Stop Junk Mail. Be Eco Friendly. Do Good. The GreenDimes Blog

ChicoBags!

Happy Tuesday.

On Friday I wrote about our great re-usable bags and all of the hot new colors you can now snag them in. A GreenDimes reader wrote in with a great question about ChicoBags, so I thought I would share. Instead of answering the question myself, I thought it better to ask the ChicoBag people themselves. Here you go:

Question to GreenDimes customer service: ‘The ChicoBag site says they are made out of nylon. Isn’t nylon a plastic/ synthetic substance? How is this good for the environment?’

Answer from ChicoBag: ‘ChicoBag is on a mission to help humanity kick the single use bag habit. One of the most challenging aspects of kicking this habit is remembering to bring a bag with you at all times. The ChicoBag fits into a pocket, providing for far fewer single use bags being consumed. (Five ChicoBags per person per year would be better than the average Americans consumption of 500-700 disposable bags per person per year!) Once ChicoBags are expired, we request that they are sent back to us for our reuse program. A variety of products will be created with expired ChicoBags.

ChicoBags are not the "be all and end all" answer to the packaging problem in our society. However, developing reuse habits and psychology provide for people being more conscious of a variety of packaging and disposal issues. This consciousness will lead to lessening the impact we all have on the Earth...’

I hope this is helpful, I certainly thought it was. Thanks for writing to us, and our thanks to ChicoBag for weighing in. We love your bags and all of the great habits they are perpetuating…

Kendra

http://www.greendimes.com

GreenDimes Bags in Every Color!

Check this out!

If you haven't already spent a few minutes looking through the new products in the GreenDimes' store, you're missing out big time.

The t-shirts are awesome (and soft!) and we just made 10 new colors of the bag available. So when you show up at the farmers' market next weekend, you can have the coolest bag on the block. Hands down.

I just ordered the black (if you know me, you know that I am very loyal to the color) and purple, just for fun. The bags come in little pouches that you can easily slip into your purse, the dashboard of your car or even the pocket of your favorite jacket.

They also come with a little carabiner clip- so if you see one of our infamous engineers, *Gabe, out and about, take notice that he *always* has a GreenDimes re-usable bag on his belt-loop. You won't catch him in an unfavorable-plastic-bag-carrying situation ever again!

Get yours today. And give them as a gift... in as many colors as you wish. Because now you can.

Take good care and have a great weekend...

Kendra

www.greendimes.com/store.html

*Name changed because he was too busy engineering this morning for me to make sure I had his permission to use his real name

Off The List- Episode 1

For those of you who enjoyed the introduction to 'Off The List' that I posted last week, here is the eagerly anticipated first episode. Click here to check it out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=794wbpg7A3Y

Enjoy!

Kendra

www.greendimes.com

"Off The List"

I came across the most brilliant project- and one I think you will all appreciate very much. A fan of the site, jonnyHal, e-mailed to let us know that he was keeping a video diary of his quest to get off of the solicitation lists that keep catalogs continuously pouring into his mailbox.

Here is what he wrote (Disclaimer- I have asked for and obtained his permission to post this):

BACKGROUND:

On June 6th, trash day, something inside me snapped.

I was tossing the assorted glossy brochures, magazines, sales come-on and catalogs we received that week into the appropriate bin at the curb.

Pottery Barn.  J Crew.  Crate & Barrel.  Victoria's Secret.  Into the dumper.

Now I know what you're thinking -- why would he toss the Victoria's Secret catalog?

The point being on June 7th, I began a telephone campaign to get off as many mailing lists as possible -- part of a gung-ho effort to reduce our ecological footprint or some crap like that. In my extensive research - 2 questions on Google - I came across this staggering fact:

The average American receives about 50 pounds of unwanted junk mail each year.

And that's just from West Elm.

Catalog retailers.  Banks.  Magazines Publishers.  Credit Card companies.

All buying, selling and trading names -- just yours and mine, so don't worry- making money by sending us stuff that we didn¹t ask for, don't need and can't afford.

So I called them and asked to be taken off their lists. Bad idea.

Incompetence was met by inertia. But enough about me.

Fortunately, I did have the foresight to record many of my fascinating encounters with the machine/human hybrid that now qualifies as telephone customer support.

But rest easy, these calls were recorded purely for quality-assurance purposes. They are in no way an attempt to poke cheap fun at or gain back a measure of control from the faceless behemoths who control our very existence on this planet.

The project is called "Off The List".

To view the trailer, go to:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vilQTe9UErc

Getting off a list.  How hard can it be?”

-jonnyHal

Make sure you check back every week- we are going to update the blog with his episodes as we get them!

Kendra

www.greendimes.com

GreenDimes maps it out

G’day and welcome to post-vacation reality…

Things are crazy here at GreenDimes as we work away and catch up from our long weekend (and by long, I mean not long enough!). Anyway, I have a really cool thing for you all to check out on our site. Thanks to Robert (engineering), we have a *REALLY* cool (“easy, breezy and beautiful”- description also courtesy of engineering) MAP showing what states people are signing the petition from.

As a transplant, I am psyched to see California in the lead. As a native Coloradan, I am going to have to encourage more signing… (Although not to discourage my family from engaging in all things GreenDimes- thanks for signing Mom, Dad, Aunt Sue, neighbor John, etc…)

So let’s see it! We know everyone is proud of their state for something, right? Why not claim the GreenDimes title as the state to have the most people out there stopping junk mail?!?!

Kendra

www.greendimes.com