The concept of going green is finally reaching a new high and gaining more attention than ever. This concept encourages people to adopt sustainable or eco friendly practices and products in order to save the environment from the problems such as pollution and global warming. Many businesses have adopted eco friendly methods of producing and now their decision has finally paid off when the practice of going green is becoming beneficial in the monetary sense as well. The businesses that are yet in the dilemma to adopt eco friendly practices will be glad to know that the businesses that did are now feeling more than glad about their decision.
The office depot tracking poll that was conducted in the year 2012 clearly showed that almost sixty one percent of small enterprises were trying their best to turn green and seventy percent were all set to go green in the coming two years. Let us talk about some businesses that have already tasted the success by going green.
Going green is a wonderful option after all
The first business was established in the year 2004 in Georgia and is named Enviro-logs. This enterprise makes fire logs from waxed cardboard boxes that are primarily used to transport goods. The wax from which the logs are made happens to be food grade safe which means that the fire logs pose no threat to the environment when they burn unlike wooden logs. The founder of the company shared his journey and told that it was informational marketing that helped his business a lot. At present enviro-logs is the third largest producer of fire logs in the country.
Jesse Laflamme never thought that he would be working on a farm which was founded by his grandfather. This 200 acre farm is now managed by Jesse along with the unending support from his wife. Today the egg farm owned and managed by Jesse is one of the leading ones in the area and produces organic eggs. The third business on the list we are discussing today is owned by David and it is name eRcyclingcorps. The main function of this particular company is to refurbish the old mobile phones and then sell them in the developing nations.
If in case the old mobiles they get are beyond any repairs then they forward them to the recyclers. Since the year 2009 this particular organizations has gathered no less than ten million old cell phones. David said that the business is doing really good but he feels sad about the people who just discard their old mobiles without even thinking about the danger they are letting loose on the environment. There are many such green businesses who have decided to contribute their share by adopting greener ways and making this planet a better place to live.
The Mother Nature Network or MNN is the fourth business enterprise which we will be discussing today. Joel co founded this particular firm in the year 2009 and Joel is actually an ad agency executive. Chuck happens to be the other founder of this organization who is primarily an eco activist. MNN used to cover only news that was connected to the environmental issues during the initial years of its launch. With time it evolved and began covering other topics as well such as family, travel, home and wellness. One of the founders of this organization said that their main focus is on the responsible consumers who are connected to one another by their thoughts. These were the four businesses that took the smart road of going green and finally got success.
measuring twice as large as traditional refugee tents, the modular housing unit provides a temporary shelter for displaced people, whether long-term or short-term.
by: Environmental Leader, 2013-07-01 12:55:26 UTC Recycling incentive company Recyclebank has lowered its carbon emissions by 27 percent, from 830 tons in 2011 to 602 tons in 2012, with the help of NativeEnergy, which calculated the company’s greenhouse gas emissions. Becoming aware of the impact of its operations helped Recyclebank reduce its emissions, CEO Jonathon K. Hsu says. The company also [...]
Los Angeles architects Kyle and Liz von Hasseln have set up a business that produces 3D-printed sugar sculptures for wedding cakes, table centrepieces and pie toppings. (more...)
Which material is friendlier to the environment: cotton or silk? A new app from Nike can tell you.
For about eight years now, Nike has selected materials for apparel and shoe products by using an in-house sustainability index, developed by researchers from a gigantic database of scientific research and analysis of the life cycles of products. It lives as an open-source tool within the sportswear company and charts the amount of water a given material will use, or the waste produced by a certain manufacturing process. By consulting the index during its design process, Nike has reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 18% from a decade ago.
As of today, these corporate gems of wisdom are accessible to designers anywhere, via the new Nike Making app, available in the iTunes store. The app is a pocket toolkit for product makers to give their projects an environmental score. Even within Nike--an R&D driven company--designers say they aren’t always sure which materials yield the greenest products, says Hannah Jones, Nike’s VP of Sustainable Business and Innovation. The Making app lets designers sort through 22 different product materials such as cotton, silk, grass-fed leather, rayon-viscose, and so on. Each material is then scored within four buckets of environmental impact: water use, energy, chemistry, and waste. To keep designers on point, the app also figures for performance and aesthetic needs.
“It’s all part of a single strategy to change the palette of the world’s materials,” Jones tells Co.Design. “If we could put information out there and empower our design community to make better choices, it would be an important lever we could pull.”
The app runs in tandem with Nike’s fourth Launch Challenge, which wrangled minds from NASA, the U.S. State Department, and USAID to help find newer sustainable materials. The need is acute: Despite the emphasis typically placed on the environmental harm of shipping (heard prominently within movements for local farming), materials account for 60% of the environmental impact incurred from a pair of Nike shoes.
The issue is, of course, not exclusive to Nike. “In 2010, there were 150 billion garments produced in the world. A dye house uses 200 tons of water,” Jones tells Co.Design. “We can impact the industry to think in a very different way about how it values materials.”
It’s hard not to wonder why Nike invests so much in this index when other companies are finding new ways to consume less, such as in Patagonia’s Common Threads Initiative. Jones says that’s only one of a few pathways to achieving a sustainable company: “There’s always one set of arguments that say we should all consume less. The next says let’s make better, longer, more durable products. The third is the one I think is most interesting. How do we actually close the loop? How do we create products that could be infinitely recycled?”
Nike did just that for their 2010 World Cup soccer jerseys, which were recycled from plastic water bottles. To date, the company has kept 1.1 billion plastic bottles out of landfills by developing products from recycled polyester. They’re also exploring partnerships with progressive startups that are investigating new techniques, such as dying garments without using any water. All of which will inform the Nike Materials Sustainability Index and the Making app.
The Making app rolled out first for students at London College of Fashion’s Centre for Sustainable Fashion, and a separate app for shoe designers is anticipated in the future. As much as Jones and her team intend to influence choices made by designers, by strategically putting the knowledge in the hands of a new generation of designers, it’s clear that they (smartly) aspire to plant the seed for future materials innovations. “What about alternatives to cotton that don’t impede on performance, or radical new materials that don’t generate any toxic chemicals?” she asks. This kind of thinking is “becoming intuitive for the students. Teachers can build it into classes, and a whole generation of designers will be change agents.”
Strung is a new stool design by Not Tom that lies at the place where craft and DIY meet design. Their first self-produced design, the stool consists of a simple flat-packed frame that the user can build and customize to his or her liking, adding the string you’d like in whatever pattern you wish. Just make sure it’s sturdy and pulled taut!
by: Design 4 Sustainability, 2013-07-03 06:01:40 UTC
Flextrus PaperLite® is a paper based product with unique built in stretching opportunities. Flextrus buys the FibreForm® paper from Billerud and combines ...
by: Design 4 Sustainability, 2013-07-02 22:03:20 UTC
BEAVERTON, Ore. (November 30, 2010) - In an effort to further industry sustainability efforts, NIKE, Inc. (NYSE:NKE) today released its Environmental ...
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