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Eco-Friendly Gifts: Show You Care While Making a Statement

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Eco-Friendly Gifts: Show You Care While Making a Statement

Too often we give gifts that are over packaged, over wrapped, and under used. So much energy and materials are used up in the manufacturing of these items and often gifts are forgotten about or disposed of if they aren’t useful. Even for the more thoughtful gifts, alternatives exist that will allow you to give Eco-Friendly gifts rather than those that create excess garbage and pollution.

Make Your Own Earth Friendly Gifts

Homemade gifts may be one of the most thoughtful gifts you can give someone. It shows you care enough to put your own time and energy into the gift and allows you to get creative. This option can usually save you money and will almost always eliminate unnecessary packaging.

Deciding on the homemade Eco-Friendly gift you’d like to give can be determined either by using a talent you’re passionate about or by basing it on something your recipient loves. For the best gifts, you can give according to the interests both of you share. For example, if you love to bake and they have an addiction to chocolate chip cookies, bake them up a batch of your favourite recipe and put them in a reusable tin.

Homemade gifs can include ideas such elaborate home cooked meals, a sweater or scarf knit from 100% organic wool, or a personalized piece of art or poetry you’ve created just for them. By using your strengths and determining your recipient’s interests you’ll be able to give the most appreciated and Eco-Friendly gifts.

Online and Digital Gifts

Gifts that have absolutely no packaging or material mass can still be incredibly thoughtful and cherished. Purchasing online subscriptions, paying for gaming memberships, buying e-books and music downloads, or donating to their favourite charity will completely eliminate the waste made from manufactured products. These Eco-Friendly gifts allow you to give your friends things they want and can actually use.

Organic Gifts

If a store bought gift is the best choice for you, Eco-Friendly gifts can still be found by choosing items made from biodegradable, recyclable, and reusable materials. If you’re giving clothes, pick them out something made of 100% pure cotton, wool, or hemp. Gift baskets containing organic foods can be extremely welcome around the holidays as they can be opened and shared by everyone.

Giving Eco-Friendly gifts may also encourage your recipients to take the environment into consideration. With whatever gift you choose to give them, you may also be giving them the gift of education by reminding them that our environment needs to be protected and even the smallest of steps can help prevent further pollution.

Eco-Friendly Wedding Invitations

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Eco-Friendly Wedding Invitations

Whether you’re trying to have a greener wedding or just reduce the waste made by a large quantity of wedding invitations, a few helpful ideas should put you on the right track to sending out Eco-Friendly wedding invitations to all your guests.

Recycled Paper

Probably the most common forms of Eco-Friendly wedding invitations are those printed on recycled paper. While some people may not prefer the look of recycled paper, wedding invitations can actually be made quite beautifully from them with natural dyes and organic soy-based ink. Using a non-bleached type of paper will reduce toxic waste from manufacturing while saving trees.

Paper Alternatives

Your invites don’t necessarily have to be sent out on paper. Using other natural materials such as hemp, bamboo, and cotton will not only be better for the environment but will give you some very creative and stylish looking invites as well. This may be a more expensive option, but your invitations will be biodegradable and eco friendly. Reusable cloth envelopes are also an impressive addition to your Eco-Friendly wedding invitations, but this may get more costly or time consuming if you have a larger guest list.

Paperless and Material Free

Why mail any invitations at all? Technology has reduced much of the need for typical postal services and it can help with your Eco-Friendly wedding invitations too. You can call all of your guests individually or send everyone an e-mail informing them of your wedding plans. To take it a step further, you can set up a wedding guest mailing list or create an online event with its own website. If you’ve decided you still want to stick with traditional paper invites, asking your guests to respond via phone or e-mail can still cut down on a huge number of paper replies.

Minimize Your Invitations

Your Eco-Friendly wedding invitations don’t have to be drastically different from the beautiful, handwritten, glossy white cards you’ve always dreamed of. You can still have the classic invitations while reducing trash by keeping the invitations smaller and including all the guests from one area or household on one invite. Print only as many invites as you’re going to need and be sure you avoid heavily treated or dyed types of paper. Even making the smallest changes to your wedding invitations can help you protect the environment and prevent further pollution and waste.

Eco-Friendly Promotional Products to Show Your Company Cares

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Eco-Friendly Promotional Products to Show Your Company Cares

Showing your customers that your company cares about the environment is a great way to express your environmental concerns, give your company a positive community image, and earn yourself some valuable advertising.

Choosing Environmentally Friendly Materials

Regardless of what Eco-Friendly promotional products you’ll be using, ensuring they’re made from eco friendly materials is the first step to greener advertising. Your products should be manufactured in a manner that reduces pollution and waste, so check with your supplier to see if they follow environmentally safe production processes and determine if the materials they use are recycled and biodegradable.

Choose recycled products whenever possible. Try using recycled paper for all your flyers, posters, and business cards and recycled plastics for promotional water bottles. Reducing packaging as much as you can will make your Eco-Friendly promotional products even greener. When shipping, check with your manufacturer regarding packaging procedures and try cutting back on excess waste if you can.

Ideas for Earth Friendly Promotional Products

What kinds of products do you plan to offer your customers? If you’re going to give them Eco-Friendly promotional products, you might as well be sure you’re giving them something useful that won’t end up in a landfill. Reusable water bottles and travel mugs are a great way to show your company encourages reusable products and can be handy to give your staff for using at work as well.

Reusable tote bags are excellent for advertising while still putting an environmentally friendly message out there. You’ll most likely have your company name and logo printed on the bag, but adding an environmentally friendly slogan is just one more step you can take to really deliver your message.

Other items, such as mugs, pens, Frisbees, and t-shirts are great as long as you ensure they are being made with environmentally safe materials and they are stylish enough that your customers will want to keep them. Using appealing logos and lettering on an item will encourage customers to keep your Eco-Friendly promotional products; then, not only do these items stay out of a landfill, they continue to advertise for you.

Other Ways to Help Your Company Go Green

You don’t have to stop at Eco-Friendly promotional products to play a bigger role in saving the environment. Setting up carpooling programs, reusing and recycling old office equipment, using recycled paper products, and encouraging the use of reusable water bottles are all ways you can reduce waste while encouraging your customers and employees to do the same.

Eco-Friendly Shopping Bags: Saving the Environment in Style

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Eco-Friendly Shopping Bags: Saving the Environment in Style

The disposable plastic shopping bags we see people carrying out of stores in armfuls are a wasteful convenience that can easily be replaced with Eco-Friendly shopping bags. Plastic bags deplete the earth’s oil and paper bags ravage the forests and lumber supplies. The manufacturing process of these bags we so casually toss away also contributes to the pollution of the environment. Earth friendly shopping bags can be reused and recycled and are usually made from biodegradable materials.

Earth Friendly Shopping Bags Save You Money

Quite often reusable tote bags are free as promotional items or can be purchased at very low costs. More and more shopping stores these days are charging for plastic bags in an effort to reduce waste and pollution. By carrying your own Eco-Friendly shopping bags with you, you can avoid paying for disposable bags while using them to carry other personal items such as books, gym gear, water bottles, or wallets.

Made From Natural Materials

Earth friendly shopping bags can come in many different styles, colour, sizes, and fabrics. Some reusable tote bags may not be made from eco-friendly materials, so make sure you’re buying one that is biodegradable and can be recycled.

Some Eco-Friendly shopping bags are made from cotton, canvas, or mesh, while others may be made from new eco-friendly types of plastic. These plastics are recyclable and strong enough to be used over and over for quite some time. These plastic Eco-Friendly bags can be made from 100% polypropylene, 100% polyethylene, or 100% post consumer PET recycled water bottles.

Used As a Promotional Product

Many companies give these Eco-Friendly shopping bags away as a marketing tool. They are able to show that their company cares about the environment while having their label displayed like a mini billboard on the side of a bag their customers are walking around with. Some of these bags can be quite fashionable and may come in the form of a shoulder bag or backpack. Many people will reuse these often, especially when the logo is from a popular high end store.

Earth friendly shopping bags are made to be inexpensive, yet durable. They offer an eco-friendly alternative to the drastically wasteful, disposable plastic and paper bags. With the increasing reduction of natural assets on our planet, taking every possible step we can to reduce waste will prevent further pollution and contamination to our world.