Ecopreneurist

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.

Bamboo as a material was a big mover in 2009. The industry saw bamboo cloth being used in caps, shirts, towels, jackets, heavy totes and even robes. As a replacement for hardwood, bamboo is used in awards, cutting boards, umbrella shafts, and any number of tool handles.

For 2010 the move to bamboo does not seem to be slowing down. As a quick-growing, renewable, natural resource bamboo seems here to stay in the promotional products market. Here are two quick ideas in bamboo new for 2010.

The KIVA Ball Point from LogoMark is one of the first bamboo body pens to hit the market this year. I suspect there will be more. Like most items from LogoMark this pen has a little more style and flare than its peers.

The bamboo pen body gives the KIVA a natural feel and the black, blue or green plastic tip and clip is biodegradable plastic. These pens EQP for $1.45 with one color imprint. With PLA pens for Shepenco running at around $0.50, the KIVA is not meant to be competing in the cheap eco-pen field, but rather as a nicer, client or employee gift pen, perhaps as part of a package with  LogoMark’s bamboo office picture frame or bamboo business card holder.

A number of basic bamboo shopping totes are also coming to market including a bamboo version of the very popular Big Thunder tote by American Ad Bags.

This Bamboo Thunder is 100% Natural Bamboo – which is naturally biodegradable and an eco-friendly sustainable resource – and has a incredibly soft touch that you just do not get with poly or canvas bags. For added strength the Bamboo Thunder offers stitched seams in the sides and at the bottom gusset.

One issue might be price. The Bamboo Thunder by American Adbag runs EQP $3.00, which is more than the $2.10 EQP price of the screen printed polypropylene Big Thunder by Bag Markers (yes different manufacturers, same name, go figure). Both bags measure in at a whooping 13″ x 10″ x 15″. Yes that is a 10 inch gusset.

If you are an ASI distributor Dustin is the contact to talk to at LogoMark. What more info on the Bamboo Thunder, talked to Courtney Rasmussen at American Adbag.

If you are interested in the these items or other bamboo ideas to promote your own business contact your local promotional items vendor or email info@proformagreen.com for information and pricing.

It’s hard to believe that it’s already been a decade since my wife and I opened our doors of Inn Serendipity in southwestern Wisconsin.

Our marketing background at a large advertising agency in Chicago taught us the value in protecting your company name and brand by trademarking your logo with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). For Inn Serendipity, we did so from the very start. Now, it’s time to renew based on the USPTO’s ten year renewal cycle. From our perspective, we found that we didn’t have to be an attorney (or a genius) to use their straightforward Trademark Electronic Application System (or TEAS) service online.

After our original submission of our logo to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) by following their step-by-step process, we just had one additional renewal payment of $100 and submission of an affidavit that demonstrated our use of our business logo between our fifth and sixth year. Since we applied for a trademark within only one USPTO class, the original fee was about $500.  While there are many “Serendipity” bed and breakfasts, there is only one “Inn Serendipity.”  Given that we plan on being the longest, continuously operating B&B in the nation (possible, since we started Inn Serendipity when we were only 30 years old), preserving and protecting our name is crucial.

Now heading into our ninth year, we, once again, have to renew our trademark for another ten years to protect our investment of time, energy and creativity into developing our award-winning green enterprise. Our trademark protects us from someone else coming along and infringing upon our identity. That said, we are eager to share how we operate our enterprise and borrow our approach to becoming a better business, not necessarily a bigger one.  It’s what we write about in ECOpreneuring (from which some of this blog is drawn). Our first book, Rural Renaissance, covers a wide range of topics related to running our enterprise as well as living sustainably.

Naming your Business

A DBA refers to “doing business as” and establishes the name of your business. Our sub-chapter S Corporation serves as the legal business while we hold a DBA, Inn Serendipity®. Registration forms and fees vary by state but most are easy to determine by contacting your state’s Department of Commerce. Often, many DBAs can be created within one umbrella business name.  Forming a corporation or Limited Liability Company, done within a particular state, is distinct from trademarking a name used for business.

Increasingly, many green businesses choose to create an authentic connection to a real place, like a farm that sells honey, by branding themselves and using their personal name in the business name. There is no correct business name. But whatever name you select must not be used by any other business, otherwise you might find yourself in a legal dispute. You can do free searches for names on the USPTO website.

Registering your Trademark

Naming your business is fulfilling and should be a meaningfully creative process. While possibly requiring the services of an attorney if you have a complex business model, establishing the name of your business and registering its trademark or service mark with the US Trademark Office can be done with the forms provided on their website. Protecting your business name insures that no other business will usurp your reputation and borrow your identity for their profit, not yours. The small “TM” refers to a registration mark waiting for approval by the US Trademark and Patent Office. Once approved, the “®” replaces the TM. It’s important to use these marks to protect the reputation of your business and reaffirm that you are pursuing business in earnest, not as a hobby.

Besides the easy to navigate USPTO website, amazingly you’re just a toll-free telephone call away from someone with the USPTO to personally assist you with your registration.  As for the cost to register a trademark, perhaps a better way to think about it might be to consider the costs (or lost revenue) your enterprise might incur should your business have its identity stolen.

Protecting Authored Works and Inventions

Processing Trademarks and Servicemarks are only a few of responsibilities of the USPTO. They’re also the Federal office that handles patents and copyrights. Protecting your ideas is important. Patents, usually lasting up to 20 years, are offered by the US Patent and Trademark Office for intellectual property that is unique in design, utility (a process or machine) or plant. Copyrights apply to “original works of authorship” and include literary, musical and other artistic forms of expression; the length of a copyright depends on when it is created, how many individuals may be involved and various other factors. Our books are copyrighted. If we invented a new wind turbine that mounts on our roof, it’d be patented. The bigger or more complex the idea, the more you might consider hiring an attorney to assist you in protecting your interests.

Graphic: Inn Serendipity’s trademarked logo/www.innserendipity.com

If you are thinking about ways to green your supply chain, you’re not alone. A Supply Chain Consortium survey showed that organizations of all sizes are implementing sustainability initiatives throughout the supply chain not only to achieve regulatory compliance, but also to improve brand image and customer satisfaction.

What does that mean? The most effective greening of purchasing involves thinking about your entire inbound supply chain with an overriding purpose in mind: to select and purchase goods and services that are affordable, and have the least possible environmental impact throughout the course of every phase of their lifecycle including manufacturing, shipping/transportation, use, and recycling or disposal. And, contrary to popular belief, green purchasing does not always have to mean higher costs—although sometimes it will. In fact, by greening your supply chain you can often streamline your purchasing process, reduce overall costs, and improve your environmental footprint.

There are five good supply chain strategies that can be used to reduce waste. You can start by considering strategies that reduce the physical distance between where materials are sourced and where they are used. These strategies not only help reduce travel-related emissions, but also often result in shorter times to market and lower inventory holding costs:

Buying local is an excellent greening strategy. There significant social, environmental, and economic benefits to creating local economies. At this writing, some thirty-six cities and towns—from Albuquerque to Tampa—have adopted programs to label and promote locally owned businesses. It is always worthwhile to check with your vendors about the availability of local products and materials. Buying local also provides business owners with more control over their materials and end products. As an example, one wholesale distributor of locally grown food products in Michigan tells the story of being able to deliver poultry products that are cut to customer specifications quickly and on a regular basis, something that would be impossible if he were using larger, more distant vendors. The Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) is a good resource for finding a local business network in your area.

Read the rest of this entry »

Walking the green walk, isn’t always easy, and the holidays present special challenges. Its not always easy to mess with traditions. Last Thanksgiving I hosted a 100-mile Thanksgiving (I chronicled it in two blog posts on the OrganicMania blog). My attempt to convince my mother-in-law in Tampa that buying condensed milk at my local supermarket for her traditional key lime pie wasn’t really in the spirit of the plan, did not go over so well. That said, I can see a 100-mile Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanza or even a 100-mile gift rule.

Tip #1: Source locally. Use local and sustainable produce, flowers, beverages, décor and rentals for holiday parties and meals.

Beyond that, there are two primary categories of activities involved in greening holiday parties and events: Finding ways to minimize the impact of the consumption occurring at the event itself, including food, flowers, beverages, décor, gifts, ect… Finding ways to mitigate the carbon footprint resulting from the airplane travel, car travel and lodging consumed for the event.

The good news is that there are a number of greening strategies that can deal with some or all of these factors that that are sexy and require little to no extra costs.

1. Make sure you have a recycling plan in place. Make recycling easy by having a sufficient number of well-marked recycling bins near where people need them.
2. If you are exchanging gifts (…think Secret Santa), make them green. There are a host of environmentally friendly gifts items ranging from aluminum water bottles to solar powered messenger bags to fair trade chocolates to locally made crafts that could fit the bill. Read the rest of this entry »

Yet again, a LinkedIn question (asking for top 10 greening tips) got me thinking.  Is there really a thing such as a generic list of top 10 tips for greening? I don’t think so.

As a start, the foundation of a green program lies in what a business is already doing. Do you recycle? Do you use CFLs? Do you have a programmable thermostats? Do you leave their PCs on all night? How much water do you use? What are your transportation needs? Depending on the answers to these and other questions, you will be able to identify the areas where the top green opportunities lie.  Even if you business practices are not very green now, you will probably find that you’ve adopted a green business practices already, and that you can implement others with no cost or change in business performance.  As an example, for most small businesses, changing to high efficiency lights or using recycled copy paper will have no direct impact on your core business operations.

So how do you know what the top 10 things you can be doing to green yourself are? One way to determine which greening practices will yield the most bang for the buck (a.k.a. be a top 10 tip) is to focus on the largest expense areas. There is often a correlation between expenses and volume of use. If you cut back on what you spend, you will likely reduce what you use.

So, whether reducing paper use or switching to high efficiency lights is a top 10 tip depends, well, on how much paper and electricity you’re using.  A business may want to target all expense areas over a certain threshold amount. You can measure this in dollars or as a percentage of overall expenses, such as any expense on which you spend over $500 a month, or that represent 10% or more of total expenses. A list of business expenses can guide the planning process. Start with the areas of the business that will have the greatest financial impact. You may not be able to change things as dramatically as you’d like, especially at first. Look for actions that are achievable and cost effective to implement. If staff leave lights on in unoccupied rooms (bathrooms, storage sheds), you may want to make turning off the lights in unused areas a priority. That step may be as simple as posting signs on light switches. If, on the other hand the lights are generating significant added costs, they may want to install motion sensors or bi-level light switches.

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Ecopreneurist does a terrific job of educating the public about green business, especially startups.  My own personal blog, EcopreneursGuide, has a variety of pages that also address this topic, though with woefully less information and diversity, since it is only my blog, and doesn’t have the wealth of writers associated with Ecopreneurist.

But the interesting thing is that my blog gets a decent number of hits. Not, mind you, for any of the articles I write, but only for the resources I list.  The page that, overwhelmingly, gets the most attention, is the “Green Business Opportunities” page.  With Google Analytics, it is easy to see that most of the people who come to my blog do so because they are searching for this exact phrase. People want to change the world.  We need to make sure they have the resources to do so. Read the rest of this entry »

The House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming recently heard from a panel of leading edge scientists and industry executives on the state of existing U.S. clean technology and the lack of funding for developing and scaling the technology into commercially viable products and services.

The primary technologies discussed were solar and carbon capture technologies. Dr. Brent Constantz, CEO of Calera Corporation, which focuses on a transformational technology that converts CO2 into green building materials such as cement and aggregate, argues that this process is better than traditional CCS (Carbon Capture and Storage or Sequestration), as it represents a permanent CO2 conversion from gas to solid material.

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Consumer Alert: There are three things you need to know about remanufactured ink and toner cartridges:

1. They are not inferior in quality to new Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) products. (In fact, in 1997, the US EPA stated that remanufactured products are “as good as new.”)
2. Using a remanufactured or any cartridge other than that of the OEM will not in fact void the printer equipment warranty. (Not that manufacturers didn’t try.  They did but the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act of 1975 specifically states that a warranty may not be voided because of the use of aftermarket products.)
3. Buying them will typically save you money and selling spent cartridges will typically make you money.

(This information comes courtesy of Ecogreenoffice.com whose primer about the truth about remanufactered print cartridges contains lots of additional information.)

There are two sides to greening your ink and toner purchases: The Buy and the Sell.

The Sell. The act of selling ink and toner cartridges is one of the easiest ways to make money and be green at the same time. On the revenue side, cartridges are valuable (some are worth as much as $22). If cash isn’t what your looking for, retailers such Office Max, Office Depot and Staples have rewards programs that give up to $3 in store credit for each eligible cartridge and have drop boxes in stores. (Office Max also has a postage-paid shipping program for those who recycle high volumes of cartridges—up to 300 a month). In any event, selling spent cartridges is easy and sometimes even lucrative.

The Buy. Want to know the impact of all those cartridges you’re using? The folks at SB Office Supplies, an online office supply retailer with an extensive green catalog, have a nifty Remanufactured Cartridge Savings Calculator that tells how much oil is saved and how many cartridges stay out of land fills when you buy remanufactured cartridges.

Convinced? They are basically two routes to go. Read the rest of this entry »

Another post inspired by a HARO request.  This time it was an ask for low or no-cost tools used by small businesses.  I did a quick search for the word “free” in my book and realized there are dozens.  Here are my 19 favorites:

1. Free energy-efficiency information, resources, and technical advice—ENERGY STAR for Small Business provides free information, resources, and technical advice on hundreds of cost-savings practices. Includes a downloadable copy of the free ENERGY STAR for Small Business Guide, “Putting Energy into Profits” and information about ENERGY STAR–labeled products.
2. Free recycling and conservation signs—You can customize, download, and print free recycling and conservation signs at recyclereminders.com.
3. Free control of your IT—If you run a network, software from companies like LocalCooling.com allows the settings on computers to be controlled centrally so you can automatically turn those babies off when no one is using them.
4. Free Green IT for Dummies—HP sponsors a free, downloadable, condensed, limited edition of the Green IT for Dummies guide.
5. Free recycling bins—The Coca-Cola/NRC Recycling Bin Grant Program provides recycling bins to selected grant recipients for the collection of beverage container recyclables in public settings.
6. Free rideshare widget for websites— at GooseNetworks.com. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a basic marketing tip: Don’t position your product as green.  Well, not primarily green. Instead, position your products and services first as delivering core consumer benefits then-as a second set of attributes-green. You may even find that your competitors are not onto this savvy positioning strategy.

A couple weeks ago I was looking for examples of this principle. I wanted to show how a company’s marketing message should extend beyond greenness to appeal to other core consumer attributes people expect from a good products.  I put out a query on HARO and received dozens of interesting products.  Of those, five stood out.

The first thing I noticed about Vers iPod Docks is that they are incredibly beautiful.  But, they first thing theat Vers wants you to know about their products is that they sound great. They let the fact that they have been touted as the most environmentally friendly iPod dock available speak for itself and focus instead on the benefits that consumer’s want in a an iPod dock: Great sound and good looks.  In the words of David Laituri, partner in Sprout Creation makers of Vers products:

“We tend to focus on superior sound quality and design, and environmental thoughtfulness a fast second. Since our sustainable design efforts are a work in progress, we avoid ‘green’ and ‘environmentally friendly’ whenever possible.”

Green Toys are made out of recycled milk containers and are made in the USA (so from a supply chain position they are very environmentally sound.) Green Toys are also packaged in recycled corrugated boxes with no plastics, cellophane or twist-ties, and are 100% recyclable. But most importantly, they positioned as safe (they contain no traceable amounts of Phthalates or BPA and have no external coatings with lead paint) and fun (they are chunky and colorful and beg to be played with). Read the rest of this entry »