Hello and happy new month! I have to say, I think July is my second favorite month after June, which I have an affinity for because it is the month I was born!
I know I have been slacking on my daily posts—I apologize. I have a lot of catching up to do after the Holiday and I am up to my ears in information about composters. I will have a really good blog post for you about composting soon; think of it as business composting 101, per se, but I have not finished my research quite yet so I don’t want to jump the gun…
Speaking of guns, I got to fire my first “riffle” this past weekend; granted I fired it at a target that I apparently did not even come close to, it was still fun, although the “kick back” was almost enough to kill me. So that’s how I spent my Holiday—in a farm in the middle of nowhere, driving tractors and shooting guns. Well, only one gun.
Okay wow really off target, Chandler (no pun intended). I am beginning to have way too much fun with this blog.
Let’s recap: Work on recycling PET thermoforms is moving at the pace that the Committee I am co-leading is moving; that is, slowly. If it helps put the pace of work in perspective, I sent out my notes from the last Committee meeting to my co-lead who forwarded them to legal four weeks ago; we still have not heard back from legal…
I will readdress these issues in a week or two; in the meantime, I am focusing on Dordan’s action plan for its goal of achieving zero-waste. In doing so I am now completely restructuring our website to house these new sustainability efforts. Once I get the website changes finalized and reach out to different publishers who may be interested in covering our sustainability story, I will aggressively design our action plan; I assume this will be way more difficult than I am anticipating as we have several hard-to-place materials, like the corrugated tubs inside the rolls of plastic we buy…
Also, for all those creative folk out there, we are brainstorming on a brand for our new sustainability efforts. As discussed in a previous post, most of my work on sustainability thus far has been from a macro- level. What I mean by this is I was focusing on the sustainability of different packaging materials
in general, waste management of packaging materials
in general, plastics’ reputation
in general, etc. (think my rebuttal to The NYT’s The Haggler:
http://plasticsnews.com/headlines2.html?id=17268&q=chandler+slavin). Now that we are actively pursuing our own intitaives, we need to brand said efforts. A lot of companies out there have their own “green team” or what not, which overseas all the sustainability works. We need some kind of green team, too. Well, we don’t need the team; we just need the brand. Get it? Again, our new sustainability initiatives are social and environmental: social insofar as I will be doing grassroots education about recycling with schools and we will be donating the food from our Victory Garden to local charities and events; and environmental insofar as we are working towards zero-waste and trying to recycle thermoforms. If anyone comes up with a brilliant idea you will win a fabulous prize, like oh I don’t know…research about recycling! Fun fun!
OKKKKKKK and for the meat of today’s post: I am happy to report that the Sustainable Packaging Coalition, in partner with Metaphore, just created an awesome new website, which discusses the life cycle of paper. Check it out:
http://www.thepaperlifecycle.org/.
I really like this website because it is pretty and brings to light a lot of issues about sourcing paper that people don’t often recognize such as deforestation, exports, illegal logging, etc. Again, kudos to all those involved!
Also, I was really tickled pink with today’s Chicago Tribune article titled, “Green Choices.” Unlike most coverage of “sustainability,” author Monica Eng did a splendid job highlighting the pros and cons of different materials and situations. No reductionstic stances here! Check it out:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/health/ct-met-eco-questions-20100706,0,3618266.story.
I gotta find this Monica…I am a big fan!
That’s all for today my wonderful packaging and sustainability friends. Again, I apologize for the “light” content of today’s and the previous days’ post. I promise I will bring the bull back; in the meantime, go packaging!
Tootles!