If Print Buyers Online (PBO) has its way, you’ll soon get a tax break for making sustainable choices in your printing. This week, PBO is introducing legislation that would amend the Internal Revenue Code “to allow print buyers a credit against income tax for the completion of sustainable print projects.” To be declared “qualified sustainable […]
Tax Credits for Green Printing? Read More 👉
When people hear the word “deforestation,” the image that comes to mind is logging. Logging is tied to paper and fiber-based products, which are subsequently labeled forest-killers. That’s some powerful imagery. But is it accurate?
Quick! Define Deforestation! Read More 👉
A few days ago, I blogged about the American Forest & Paper Association’s ability to blow its own horn that its member companies have made great strides in key areas of sustainability, including paper recovery, emissions reduction, use of alternative energies, and much more. I was looking at its 2010 “Sustainability Report” again today and
Sustainability as a Condition of Association Membership? Let’s Make It a Trend! Read More 👉
Look around you. How much of what you use on a daily basis comes from the forest products industry? Everything from the office paper you put into your printer to the wood fiber in the RTA furniture in the office is produced by this massive, global industry. Sometimes, the news coming out of this industry
AF&PA: The Paper Industry Is Making Huge Strides Read More 👉
This week, Greenpeace released a new report “How Sinar Mas Is Pulping the Planet.” The conclusions were highly critical of Asia Pulp & Paper, one of the largest vertically integrated pulp and paper companies in the world. According to Greenpeace, APP is gobbling up tropical forest for fiber production, lying about its intentions to scale
Greenpeace and Asia Pulp & Paper Duke It Out Over Greenpeace Report Read More 👉
I’ve blogged a number of times about the benefits of purchasing paper that uses an environmental certification like the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) or Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI). But has not using one of these certifications become a negative differentiator? Can it get you kicked out of the running? I just read a post on
Rejected! Can Lack of Environmental Certification Hurt You? Read More 👉
Celestial Seasonings pillow-style tea bags are made with natural fiber and no strings attached. On Tuesday, I blogged about SunChips’ new fully compostable bag. But hey, it’s Frito Lay. They’ve got the bucks to be super green, right? Then I opened a box of one of my favorite brands of tea, Celestial Seasonings, and there
Celestial Seasonings’ Green Isn’t Just for Tea: Who Knew? Read More 👉
SunChips chooses transparency to market its new 100% compostable bag. Last year, I wrote about SunChips’ “compostable” chip bag that wasn’t really compostable at all. It was one-third compostable, which meant that its compostable layer was laminated to two-thirds non-compostable layers, rendering it — well — noncompostable. Now that’s changed. SunChips bags are now 100%
SunChips Turns Environmental Commitment into Brilliant Marketing Read More 👉
Many people think that if they use paper, they need to pay attention to carbon emissions, but if it’s e-media, not so much. Not true. Whether it’s print or electronic, all media has a carbon footprint. According to a report by Don Carli of the Institute for Sustainable Communications, as reported in Printing News: According
More Reasons to Take Your Media Choices Seriously Read More 👉
Businesses marketing themselves as “green” are not using environmentally-responsible marketing materials. Earlier this month, a survey released in conjunction with Canadian Environment Week (May 31 to June 5), showed that more than half of businesses marketing themselves aren’t walking the walk — at least not in their marketing materials. The survey, conducted by traffic marketing
Marketing Green: Are You Walking the Walk? Read More 👉
Businesses and individuals can make a difference by choosing sustainably sourced paper products. As oil continues to spew into the Gulf of Mexico and Hooters girls contribute to the solution by donating pantyhose, my thoughts turn to environmental paper certifications. Okay, it’s not going to solve the devastating loss to wildlife, eco-systems, and local economies
No-Brainer Way to Green Your Business Read More 👉
Want an environmental alternative for direct mail marketing? No sweat. Pick your green. 100% PCW. Environmental certifications. Paper that sprouts seeds when planted. Want an environmental alternative to foam core? Not such an easy proposition. That’s why it’s exciting to see real investments from major players in this space. One such investment was announced at
Yes, Virginia, There IS an Environmental Alternative to Foam Board Read More 👉
Ingram’s Lightning Source Inc. today announced that it has received Chain-of-Custody (CoC) certification from three leading environmental organizations: the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) and the Programme for the Endorsement of Forestry Certification (PEFC). Chain of custody (CoC) is an accounting system that tracks wood fiber through the different stages of
Book Publishing Just Got Greener Read More 👉
What do you do when you need an environmentally-friendly press pack but you want to do it without using metal or plastic binding? You do what Icones (Lorient, France) did for its client Bio Nutrisante — and it won an award for it. Did I mention that the run length was an ultra-short 55 packs?
Design That Inspires: Environmentally Friendly Press Pack Read More 👉
Recently, I was privileged to participate on a judging panel in an international printing contest. One of the categories was environmental printing. In that category, an entrant had submitted a very interesting postcard made of 100% recycled paper and containing seeds in the paper fiber, enabling the postcard to be planted. The message was environmental,
Do Plastic Envelopes Undermine a Green Mailing? Read More 👉
Company teaches children the difference between plastic and bio-degradable shipping materials. This morning, my children participated in a scientific experiment and learned about the differences between plastic and bio-degradable shipping materials. It wasn’t at school. It was on my front porch, thanks to a small green insert in the shipping box containing our new butterfly
Feeling Good About Packing and Shipping Read More 👉
In the last 24 hours, I’ve experienced The Tale of Two Communications Philosophies. The contrast between the two drives home, to me, the challenge facing the green industry. First, a conversation I had with a client — a new business start-up — about its website copy (which I’m writing). Sure, they wanted to let people
Don’t Make Greening So Hard Read More 👉
Please consider the environment before printing this email. We’ve all seen taglines like this. It makes us think about a very important issue, which is the environmental footprint of the media we use. Whether we are making decisions about the use of media for marketing, corporate identity, and administration or simply being consumers of media,
Digital Vs. Printed Media — False Dilemmas and Hidden Opportunities Read More 👉
Looking for more reasons to hate spam? Here’s one. According to McAfee and ICF International, annual spam energy use totals 33 billion kilowatt-hours (KWh). That’s equivalent to the electricity used in 2.4 million homes in the United States, with the same GHG emissions as 3.1 million passenger cars using two billion United States gallons of
Measuring the Carbon Footprint of Spam Read More 👉
I hope you’ll indulge me and let me get on my soap box for a minute. I recently released a new report in my Marketer’s Primer Series, “Greening Print Marketing: A Practical Guide.” One of the most surprising pieces of feedback I’ve gotten from printers is, “My clients don’t care anymore.” With all the media
Report: Greening Print Marketing: A Practical Guide Read More 👉
My last post on questioning conventional wisdom on recycled paper generated some terrific comments. After all, when you look more deeply into some of these issues, they aren’t all they are cracked up to be. Is possible that post-consumer waste (PCW) paper isn’t as green as we think it is? The question was worth asking.
Does PCW Paper Really Save Energy? It’s Worth Asking the Question Read More 👉
I’ve been thinking about postconsumer waste lately (apparently, I have too much time on my hands). What I was wondering was this: Postconsumer waste is only one of three waste streams for unused paper. There is also mill broke (scrap collected at the mill and recycled back into the same type of paper from whence
Questioning Conventional Wisdom on PCW Recycled Paper Read More 👉
If you want to “green” your news reading, just go online, right? Ditch that dirty, landfill-clogging paper. Not so fast, argues Sarah Westervelt, environmental expert and activist. In a recent article on The Dead Tree Edition, Westervelt said that she was “too informed about what’s going to happen to my computer when I’m done with
Newspapers May Be Greener, But What About Redundancy? Read More 👉
Looking to get a little green into your conference schedule? There are a number of printing, marketing, and paper-related events coming that touch on a variety of business and marketing topics from a sustainability perspective. Some require you to leave your office just like SEO Conferences. Others don’t. Thanks to What They Think’s Going Green
Green Print, Paper, and Marketing Conferences for February Read More 👉
