The Greening Place

Gulf Oil Spill

2010-06-11T10:53:00.000-07:00

Good slide show of pictures from the Gulf Oil Spill. Enough said.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/30/louisiana-oil-spill-2010_n_558287.html#s98937

2010-06-02T16:04:00.000-07:00

Promotional Products Can Be Effective and Sustainable
The promotional products industry is a 9 Billion dollar industry. They are purchased and used because they work, whether you're trying to promote your business or doing a fund raiser. More and more organizations who use these products are focusing on giving away things that people will really use. There is an awareness that creating waste is not a good message, so useful items are more popular. Also, eco-friendly versions are being purchased in large enough quantities that the prices are now the same as the non eco-friendly versions.

Eco-friendly promotional products are coming into the market in increasingly greater numbers and at cost effective prices. Pens and other commonly plastic products are coming in corn resin plastic, recycled plastic and biodegradable plastic. Some green enthusiasts believe that unless a product is made completely of post consumer recycled materials it's not really 100% sustainable. That's technically correct but something that is 60% recyclable or biodegradable is better than not making any attempt at sustainability.

As with all industries, the promotional products manufacturing process will evolve. As more of the eco-friendly products are sold, we'll see more choices and higher degrees of sustainability. With any consumer driven change, industry tends to be a little behind the curve and changes in incremental steps, rather than one big leap.

Pictured are corn resin plastic pens and a mouse pad made of recycled rubber.

Recycling vs Reuse

2009-09-02T10:34:00.000-07:00

Reuse and Remanufacturing vs. Recycling

If you decide to recycle your empty inkjet cartridges or old cell phone instead of throwing them away or putting them in adrawer to deal with later, you'll find pages of companies involved in recycling of these two electronics. The reason these companies can exist and we're one of them, is because many (not all) inkjet models and cell phones have monetary value. The value comes from the demand for these items as reused or remanufactured products.

You'll also probably heard about sustainability or a sustainable world. This just means using less and a big part of using less is reusing what we have. So remanufacturing and reusing empty inkjets and cell phones makes a great deal of sense and contributes to sustainability, not to mention that remanufactured products are often 50% of new ones.

When you get ready to Recycle, please use ours or other companies that collect to reuse. Make sure you're sending your old electronics to someone who has REUSE as a priority in their Reduce-Reuse-Recycle.

Not All Recycling Programs Are Created Equal-Look for Reuse

2009-08-31T15:31:00.000-07:00

You want to turn in your inkjet cartridges or your cell phone for recycling, because you really don't want to throw either in the trash. You do a Google or Yahoo search. Pages and pages of results come back for inkjet and cell phone recycling. What to do??

If you are concerned enought to not want to trash either your cartridge or cell phone and you've bothered to do a search, then the next thing you should be concerned about is REUSE.
Sustainability is really the function of "reusing" things whether it's electronics, clothes, water, cans, etc. You turn in your cans and plastic water bottles so that they will be broken down and the plastic and aluminium will be reused. That way we don't have to produce so much plastic and aluminium using raw materials. We can reuse.

The same is true for inkjet cartridges and cell phones but both of these are actually much easier to reuse. Empty inkjet cartridges are easily remanufactured. This means taking out the old sponges and all OEM ink and putting in new sponges and different ink. The plastic casing that inkjets are made of are industrial grade plastic which lasts forever, so many inkjet cartridges can actually be remanufactured multiple time as long as they are packed with a little care when sending them in for recycling and reuse.

Cell phones are even easier. It either works or it doesn't and it's either new enough technology that someone wants it or not. If the technology is less than 18 months old (as a general rule) and it's not cracked or broken, it can probably be refurbished and reused.

Remanufactured inkjet cartridges are sold by many companies as "compatible cartridges" or"remanufactured cartridges". They won't have an HP, Dell or Lexmark sticker on them. They do not as many people think invalidate your printer warranty. They are generally of high quality and cost about half the price of a new cartridge.

Over 700 million inkjet cartridges are sold in the U.S. every single year. About 150 million get turned into recycling programs. Some of these programs collect them to remanufacture them and reuse them, others destroy them. Make sure your program reuses them. Otherwise you really haven't contributed to being sustainable. A new cartridge will still have to be make using raw materials and creating more plastic.

Over 130 million cell phones are "retired" each year. Only 13 million get turned in for recycling. It's estimated that 40 million get stored in drawers and 65 million are unaccounted for.

Please make sure that your inkjet cartridge or cell phone will be REUSED.
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