Backyard Offices : Hip, Hot & Sustainable Design

Garden office by IN.IT. Studios. I might never leave work if I had this in my backyard!

In 2050, will most professionals work remotely from their homes?
We seem to be moving in that direction. I am jumping on the early adopter band-wagon and thinking about moving my office to my backyard. There seem to be so many advantages...

• Instead of commuting to work, you stay at home and save both gas and time.
 (It's nice to save money, and it's nice to have more time. And it's nice to know that you aren't polluting while commuting. It's a win-win-win.)

•Working from home offers more than a few perks.
(For me, this means my favorite cup of tea, the perfect radio station, and doggie-walks at lunch. Pulling left-overs right from the fridge instead of packing or buying a snack at work is always nice, too.) 

On the flip-side, welcoming clients into your personal living space for creative pow-wow sessions is not always ideal. And sometimes people find it difficult to disconnect from work, and to focus on family time.
(My office calls to me at all hours of the day, because I love my work.) 

A backyard office seems to be the perfect solution. It would allow you the benefits of being at home, and it would also help keep those home-work boundaries a little more rigid. It wouldn't be a stretch to run something this size on solar power, so you could even be absolutely sustainable in your space from 9-5.

I am drooling over some of these lovely out-in-the-back solutions that would allow me to really close the door at night. They would also look awesome from my living room window. This means that I could still enjoy the view while spending quality time where I belong: at home.

 Ecospace Studios designs these work pods, along with other equally gorgeous
backyard structures. Goodbye fence, hello ultra-cool office!

Another example of Ecospace Studios architectural design

And for my teeny-tiny backyard space, this office on
castors might be a better match! 

Green Business Cards by Moo !

A small selection of ready-made designs by the fabulous artists who sell on MOO  /  Credit: Moo Print

If you haven't seen MOO before, then you are missing out on one of the best collections of cute and trendy graphics anywhere. period. 

This is the perfect stop for anyone who wants amazing, but doesn't have the budget for custom branding or embossed and die-cut. At MOO, you can pick out one design per business card, and make a huge statement with variety and a noteworthy collection. (Yes!) If you order 50 cards all 50 can be unique, and the price for printing doesn't change. It's a great way to try out a few different ideas or techniques on your cards for an amazing price.

It turns out that MOO has a wonderful business card option called MOO GREEN, I am not sure how I missed this addition to their collection, but I did. The last time I visited their site this wasn't an option, and now that it is I will be frequenting their site on a regular basis.

Their cards are totally chlorine free and 100% recycled with  Post Consumer Waste paper. Tell your friends, this is an amazing day. (I hadn't been to the MOO site in a few years, so I know I am on the caboose end of this news.) I'm just so excited about it, because it means I can shop at MOO again. Their print quality is amazing, the cards are quirky, and the off-sizes are great conversation starters. I am smiling all over.

Credit: Moo Print

How to Offset Carbon

So your office is sort of green- you use the right printers, buy 100% recycled paper, but you would like to offset your carbon emissions that you produce by getting to work in a car, or maybe your business is an energy guzzler and want to reduce carbon through carbon credits. Here's a basic overview of what it means to purchase carbon credits. Stay tuned for the next post on where to purchase, and how much they cost.

What is a carbon credit ? What does it mean to offset carbon ?

When people reduce their environmental footprint by buying carbon credits, they may not be actually decreasing their own wastes and carbon footprint at their immediate location. What they are doing is putting money into clean, responsible, and sustainable carbon reduction somewhere on the planet, (and perhaps not really changing the way that they do business at all. ) Now, I am all for carbon reduction, and I am a firm believer in the carbon credits industry as long as it is run responsibly.

If you think about carbon reduction at the individual level or business level, putting money into a sustainable project in another country might seem like an easy way to make your company look greener. If you, however, start to think of the earth as one entity, interconnected and dependant - then purchasing carbon reduction credits in South America does affect the overall state of the planet and, indeed, the less carbon we produce as a UNIT the better off we all are.

When a company offsets their carbon, what they are doing is making a reduction elsewhere, in order to bring their polluting practices down closer to neutral.

Carbon Reduction versus Carbon Offsetting: hypothetical situation 

(Let's substitute "number of trash bags" for "tonnes of carbon dioxide", and pretend that the number of bags of trash on the planet could affect our climate.)


If I, for example, make 100 bags of trash per week, and I want to reduce them, then I could look at my own spending and purchasing and examine my lifestyle to reduce my waste. I may recycle to become more sustainable, and in this way I reduce my weekly trash bag footprint.
(Reduction) Great. I am directly affecting how much trash bag waste I produce - in my own home or business.

If I then, realize, that even after doing my very best to reduce my trash bag footprint that I am still producing 20 trash bags a week, and I want to go "trashbag neutral."

I don't want to be responsible for changing the climate with my trash bags, but I can't exist (or keep my lifestyle) without have some trash bag emissions.

I can then pay to offset my trash bags. I can find a company, for example, that has a high production of trash bag waste. Every week they produce thousands of bags. I can pay them to change over their machines, and because of the machine I purchased, they now make 400 trash bags a week less. I have "gone trash bag neutral."

I have offset 400, and I only produce 20 - so my own trash bag waste is actually non-existant. (Not really, but the math works out that way if you add it all up, globally.)

While to some, this type of offsetting seems like "not really going neutral" - it is a great way to make an industry of a "step in the right direction." Carbon offsetting all of a sudden becomes "chargeable", and we all know that it's the money-green and not the planet-green that makes the world turn. Carbon offsetting is a unique marriage of the two worlds.

While the first company is still producing 20 bags of trash - they have also made a drastic reduction elsewhere, and if we begin to think of the earth as a globally connected entity with one atmosphere and one climate, this sort of offsetting begins to make sense. It's not so much about the "individual business" and the change that they have made, it's more about the "greater good" and the overall change.

Who can argue with a motivating factor like that ?

Top Six Reasons to Print with Soy Based Ink

Soy based inks have garnered a lot of attention lately, and with due reason.
The printing industry has long been motored on petroleum-based inks, and with the move towards soy and vegetable based alternatives at an all time high, I decided a list of benefits was in order.
What are the Benefits of Soy Based Ink for Printing ? We have listed out top 6...

It's Soy ! 
I am usually not  a fan of accentuating the obvious, but basing an ink on soy is so much better for the environment than basing it on petroleum, that I could't resist.

Colour
Soy based inks are brighter than standard offset inks. More vibrancy, more pop, who would complain ?

Recycling 
When papers are recycled they have togo through a process called "de-inking." Soy inks respond better to the de-inking process than traditional inks, resulting in less paper fibre damage. The end result of this is a brighter, whiter recycled paper, making the entire process quicker, and greener.

Longevity
Contrary to their ease in de-inking, soy based inks do not rub off of papers as easily as traditional inks (especially on newsprint.)

Low in Volatile Organic Compounds
Soy based inks are naturally low in VOCs, and thus give off less harmful, nasty chemicals. Using soy inks reduces pollution, and

Renewable Resource
Soy is a renewable resource - petroleum is not.

Greenwashing - BIC wins our Unethical Marketing Award of the Month

Who hasn't heard of BIC ? The company that brought us the disposable pens and razors.... you know, the clear ones with with blue lid that have long been a staple in our North American homes... That's right, we all know who they are. Unfortunately, their brand is so established that even with very irresponsible claims on their packaging, we aren't all aware of what they are doing.

With consumers deciding to purchase environmentally friendly products in unprecedented numbers, companies that simply don't measure up to consumer demands for smarter solutions are simply not earning consumer loyalty (translation: consumer dollars.) While more consumers are looking for environmentally responsible products, like refillable pens, many companies are feeling the pressure to make definite changes in the way that they do business.

Some companies rise to the occasion, while others (ahem - like BIC) decide to take the low-road and create elaborate marketing campaigns that look very "caring and green" without significantly changing the way that they do business. Instead of offering real solutions to non-biodegradable disposable razors and pens, and producing products that really walk the walk, they instead decided to fake the talk with fancy green packaging. Their claims that are, at best, deceptive.

"Made with 62% Pre-Consumer Recycled Plastic."

Any time you see pre-consumer waste claims on any packaging, your guard should go up. Using pre-consumer plastic is not really recycling at all. Scrap raw materials (left over cuts from other industrial processes) have always been used to make other things... this is frugal use of costly materials, not recycling in the traditional sense of the word. Pre-consumer recyclables have never been used in any product. They have never been purchased, and never discarded.  Instead of pre-consumer look for post-consumer.  Post consumer waste is, as it sounds, used after its first round of use. Post-consumer makes use of USED materials; materials that have been placed in the blue-box and picked up for recycling.

While I love the idea of eco-friendly pens, BIC has totally missed the mark with their ecolutions stationary line. Something with 100% recycled materials would work for me- something with refillable ink barrels and a perhaps a new type of ink that has no petroleum by-products. Something to that tune would warrant a "eco-solution" label like eco-lutions.

Their current campaign reeks of greenwashing (a type of unethical advertising campaign that attempts to convince consumers that the company is green and good, when they are not.)

For all of the above, BIC wins my greenwashing wah-wah award of the month - their "ecolutions" line wins an honourable mention for it's well designed and creatively worded eco-logo, and their package claims would entice any earth-conscious consumer to pick it up to purchase it, until reading the fine print and thinking critically about what they are really offering.

What is a V.O.C. ? (Volatile Organic Compounds and the Printing Industry)

These days, it's fairly easy to source a printer who promotes recycled, post-consumer-waste papers. I have often curbed my guilt about sending off thousands upon thousands of copies to the printers because the paper was, afterall, recycled.  Lately, however, I have decided to take another small step towards full-sustainability and begin to probe my printers for answers on their ink choices.

Conventional offset prints are created with petroleum-based inks. These inks contain a plethora of heavy metals and they emit Volatile Organic Compounds into the environment A volatile organic compound (VOC) is a carbon-based chemical compound that, under normal conditions, evaporates at room temperature. You can literally smell this process at work when you pump gasoline, and when your oil-based paint is drying. These compounds are a health and environmental concern - not only are they harmful pollutants to our ground water and soil, but they can also cause cancer and birth defects.

Employees at printing presses often complain of dizziness, headaches, and respiratory problems directly related to the raw materials used in the printing process. The great news is that there are better, safer alternatives to printing with conventional oil/petroleum based inks. Soy and vegetable based inks have lower VOC emissions and the quality is equally as crisp as traditional CMYK printing. Ask your printer if they offer low VOC printing, and if they don't, there are many other printers out there that do !

Eco-font cuts ink down by up to 25%

Eco font is, quite literally, a font that cuts ink usage down by 20 - 25%. It was created by SPRANQ creative communications, a design agency based in Utrecht.
The font has holes in it, and reduces the amount of ink needed to print the basic sans serif letters.

When I first saw eco font my first impression was that I would probably save even more ink and have a better looking typeface by using a hairline font such as Helvetica thin. This is true if we are talking about a display size printout, but we all know how difficult thin-and-skinny-sans-serif fonts are to read at smaller sizes. The lines become so thin that they are hard to see.

The beauty of eco font is that when it's printed between 8 and 11 pt. size the holes are not noticeable. The font passes as a regular type face, and saves expensive toner along the way. Of course when it's blown up to a display size the circles become noticeable, but that's where the skinny-sans saves the day.
Download eco font for free from dafont.com.

Ecosia Search Engine Saves the Rainforest

What is Ecosia ?

We just found out about Ecosia, one of the coolest environmental initiatives that we have read about in awhile. Ecosia is a search engine, and like Webcrawler, Yahoo, Google and Bing before it, Ecosia offers a list of sites based on your searched keywords. (Nothing new here yet, but keep reading.)

Ecosia is our new favorite favorite. Its uniqueness is that 80% of its advertising revenue is donated directly to rainforest programs - eighty percent ! They have partnered with Yahoo, Bing and the WWF to protect rainforest in Juruena National Park in the Amazon region of Brazil.
(By WWF we mean the World Wide Fund for Nature kind, not the Hulk Hogan kind. )

Considering that the industry leader Google ranked 34 on the Fortune 500 list of most profitable companies, there’s a lot of possible advertising dollars to be scooped up by Ecosia and put into saving the earth’s oxygen powerhouse. What a breath of fresh air !

Some people will roll their eyes at the fact that Ecosia is partnered with Yahoo and Bing. In Februrary , 2010, Wired ran an article about the two companies search-swapping in an attempt to gain more market share.
It may seem like a cheap-green washing attempt at gaining a slice of the ad-revenue-search-engine pie. And it might be just that. These companies must have been looking for some solution to Google world domination.

Enter Ecosia...

...a small, unknown company from Germany. A company willing to give 80% of their revenue away for the greener good. (WWGD? What would Google Do? Keep Reading - they do more than you would think.)

It only makes sense that Ecosia jump into bed with the larger guys. Bing and Yahoo give them search results, and advertiser's links. Ecosia works like a portal into Bing or Yahoo, and sends back results from both. So, why use Ecosia ? How does it work ? How does Ecosia save the rainforest ?

If you look at their site, they have it all broken down for us. The sponsored links are pay per click links. (This is the same as all the major search engines.) If you click on a sponsored link, the owner of that "advertisement" link pays the search engine a certain amount of money for every person that lands on their site.
Even though most people don’t click on sponsored links when they are searching, some people do. Ecosia averages about 0.13 Euro cents per search. Ecosia then uses 80% of those profits and puts it towards the WWF’s initiative to protect precious rainforest area and ensure that it is not cut down.

How much rainforest is saved each time you search on Ecosia ?
Roughly 2 square meters with every search.
YES YOU READ THAT RIGHT ! 2 SQUARE METERS SAVED PER SEARCH !

Simple. Amazing. We feel good. They feel good. We love it.

What we love even more is that as more people jump on the Ecosia bandwagon, the more pressure will be put on Google (and the Bing and Yahoo companies themselves) to go even greener. They are already doing some great green things over at Google. Google has been a leader in the eco-friendly initiative and they are not lagging behind.

You, me, your friends and their friends (aka the general public) have a great opportunity here to passively do our part. In the case of the search engine green-off... the simple act of conducting your internet searches elsewhere can not only save green areas, but it could also force larger companies into doing even more for the planet.

If it’s "green" that will move searchers from one search engine to another, and eco-green that ultimately means money-green, then the great strides that have been made in the past few years in public awareness are finally paying off. Big time.

It's amazing to see large companies respond to public demand for change.

I have a feeling that we will be seeing much more of these "who's leaner and greener" campaigns. At the end of the day, this type of positive pressure to leave a size 2 carbon footprint can only have a positive outcome overall.

LET THE GREEN WARS BEGIN!