eco-friendly printer

If you’re the latter or if you are a green procurer, you probably want to streamline the “boom!

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.

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.

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.

... It comes as no surprise then that recovered paper is a lucrative - and highly competitive - market in Asia. In August, the Taiwanese government banned exports of recovered paper to prevent material from being lured to countries such as China because of the latter’s preparedness to pay higher prices.