green printer

The big names cannot help but pump out more sustainable paper products on an almost weekly basis. From biology college textbooks gone green to carbon friendly greeting cards, we’ve rounded up the top ten green papier goods that caught our eye.

I had the chance to meet with Stephanie - the artist and creator. She is so neat!

She was telling us how she doesn't have to be eco friendly - that's it is so much cheaper and easier to use just any products. But she goes that extra step. She only used recycled paper and she's bought printers that use a crayon technology so she doesn't have any plastic cartridges.

Printing just 800 posters with an eco-friendly printing company will produce the following energy and environmental savings: 0.33 trees preserved for the future, 30.90 lbs of greenhouse gases prevented and 237,000 BTUs of energy not consumed.

Today, the World Wildlife Federation (WWF) "graded" the top ten holding companies for luxury brands - including Bulgari, Coach, Hermes, L'Oreal, LVMH, PPR, Richemont, Swatch, Tiffany and Co and Tods - on "a scale of A+ to F for their environmental, social and governance performance and what non-governmental organisations had said about them".

Ah, Christmas. ‘Tis the perfect season to be merry, bright and…green. But it’s not always easy telling your rosy-cheeked in-laws or your office colleagues, their hands brimming with beautiful, glossy (yet unsustainable) paper-wrapped gifts, on why you opted to give them local wine wrapped in a burlap sack (”oh, but it’s chic and reusable”).

We know that recycled paper is good for the planet but... Outpost Magazine recently published a story about recycling panda poop into paper. Seriously – now THIS is recycling! Panda’s eat massive quantities of bamboo, and lots of it comes out the other end as fiber-rich excrement. The Chiang Mai Zoo in Thailand has already begun profiting from panda poop. They sell several items made from the dung, including paper, books and bookmarkers. The best-selling item, however, is plastic bags of panda poop – straight up.

Whatever the motivation, Kindle steps recycled paper books and paperless paper up a futuristic notch by re-igniting the e-book market and paving the way for book publishers to go green. Maybe.

The New York Times recently reported on how a group of scientists out of North Carolina State University are looking to turn trees into new energy sources using a controversial genetic engineering process that reduces the amount of lignin, a chemical compound that interferes with efforts to turn the tree’s cellulose into biofuels like ethanol.

2. Grasp - quickly - the content that everyone else misses Scour and break top environmental news, yes, but also check out what your activist, researcher and even police (crime and traffic will always make news) friends are up to - they are usually the first with their eye on the latest news-worthy content.

Tip: Search the forums on places like Meetup.com to see what other environmental and special interest groups are talking about.

It's estimated that 97 billion e-mails whisk through cyberspace every day. And according to GreenPrint Technologies, despite 20th century predictions of a paperless office, Americans use enough sheets every year to build a 10-foot-high wall that would stretch from New York to Tokyo and beyond.

Subterranean chemicals, including those part of a class called volatile organic compounds (VOCs), from a former chemical burn pit owned by IBM in the pre-regulation 1950s through to the 1970s has likely re-emerged and spread under an upstate New York Country Binghamton Country Club property to the south, according to recent tests overseen by state health and environmental officials.

If the Victoria (dirty) Secret fiasco is anything of a hint of what’s to come for corporations like Sears from the new breed of powerhouse non-profits and their vigilant, eco-savvy members, Sears’ management is going to incur a few expenses over the next couple of months, including:

Advil extra-strength costs for 8am boardroom headaches: $65.

Quirky YouTube video on Kleenex and deforestation. You'll never look at tissue paper the same way again.

Sustainability forward designers have seen what works and what doesn’t when it comes to businesses affirming their environmental commitments to clients. From business cards to 200 page magazines, more and more customers are flipping over to the back of your paper products to look for things like 100% post-consumer recycled paper. Sometimes, they look for wind-powered web sites.

Victoria’s Secret’s executives never expected this story to skyrocket from the underground level of blogs and hack basements to full page ad coverage of the likes of the New York Times. And, we didn’t even get to the part of Victoria’s Secret garnering a legal (and reputation) bill longer than Gisele Bundchen’s legs but there you have it: a case study that blogs have power and consumers are watching your every (un)green move.