Green Materials, Packaging And Transportation
What are 'sustainable raw materials'?
How difficult is it to find sustainable raw materials for my business?
Depending on the industry that you're in, years ago it was very difficult. Now it is so easy to find sustainable raw materials. All you have to do is a Google search. But, in addition to that ,you're seeing that the industry is so developed on sustainable raw materials that they put another condition- organic sustainable raw materials. Now, organic materials are free from pesticides and steroids and growth stabilizers. What it's basically saying is we're going to take this sustainable product and we're going to grow it in an organic material. For example, cotton, well you can have regular cotton or organic cotton - and I think we've all heard about organic cotton. The difference between the two is one is grown organically, so you are going to have some issues, it's not going to be as uniform and your cost might be a little bit higher for organics, but by the time you get an industry that applies its manufacturing prowess, it will possibly be cheaper than normal organic cotton. That's what the big block stores are finding out. The raw material might be more expensive, and that's what I've found, but when you apply manufacturing processes to it, not only does it take dye better so you use less dye, it weaves better. It's, although a little bit more organic, it ends up being easier to work with because you don't have all these modified pesticides and this kind of funky cotton. You can produce a garment far cheaper than a normal t-shirt, and that was a big issue last year. A perfect example that we have in manufacturing, the RICO packets were made from trash, and although the material is not sustainable, it's trash, and it comes from bleach bottles. We're able to actually optically sort out the bottles with a laser technology that enables me to grind and process it faster than when I just put it all together. Yes it costs me more money, but I'm actually able to make boxes faster and cheaper because my material is more consistent. So in doing that, finding organic sustainable raw materials is the new even greener step than just sustainable raw materials.
What are the 'three pillars of sustainability'?
The three he's basically: Environmentalism, and then you have Ecology and then you also have Economy. With sustainability, when you talk about these three pillars, you have to understand that in designing products, you really have to balance the raw materials, and you also have to balance the needs of the consumer, and you have to make a profit. So when you are talking about sustainable design, and you start talking about these three different categories, you really need to assess how your product fits within these three categories in order for it to be sustainable.
What are the 'four R's of the environmental cycle'?
Right now the industry talks about the "four R's," which is reduce, reuse, recycle, replenish. So, in a nutshell, reduce. How can we reduce our packaging? Can we buy a product that we can reuse multiple times? That's so important. Should we use it once, like a cardboard box is used one time. It's very environmentally destructive. With the Reco Pack, you can use it 400 times. So you want to reduce the amount that you consume, or the packaging that's wrapping your product. You want to reuse that product, and if you can't use it any longer, don't throw it away. Put it on Craig's List, put it on Free Recycle, put it on GeGoIt. And give it to someone else to reuse that product and extend the life of it before entering the landfill. Recycling. Recycling is if we do have to throw it away - newsprint, glass, aluminium cans, bleach bottles - why can't we recycle it. Let's recycle by taking a used product and bringing it back into industry, preventing us from using more finite raw materials. Slowing down the rate of finite consumption. And then, replenish. Replenishing is that if you're - similar to taking a tree out, you need to replenish what you've taken.
What is 'zero-waste packaging'?
Zero-waste is packaging that breaks down in the landfills or produces no waste. An example of zero-waste packaging is going into a store and buying a product that isn't heavily packaged. So, what you'll find is many retailers, even Toys-R-Us, are actually bringing in the toys without the cardboard, without the fancy items, and they're put in very special bins. You'll go inside and say " I'd like to have that toy", you buy it and it doesn't have any packaging; it's zero-waste. They're just testing this now so it would be like going to buy an action figure you don't have a fifteen page brochure, you don't have a back card, you don't have a clam shell to put this little guy in. You can actually go and buy that loose action figure, and they're just testing this out now. Zero-waste packaging is also when you are going to buy a product that the packaged item produces no waste, so you are seeing a lot of corn-based polymer wraps in consumer products so you can actually take this wrapping and put it in the organic waste and it will breakdown in the landfill.
What can I do to make my packaging more reusable?
What is a 'post-consumer' product?
Post consumer is a product that a consumer at one time used, in terms of packaging or the actual product itself. And then, it ends up in a municipal sort facility and goes into a recycling channel that actually reprocesses the material and re-introduces the recycled material back into a similar product. An example would be newspapers. You would read it and then recycle it. A recycler would grind up the fibers. Some of it would go back in to another newspaper. Aluminium cans are by far the best use of post consumer. Some of the statistics are as high as 98 percent of all aluminium is recycled back into a can in under six weeks. So if you drink a soda, you then put that in your recycling bin, and eventually it becomes another can. Glass bottles are by far the best example because you can drink a beer, take it back to the store and get typically a CRV value of five to seven cents for that six-pack. And then they will take those empty glass bottles, send them back to the factory, clean them, wash them and then fill them up with beer again.
How can I cut down on transportation costs in my green business?
Buy Local. If there's one thing that you can do, find a local manufacturer. Not a broker, not an importer. Find a local manufacturer of the good or service that you're buying. Does it make sense to have a pencil made in China, that's shipped over here and distributed fifteen times before you buy it? You can actually find a local pen and paper company here that is manufacturing the product. Or better yet, office furniture. If you can find a local supplier, the idea is to try to buy local. That's the first impact. That's the first line of defence. If you can't find local, why can't you buy it used? What's the difference between having the latest, greatest Mac? I love my Mac, but it's okay to buy it used. It's still going to work. You're still going to extend the lifespan of it. Why not buy a used office chair? What is the difference between you sitting in it five times, and someone else selling it to you and he sat in it a hundred times? It's an office chair. Also affecting our transportation are little things such as doing electronic fund transfers on the internet. Why do you have to write a check, put it in an envelope, put a stamp and then give it to the mail carrier who is going to burn fossil fuels, when you can just hit a couple of keys of a button and get it paid? Those are things that are important in terms of affecting the transportation. When you design products and you're bringing it to market, it's so important to make sure when you design it, that you package it correctly and you can scale it down. So you're not using a volume O.K, of space to transport your product. Try to sell as much product as you can locally. You know it goes both ways, buy locally and sell locally as much as you can. And those are things that I think can impact transportation.
What is the 'Extended Product Responsibility' concept?
What is a 'closed-loop' design?
You have a closed-loop system where you can extract out your used product, like Reco copiers, and still continue using the parts. Take a look at big companies like Epson, they're doing a great job and having you bring back your cartridges. They've designed a cartridge that's not disposable, it's refillable. It's a novel concept and has a huge impact on our landfills. The products that we're designing, from the beginning - if you take a look at the Reco cube which is made from paper sludge - it's designed to break down in your garden and feed your trees. It's closed-loop. Take a look at the Geami paper, the replacement to bubble wrap, not only could be used multiple times, but it's a hundred percent recycled, and it's a hundred percent bio-degradable, and it's great for the land. It's a great soil additive.
