You've finally realized the evils of the plastic water bottle and got yourself a stainless steel one. But is it really better? This piece in the Opinion section of The New York Times by Daniel Goleman and Gregory Norris breaks it down for ya via a cool illustration and specific details on manufacturing and usage.
The bottom line: just how "green" a product is often comes down to where we get it, how we use it and how we dispose of it. The Goleman and Norris's final suggestion:
Then again, some old solutions we shouldn’t discount. Before stainless
steel thermoses, before bottled water, we already had an eco-friendly
method of getting water: drinking fountains.
Remember those cute commercials where a little kid would ride a bike, have a sore butt, and stuff his/her pants with soft toilet paper to cushion the ride? Turns out that Americans' affection for cushy toilet paper is a serious offender to old growth forests.
Fluffiness comes at a price: millions of trees harvested in North
America and in Latin American countries, including some percentage of
trees from rare old-growth forests in Canada. Although toilet tissue
can be made at similar cost from recycled material, it is the fiber
taken from standing trees that help give it that plush feel, and most
large manufacturers rely on them.
Greenpeace has come out with a recycled tissue and toilet paper guide, which rates facial tissues, toilet paper, paper towels and paper napkins according to environmental friendliness. Brands Green Forest and 365 are at the top of their list for toilet paper. Click on the widget below for more info.
For paper napkins, I'd recommend going one step further. My husband and I have been using cloth napkins for the past two years instead of paper. It makes us feel fancy and saves a few trees in the process. Something to remember is that even if a product isn't made from old growth trees, the manufacturing process uses energy and creates waste.
As many of you know, I recently got a new printer. Today I hit the first li'l maintenance check - replacing the toner cartridge. I'm happy to report that Brother makes it super-easy (and free!) to responsibly dispose of your old cartridges. Just go to their website and print out a pre-paid label, box up your old cartridge and pop it in the mail.
According to the verbiage on Brother's site:
Brother currently has a recycling program in place for used Brother branded consumable items. Some of the
select components that are returned to us will be remanufactured. Others are broken down so that all of the
appropriate metal and plastic components can be recycled.
I'm using myself as a case study. I'm about to replace my printer and decided to put my money where my Margins are and see how easy/hard it is to find a way to environmentally dispose of it. If the printer was even close to working, I'd donate it to a charity or school, but the thing is dead dead dead. It's an NEC 870 monochrome laser printer which has been fantastic for me. I've had it for at least 6 or 7 years, and it finally conked out about 3 months ago.
It's easy to find places to dispose of ink cartridges and cell phones in an environmentally responsible way; entire printers (especially outdated ones) are another matter. My first google attempt: "environmentally dispose of printer" led me to the eCycling page of the EPA, which turns out to have a very useful page listing local, manufacturer and retail recycling programs.
Since my printer's a NEC machine, I figured I'd check out their Total Trade program first. When I put in my printer model, it turns out to not have any after market value. Not a surprise. They CAN recycle it for me, but I'll have to pay them a fee to do so. Here's the damage:
It's not a ton o'money, but if I can find a cheaper (aka free) way to recycle the printer, that would be ideal. I'll keep you posted on progress.
Just heard about a great new program the US Postal Service is trying out called “Mail Back” that lets you recycle anything from iPods to old printer cartridges to PDAs. You just pick up a postage paid envelope from any of the 1500 participating post offices around the country, stuff your old Blackberry or digital camera inside and send it on its way. The Mail Back program is kicking off in 10 cities to start, including Washington, D.C., Chicago, Los Angeles and San Diego.
Postage for your goodies is paid for by Clover Technologies Group, a company that recycles, remanufactures and remarkets printer cartridges and small electronics. Clover beat out 19 other companies to win the contract with the Post Office and has a “zero waste to landfill” policy – it does everything it can to avoid contributing any materials to the nation’s landfills. Click here for more on their recycling policies.
One thing to note – you don’t have to BE in one of the 10 chosen cities to take advantage of the program. Envelopes can be MAILED from anywhere - they’re just only AVAILABLE in the 10 participating cities for now. So if you don’t happen to live in one, get a friend who does to pop one in the mail for you. The $1.00 or so you’ll spend in postage to get the envelope is a small price to pay for keeping the planet healthier.
As I continue to work on this campaign and find more and more interesting things along the way, I'm going to try to post something visual on Fridays. After all, I'm sure you're enjoying my scintillating prose, but there's only so much one can write about paper margins to keep y'all interested.
By now recycling cans is a no-brainer, but just in case you're ever tempted to toss that can into the regular garbage...
