business cards

Trendy new business cards are smaller, cuter, more eco and oh so hip

It was a serious two hour talk on climate change realities. And, what did we eat for lunch: steak. A large chunk of medium rare cow meat in tepid gravy. Sauce and solemn speech aside, I found the plat du jour ironic. Here we were, serious business people (some even part of the “sustainability task force”), earnest as heck about doing our part to learn about the adapt prong of the two-pronged “mitigate and adapt” prong to tackle climate change.

The big names cannot help but pump out more sustainable paper products on an almost weekly basis. From biology college textbooks gone green to carbon friendly greeting cards, we’ve rounded up the top ten green papier goods that caught our eye.

Warning: so, as the video and Oprah ’s darling du jour and guerrilla closet warrior Peter Walsh so clearly outlines, our pack-rat habits are making us chubby. They can also be a barrier to us going green. We share fast, eco-friendly de-clutter tips for busy lives..

“The final combination of paper choices recommended to the client represented a 10% cost savings, 13% fewer carbon dioxide emissions, and 35% fewer trees when compared to their previous product,” says Nancy E. Landrum of Sustainable Business Design.

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”).

A blog conversation: a tree-loving letter to a blogger

Get this: over 100 million trees are harvested annually to create junk mail and well, the 70 hours a year it is estimated we waste in dealing with junk mail is just not worth it.

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.

Victoria’s Secret’s executives never expected this story to skyrocket from the underground level of blogs and hack basements to full page ad coverage of the likes of the New York Times. And, we didn’t even get to the part of Victoria’s Secret garnering a legal (and reputation) bill longer than Gisele Bundchen’s legs but there you have it: a case study that blogs have power and consumers are watching your every (un)green move.