Seasons GREENings ...Eco-Friendly Holiday Cards

Watch out ... the holidays are coming. For those of you who like to plan ahead, we've sourced a great line of recycled greeting cards featuring post-consumer recycled content, FSC-certified paper and greener printing processes. You can customize them with your own message and branding. We can also supply cool cards made of seeded paper that will grow your cheer long after holidays. You can choose many stock designs, greetings, fonts and colors — or send us your customized design to be printed directly on the wildflower seed paper.

Get your green cards here or here.

Organic Cotton Vs. Conventional Cotton

People often ask us why we recommend organic cotton apparel at our promotional product firm, eco imprints. After all, a conventional cotton shirt looks pretty much the same as an organic cotton shirt. And they're typically cheaper than organic.

Looks can be deceiving.

The processes used to grow conventional cotton are quite destructive to the environment. Conventionally grown cotton consumes 25% of the insecticides and more than 10% of the pesticides used in the WORLD today! Conventional farming devours roughly 150 grams of pesticides and fertilizers to produce enough cotton for a SINGLE T-shirt.

Here's a look at cultivation practices that clearly differentiate conventional and organic cotton farming:

SEEDS:
Conventional cotton seeds are typically treated with fungicides or insecticides. Organic cotton uses untreated seeds.

WEEDS:
Conventional cotton farmers apply herbicides to inhibit weeds. Organic cotton farmers physically remove weeds with hand-hoeing and cultivation, rather than through chemical destruction.

PESTS:
Conventional cotton uses insecticides and pesticides heavily. The 9 most common pesticides are highly toxic; five are probable carcinogens. And aerial spraying is frequently used, with potential drift onto workers, communities and wildlife. Organic Cotton farming maintains a balance between pests and other natural predators through healthy soil. It also uses "good" bugs, biological and cultural practices to control pests.

Using certified organic cotton for your corporate apparel programs shows a commitment to social and environmental responsibility. Organic garments come from chemical and pesticide-free environments that protect our planet and the health of all creatures that live on it. That comfy organic cotton T-shirt is helping preserve our air, water and land.

A Beautiful Balanced Ecosystem For Your Desk

As I write this post, about a dozen brine shrimp dart about in a softball-sized globe on my desk. They nibble on green algae coating the rocks inside. I have never fed them, nor cleaned the bowl, nor aerated their water. Their clear glass home is sealed airtight. Nothing goes in or out.

These shrimp are my carefree pets, living in a completely self-sustaining world. The algae produce food and oxygen from room light, the shrimp make carbon dioxide for the plants. Together the organisms support each other with no input from me, other than appreciation. Their globes are little sustainable planets of sorts, a balanced ecosystem that could in theory continue for years. We've had ours for only a few weeks, and we've grown quite fond of it.

These mico-worlds, called Ecospheres, have been around for some time and they come in several shapes and sizes. They are the easiest aquarium you'll ever find — and a lovely reminder of our self-sustaining eco system.

You can find these at stores like Brookstones for about $65, or you can purchase them from eco imprints for even less, including costs to customize with a subtle logo or message. Find out more here.

Keep in mind a system this small is sensitive to room conditions, and it can be easy to kill off the inhabitants before you find the optimal place in a room — which is warm but not brightly lit. The question many Ecosphere owners want to know is, how long will they live and can the shrimp reproduce? While an individual shrimp can live for up to 5 years, unlike most marine invertebrates, the endemic Hawaiian red brine shrimp reproduce very sparingly. There are reports of Ecospheres hatching shrimp fry, but they are rare enough to offer little hope yours will. However, even if the shrimp die, the algae will continue to live for decades or longer — an additional ecological lesson.

These little orbs of self-sustaining life are great instructional aids. If you like living things nearby but don't like the slavery of upkeep, they're perfect pet/gardens, ideal office mates, and they make wonderful sustainability-themed gifts.

Give Trees!

Here's a promotion that helps fight global warming and keeps useless plastic giveaways out of landfills. Seed-the-Future is a great new gift or incentive card concept from eco imprints. It gives brands an opportunity to show green values and lets consumers do something good for the planet. Each card, branded with the logo of your organization, allows the holder to have one or more trees planted in their name in a re-forestation project. The cards can be made of recycled materials or seeded paper. Use them to reward consumers for loyalty or conservation or to honor employees for reducing their impact on the environment.

Non-Toxic Promo Flash Drives with 100% Recycled Casing

We've recently added a number of stylish new usb drives to our growing mix of practical and eco friendlier promotional gadgets. This ergonomic shaped design is made of a 100% recycled ABS plastic exterior casing. Manufactured under stringent RoHS standards to keep toxics out of the environment. It's both PC and Mac compatible, and comes in recycled cardboard box. We can load it up for internet streaming or incorporate your branding, advertisement, brochure or website on screen every time the flash drive is used. Get more info here.

The Problem with Disposable Coffee Cups

Did you know that if you buy just one cup of coffee or tea in a disposable cup every day, you'll create about 23 pounds of waste in one year?

Because so many disposable containers are used throughout the world — and because the resources required to make those cups are considerable — the environmental consequences can be quite staggering.

According to Ideal Bite , eighteen percent of garbage we produce is composed of disposable containers. Beverage cups made of virgin paper or — worse yet — styrofoam, make up a large chunk of that waste.

Americans trash about 25 billion styrofoam cups each year. This nasty material does not biodegrade. So 500 years from now, the polystyrene cup you toss out today will still exist either in a landfill or somewhere in our environment.

NOT ALL CUPS ARE CREATED EQUAL
Most paper cups for hot beverages are laminated with a plastic resin. This process keeps your beverages warm and inhibits leaking — but it also prevents the cups from being recycled. Starbucks now makes its disposable cups with 10% recycled content. They won't use a higher percentage because the recycled cups they've tried in the past leaked or failed and customers complained. There is a new type of biodegradable and compostable paper coffee cup available, but they are a bit more expensive, relatively resource intensive to produce and have not yet been widely adopted across the country.

The fact is, no matter what they’re made of, most disposable beverage cups end up in landfills. But there is something you can do about it. Join the growing movement towards reducing coffee cup waste.

We’ve been working with a great new non-profit, Green Cafe Network , which is greening all aspects of the coffeehouse industry and harnessing café culture for environmental education. More cafes are working to cut energy consumption and expand recycling and composting programs. Many now offer discounts if you bring your own cup.

Our partner company, eco imprints, offers a wide range of stylish, insulated, leak-resistant reusable coffee tumblers you can personalize and tote around. We've done a lot of research on the subject, and vetted out the best suppliers. Our favorites are made of stainless steel, but we carry tumblers made of corn plastic, biodegradable plastic, recycled plastic, and other durable materials.

SUSTAINABILITY STUDY: DISPOSABLE VS. REUSABLE
It's true that manufacturing reusable cups creates a bigger initial environmental impact than paper cups. However, that impact lessens over time as the reusable cup is, uh, reused. Each reusable cup has a “magic number” of uses at which point it becomes more environmentally friendly than a paper cup.

Sustainability Engineer Pablo Påster published a study last year in Treehugger, which found that after 24 uses, a stainless steel tumbler breaks even with a paper cup in terms of environmental impacts.

Considering that most reusable mugs are designed to be used at least 3,000 times, the positive eco impact of a reusable tumbler can be enormous.

To assure you always have a reusable mug when we need your caffeine fix, you can always keep a few extras on hand: one at home, one at the office, one on your bike, in your car or in your bag.

The daily impact of reusable beverage holders may seem small, but it adds up quickly. We're encouraging corporate clients, non-profits, and individuals to switch over to reusable tumblers.

If we can all get more friends, family and responsible organizations involved ...the reusable revolution will grow, and Mother Earth will get a much-needed coffee cup break.

Sustainable Swag That Won't Break The Bank

We're often challenged by clients on tight deadlines who are in desperate need of fast-turn customized promotional products that are environmentally friendly and inexpensive.

We're big fans of the ecosmart line of recycled office products and desktop accessories from eco imprints. The small sampling of eco items pictured above include a pen caddie, mousepad, pen, business card holder, picture frame, and notebook.

All are made of 100% recycled kraft paper. In most cases, your logo or message can be beautifully blind debossed along with a recycled symbol, so the environmental theme is underscored and there is no need for chemical inks on your imprint. Many items can be mailed flat. Best of all, almost everything in the line is available for less than $3!

Contact eco imprints for more information on the ecosmart line and ideas on how to affordably green your next promotion.