopreneurist or any business interested in giving green gifts this year, might give customers for the holidays.

I wanted to approach the idea from two points. First, I am in the promotional items business. For our industry the main purpose of gift giving is to say thank you to the clients you have done business with in the past year, and to keep your name in front of those clients so that they do business with you next year.

Second, as an Econpreneurist gift giving gives my business a chance to show off our green credentials but also - maybe - influence our clients, not all of whom are green, about becoming more green in their own businesses.

So I decided to start off with something very basic. Mugs.

A basic mug cost little and can normally be printed on both the front and back, so there is a lot of room for both your logo and a message.

Perhaps “Thank you for your business in 2008. Think of XYZ company in 2009 for all your ABC needs” on the front and maybe an eco message like “Americans throw away an estimated 25 billion Styrofoam cups every year. The same Styrofoam cups will be sitting in a landfill 500 years from now. Please re-use this mug each day to lessen your impact on the planet.”  Yes that will all fit on a mug.  And trust me a case of mugs showing up at your client’s office goes a lot farther than a fruit basket. Read the rest of this entry »

Maybe the title should instead read “How to Fail at ‘Greening’ Your Business”. Often times companies seem to approach “green” or eco-friendly as just another product attribute that can simply be added to packaging or website to reach the “green” consumer segment. In the rush to be eco-friendly, and due to the typical structure of many organizations, the marketing team will take the lead of the greening effort and, in the interest of time & energy, they’ll create a brilliant plan to communicate “green” to a target consumer group, but no internal alignment.

The sustainability and marketing strategies of a typical entrepreneur are often times based on the same model - the shotgun approach. Typically, entrepreneurs start to think about marketing after at least 6 months of hitting the pavement, and then sustainability appears as part of a new “marketing plan” or is seen as some kind of charitable giving / community relations campaign. Sustainable business is neither part of a marketing campaign nor a community relations effort. Neither is it about shifting revenue, but rather how revenue is generated.

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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 - 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. Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Norwood has launched two new tumblers under their Evolve line, the Evolve(TM) Traveler Mug - 16 oz and the Evolve(TM) Infinity Tumbler - 16 oz.

Both units come in a variety of colors, both are Prop 65 compliant, both are top rack dishwater safe, both are microwave safe, and both are packaged in eco-friendly packaging for shipment.

The Evolve line is also made in the US and is “designed to biodegrade within 1-5 years in a managed landfill” according to the Norwood website. With one color imprint the units both run under $2.75.

I wanted to write about the Norwood Evolve line because, if you look again at the bullet points offered in the sales material, it seems Norwood developed these mugs to specifically address issues that Ecopreneurist has raised regarding eco-friendly promotional items. Read the rest of this entry »