I had pizza the other day from Federal Hill Pizza in Warren,RI and the pizza came in a GreenBox.  I wasn't familiar with the GreenBox but I have to say after experiecing it firsthand its a useful and innovative product.

The GreenBox looks like a normal pizza box however the top of the box is perforated on the inside and splits into four sections that serve as plates.  The remaining bottom part of the box also folds up into a smaller profile box for storing leftovers.

Conscious Box is a new concept in the green marketplace.  Consumers subscribe and each month receive a box of eco-friendly and natural products.  The products have all been carefully screened and reviewed by the staff at Conscious Box before being included.  Companies cannot buy their way into having their products included in the box.

Why is this an interesting idea?  Well I think most consumers who are looking for green or more eco-friendly products will appreciate being able to try products before committing to buy a larger size version. 

With green products there is constant change in the marketplace with new products popping up and other ones failing.  The Conscious Box allows a consumer to try a number of products in small quantities before buying them at the store. 

Lets face it eco-friendly products are expensive and some of them don't work out as we had hoped.  Also many green consumers are highly concerned about waste if a product doesn't work out or isn't something they like.  Conscious Box allows the consumer to try products.

Another interesting feature of the Conscious Box is its packaging.  The makers of Conscious Box placed a high level of importance on making the box and the shipping container as green as possible.  They worked with Salazar Packaging in Chicago to develop the ideal packaging solution for their product. 

Dennis Salazar, president of Salazar Packaging and a SISG contributor said the box and shipper are made from 100% recycled corrugated content produced by wind power.  He told SISG the Conscious Box team was adamant about using the greenest possible packaging.

eBay Green Team Develops New Packaging!

eBay's Green Team recently announced a new pilot program promoting the use of a specially designed reusable shipping box called the eBay Box.

The new boxes are made from 100% recycled FSC-certified corrugated cardboard according to the company.  They were made available to participants at eBay On Location in San Jose and a limited number of users who had signed up to be part of their Green Team and opted to participate in the pilot.

eBay is offering incentives to sellers and buyers to encourage use of the new eBay Box. 

Its not entirely clear how eBay members who signed up to be part of the Green Team received notification to participate in the pilot program.  I've been an eBay member since 1998 and signed up with the Green Team a while back and haven't received any notification regarding the program.

Encouraging the reuse of shipping materials is without question a positive thing and if this new colorful box helps some eBay users recognize the importance of reusing materials then I am all for it. 

As a seller myself for many years I've been reusing shipping materials for as long as I can remember.  Also having bought a fair number of things on eBay over the years I can say many eBay members actively reuse shipping and packing materials.

Holiday Shopping

I've recently been given the opportunity to get a closer look at the world of kids toys and shopping for children's holiday gifts. One thing that I can not stop thinking about is the how long the toys will last, considering the ever-changing attention span and their ever-evolving interests or phases.

Prime example, two weeks prior to Thanksgiving was the first time my Niece was coming to sleep at our house, because my Mother was so excited, we decided to throw a little party for her to introduce her to the neighborhood. People brought some gifts, and I gave her a Minnie Mouse, which at the time she never let out of her site. Then Thanksgiving came and she was coming back for another weekend, and this time we decided to get her a little Princess castle/tent thing so that she could sleep in it. Minnie was now out of the picture, never even taken out of the overnight bag. Instead my Niece spent every minute running back and forth from the castle, pretending to be a princess, having me join her, etc. Two weeks later, another few days at Grandma's - Minnie didn't even make it into the car! and while the castle was still at my house, my Niece had lost complete interest in that, as well.

This leads me to the actual shopping experience. My Mother and I spent hours, walking around Toys R Us, trying to decide what would be fun to get for the real holiday gifts. Aisles and aisles of plastic, stuffed animals, crayons, markers, puzzles, baby dolls, any thing that can spark a world of imagination in the mind of a 3-year-old.

There has to be a better solution for the two second time-span of these toys. What are we supposed to do with the castle now? Just throw it away? We spent the gas to get to the store, the money to buy the thing, the paper to wrap it up nice, and the pieces and parts I'm sure are not recyclable. Maybe instead of toy-buying-stores, there should just be toy-renting-stores, so these items can be brought back once the child has entered into a new phase. Or maybe an alternative where one Mother, whose child is now tired of coloring, can trade with the Mother whose child just realized how exciting coloring is. Or maybe we should just re-evaluate the value of the things we consider to be gifts - is a lifeless, plastic doll whose eyes never close really the only way a little girl will learn Mother-role-playing skills? Of course this is an excellent opportunity to teach the child about donating to other kids in need, but is this what they need? What happens when THEY no longer use them?

Then we get to the packaging of the items. While many companies have gone to immense strides to make sure their packaging is as efficient as possible, many still missed the boat. One thing that should be taken into account is the way the consumer will be able to wrap the item when it is to be given as a gift. Aesthetics are a big thing when wrapping a gift and an octagonal box with a big open gap at one end is just asking for a disaster and too many attempts at wrapping, aka waste of paper with the attempts. Then the gift is opened and the successful paper is put right into the trash.

Money is tight in Lithuania. The country has been adjusting to life under harsh austerity measures since Lehman Brothers collapsed. So when the textile artist Jolanta Šmidtienė was asked to design a public Christmas decoration for the town hall square in the city of Kaunas, she challenged herself to create something cheap.

It’s not an energy neutral display, of course. The lights use electricity. But Šmidtienė’s work is a nice reminder that there often are useful--or at least artistic--ways of repurposing plastic trash. We’ll assume the top halves of the bottles were recycled.Her solution? A Christmas tree made out of 32,000 old plastic Sprite bottles. She cut the bottles in half and strapped the bottoms together with zip ties to make those spiky green hemispheres. Then she hung those hemispheres on a roughly 40-foot scaffold, around a real tree. At night, the orbs are lit from inside with 40,000 lights. It’s a dramatic scene.

UPS' Helps OAR with Sustainable Touring

Read about some of their other efforts below:

Keep Your Head Up - Everything Happens for a Reason

While this post has little to do with Sustainability - in terms of the environment - it does, in a way, have to do with sustaining one's own state of mind and keeping your head up when you feel as though you have lost everything. I meant to post this months ago, but life's distractions got in the way. (Just to note, I do not know the ladies in the picture, it is just to represent great friends) I wrote the story below and sent it to a few friends of mine, after this eye opening moment graced me with its presence. 

August 31, 2011:

I've been sitting at Starbucks all day because I don't have internet and am trying to look for jobs and was getting all sad and depressed about the possibility of not finding one. And then a nice homeless man came in and sat next to me and asked if I would help him plug his cell phone in, so I did and have been talking to him since.  He was talking about how he became homeless when his house caught fire last year and the money he had in his account was frozen until he had a home again and the bank trusted him... long story... ANYWAY... he was also talking about how many people have been screwing him over and using him and how he is having to learn how to trust people again and learning who his real friends are and this is the first time in a long time that he has been able to just sit and truly talk to someone and that I've been more of a friend to him in the past 2 hours then most of the people he thought were his friends this whole year of his struggles. And that he finally was able to get his money and filled out an application for a home that he will be able to move himself and his family into tomorrow and is so thankful to be given another chance and that I was sitting here today so he could share his joy with someone and that it's rare when you can say that years from today when you look back you will remember those few people that really made you feel special and that its funny how I just reached a huge goal in my life at the same exact time that he just reached a huge goal in his and we both managed to sit next to each other on this particular day and just enjoy it...  Made me realize that you can have everything in the world, all the money, all the talent, all the material objects that you want... but if you dont have friends to share your time or stories with and laugh with or complain to and that will truly sit and just be your friend and respect/trust you then you have nothing or you could have nothing, no home, no money, no personal possession, but as long as you have do have those few friends who will look out for you then its the difference between having literally everything or literally having nothing... and sometimes thats all that matters. Tomorrow is the first of the month... and he is no longer going to have to sleep or sit on the bench that has been his home on River Street for the past year... which has now literally been labeled "Joe's bench"... is one big relief to him and he can finally relax and actually enjoy the fireworks that will be going off on friday...  Funny how life works sometimes.

I ended up returning to Starbucks the next day. Joe returned as well, sat down and said "I had a feeling I would see you again." We just continued talking as though the day before had never ended. When we said our goodbyes, he showed me the tote bag he had been carrying his few possessions in the whole year. He asked me to sign it and told me he was going to find a nice place to display it in his new home so that he will never forget me and this day. I know I will never forget him :)

On the psychological side - what was even more fascinating was seeing the faces of the other customers, as they watched me associating with this gentleman. Discomfort, confusion and shock are three words that would sum up their expressions. Then another homeless man came in, sat down in the chair on the other side of me, and started talking. He was holding a bag from the public library, which I found stereotypically fascinating, so I asked him what he had rented out for himself. He said books on hip hop, Tupac and writing. That he would love to be as great as they are, and how much he looks up to them as inspiration.

So many people are so quick to assume that those who are homeless are unapproachable, incompetent, etc. but here I had two great examples of just how human they really are. It reminds me of a great TEDtalk I saw recently, "The Year I Became Homeless"

Always remember:

Smiles cost nothing

Thank You goes a long way and

Kurt Vonnegut