Green printing tip #11: What are your green options when it comes to promotional items?

We're happy to bring you today another tip on our weekly series of green printing tips, where we bring you in collaboration with Greg Barber, an experienced eco-friendly printer.

Today Greg is talking about a part of your business that you can easily green up and benefit both your business and your customers.

What are your green options when it comes to promotional items?

Tip #11

Whether you have a trade show coming or you start thinking about the gifts you want to give your customers this year for the holidays, you might want to consider some eco-friendly options. They're creative, fun, show your customers the environment is important to you and as you'll see it can fit even a very tight budget ,and clients today are searching more than ever for green items.


Here are a couple of examples:

Eco Circles: 3" or 3.375" diameter, coaster looking , NETWORKING CARDS. Hand these out at networking parties, or trade shows, and the response is 10 times greater than traditional business cards. The next day, your circle card stands out from the 50 rectangle business cards.

We offer these at 6 up, on each print run.You can have 1 name or 6 names, or 3 names at 2 up, etc. We offer our entire Tree Free, and 100% PCW covers to you. We can quote 1 color up to 4 color for 1 side or both sides.

The Eco Circles are my most popular item bought as a promotional item. They create the most awareness and they are inexpensive, compared to flyers and brochures.

Calenders: Printed on 100% Post-Consumer Recycled Paper. Many sizes available.

Corn Starch Bracelets: We have bracelets that are made from Corn Starch and there are 3 bracelets to a set. You wear all 3 bracelets. The charm is engraved-Go Green. For 1000 sets, you can have your own company initials engraved. This is an inexpensive gift to give @ $3.75 per set.
The corn starch bracelets, with the Go Green charm are my most popular gift.

Bookmarks: The standard size is 2 x 8 inches, printed on 100% recycled cover. 4 color/2 sides.

Environments Books: "WHO I AM", an interactive coloring book and "HOW THE LAND OF LITTER BECAME THE KINGDOM OF CLEAN", an educational, kids book are fun promotional items. We reserved the inside covers for your company misson statement or ad. These items are sold for under $5.00 each without the ads on the inside covers.

As you can see, price wise, the Eco Circles, coloring books and bracelets are all under $5 when you buy 100 at a time. If you buy over 1000 of them, the price is low.

If you would like to receive quotes on any of these items, please email greg@ecofriendlyprinter.com.

And if you have any further questions following our tips, or you have a specific question you want us to address, please email us to info@ecolibris.net .

Links to the last three green printing tips:

Green Printing Tip #10 - Are you buying environmentally sound business cards?

Green Printing Tip #9 - What to look for when selecting a green printing vendor?

Green Printing Tip #8 - Does it cost more to print my book on recycled paper?

You can find links to all the tips we published so far on our green printing tips page, which is part of our green printing tools & resources.

You can also find further valuable information on Greg Barber Company's website - http://www.ecofriendlyprinter.com.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: promoting green printing

Green book review (and giveaway!): The Complete Idiot's Guide to Renewable Energy for Your Home

Our weekly green book review has moved this week to Tuesday because of technical problems yesterday. Still, it was worth waiting because we have a great book dealing with one of the hottest issues on the green agenda - renewable energy for homes.

Our book today is:

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Renewable Energy for Your Home

Author: Harvey Bryan and Brita Belli

Harvey Bryan has been involved in sustainability and renewable design concerns for some 30 years. He has previously taught at MIT and Harvard and is currently a full professor at Arizona State University. He was on the Board of Directors of the Arizona Chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council and is certified in both BREEAM (a rating system used in Europe and Canada), as well as LEED. He is currently serving on the Board of Directors on the Green Building Initiative.

Brita Belli is the editor of E / The Environmental Magazine, the largest independent magazine dedicated to green issues.

Publisher: Alpha (a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.)

Published on: July 2009

What this book is about? (from the publisher's website)
An essential how-to on powering your home with sun, wind, water, and more.
For readers wanting to save money—and the planet—by using alternative energy, this book provides everything they need to know. The five basic sources are fully covered: sun, wind, water, earth, and bio.

The benefits, what is needed, and whether it will work for a particular home are all carefully laid out in this comprehensive overview:
• Solar energy for home heating, water heating, and electricity
• Wind power, hydrogen, and micro hydro power
• Heat pumps—air, geothermal, and water source
• Heating with wood and going bio

What we think about it?
Everyone knows renewable energy is good in general and for your home specifically and that it's good for the environment and for your wallet. But what's next? what do you do if you actually decided to move forward and green up your existing or new home with renewable energy devices? That's where this book becomes handy.

There's so much information available about solar, wind, hydropower and other alternative energy sources that you can very easily find yourself more confused and less confident in what you actually need to do. "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Renewable Energy for Your Home" is trying to make some order in this flood of information and to provide you a guidance that covers all the relevant aspects of choosing and using renewable energy systems at home.

And it does a pretty good job. It gives clear explanations on the options, the benefits, compare between options and even helps you to understand ratings of systems such as solar water heating systems.

The book includes updated information on one of the important issues involved in purchasing a renewable energy system - the benefits you can - tax credits, rebates, etc. There's also information divided to areas as the benefits in Florida are not similar to the ones in the Midwest.

Another important chapter I was glad to see in this book is "Size Matters" that reminds us that one of the sources of the energy problem we have is not only the current sources of energy but the size of the houses, which increased in 140% in the last 4 decades (2,349 square feet in average in the US - 2004 figures).

Bottom line: If you're thinking about getting a renewable energy system for your home, get this book! It may be a little too heavy for the beach but if you find a cool spot take it with you.

GIVEAWAY ALERT!!

We're giving away our review copy of the book, courtesy of the book's publicist, and of course a tree will be planted for the copy!

How you can win? Please add a comment below with an answer the following question: What renewable energy system you would like to have at home? Submissions are accepted until Tuesday, August 25, 12PM EST. The winner will be announced the following day.

If you're looking for other interesting green-themed books, you are invited to check out our green books page on Eco-Libris website's green resources section.

More relevant links:

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Green Building and Remodeling

Green Building & Remodeling for Dummies

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: plant a tree for every book you read!