Archive for 'Green Business'
Now that’s Green Tea!
Posted on 12. Oct, 2009 by admin.
Nothing is more wasteful than, er, waste. Companies pay for the raw materials that they don’t use. Then they pay again to have it trucked to the landfill. That’s why zero waste is an exciting idea. Reducing or eliminating waste is not only good for the planet, it’s good for business, as companies like Toyota and Wal-Mart have learned.
Smart companies that pursue zero waste are also taking us closer to an industrial system inspired by nature, where there’s no such thing as garbage. Think about a tree or plant, where this fall’s dead leaves become next spring’s food.
Today’s zero waste story comes from Lipton, the world’s largest tea company. Lipton is a unit of London-based consumer-products giant Unilever (40 billion euros in 2008 revenues), whose brands include Dove soap, Ben & Jerry ice cream, and Hellmann’s mayonnaise. Unilever’s an environmental leader — it helped start the Marine Stewardship Council which certifies the world’s fisheries as sustainable, it’s working with Greenpeace to develop environmentally preferable refrigerants and it led the laundry industry to concentrate detergent and reduce packaging when it came up with Small and Mighty All.
Read More at GreenBiz.com
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Ever heard of an online yard sale?
Posted on 01. Oct, 2009 by admin.
SwapItGreen is an online yard sale without the signs, tables, or travel. List and trade your stuff for trading points and swap your trading points for new stuff. Sell and buy from anyone, negotiate with your trading partner to get a great bargain. Go green by recycling. This is barter in the 21st century! Go to SwapItGreen to make your best deal.
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Paper Products that are Better, Cheaper and Greener
Posted on 08. Sep, 2009 by admin.
Marcal Small Steps paper towels are not only made entirely from recycled paper. They sell for less — in some instances quite a bit less — than paper towels made mostly from trees by the industry giants.
Here’s how the consumer’s choices look, measured from cheapest to most expensive, in terms of dollars per 100 paper towels:
• Marcal $1.64
• Bounty (Procter & Gamble) $1.79
• Giant (store brand) $1.85
• Brawny (Georgia-Pacific) 2.04, on sale
• Viva (Kimberly-Clark) $2.17
This is, of course, not the way things usually work. Solar power costs more than electricity made from coal. Organic food is pricier than conventional. You pay more for Starbucks’ coffee than you do for Dunkin’ Donuts. Partly that’s because the price consumers pay for conventional fare doesn’t reflect the full cost of the product. (See, for example, Getting Real About the High Price of Cheap Food, Bryan Walsh’s recent Time magazine cover story, about the hidden costs of industrial agriculture.)
marcal products
To say that I “discovered” Marcal isn’t precisely true. After I covered Greenpeace’s recent agreement with forest-products giants Kimberly-Clark, a PR woman asked me to look at the company. So I got on the phone with Tim Spring, Marcal’s CEO, who told me a little about Marcal and its history.
“This company was committed to saving trees for two decades before Greenpeace bought its first boat,” Spring said.
It turns out that Marcal, a 77-year-old maker of paper towels, napkins, toilet tissue and other consumer goods, has been using recycled stock since the 1950s. Based in suburban Elmwood Park, New Jersey, its paper-making factory employs about 900 people and draws much of its stock from those blue plastic recycling bins under office desks in Manhattan skyscrapers about 20 miles away.
Read entire article on GreenBiz.com
