And the winner of the People's Choice Award is:

I hope you all remember Co-op America's 2007 People's Choice Award for the Green Business of the Year.

We ran here an unofficial guide to the award, where we presented all the final 10 nominees. Last Saturday, the winner was announced in the San Francisco Green Festival:

ReusableBags.com

Congratulations to ReusableBage.com. It's a great green business and it definitely deserves the award.

Co-Op America reported in its newsletter on the winner's response to the exciting news:

"Our ongoing mission since day one has been to change the status quo of society's use-and-toss mentality by providing sound, practical ideas and products," says Vincent Cobb, founder of ReusableBags.com. "We were thrilled to be nominated the past two years, and are incredibly honored to win this year's award."

San Francisco is clearly the place to give the award to ReusableBags.com, as it is the first (and for the best of my knowledge the only) city in the US where plastic bags are banned. I hope many cities and states will follow SF's leadership and will act to finish the destructive addiction to plastic bags. ReusableBags.com is the place to see the alternatives to plastic bags and to learn how easy it can be to go green when it comes to our shopping bags.

For those of you who didn't have the chance to read the on ReusableBags.com in our guide, you can find it here.

Yours,
Raz

Eco-Libris: a great green gift for the holidays!

ReusableBags.com: 2007 People's Choice Award - part 6

Using reusable bags in the supermarket is one of my favorite green actions. It's so simple, but yet so rare.. Our nominee for today works to change the situation. Please welcome nominee no. 6 on Eco-Libris blog Unofficial Guide to Co-op America's 2007 People's Choice Award for the Green Business of the Year:

ReusableBags.com

Business description: Online store featuring a wide range of high-quality, innovative reusable shopping bags and related accessories. ReusableBags.com is also a major force providing facts and news on the global push to reduce plastic and paper bag consumption.

Located at: Chicago, IL

Operating Since: 2003

Website: http://www.reusablebags.com/

The questionnaire (thank you to Allison Kozdron from ReusableBags.com):

1. What makes your business a green business?

We handpick all the products that we carry, and focus on recycled, sustainably grown, fairly traded products and high quality products. We work constantly with our fulfillment warehouse to reduce our eco-impact in shipping and use packaging products with 60% recycled content.

2. What is your green characteristic you're most proud of?

Joining the likes of Patagonia, 1% of sales are donated to the preservation and restoration of the natural environment through our 1% For the Planet affiliation.

3. What is your biggest achievement so far?

For the last five years, we've been fighting hard to spread the word on the massive over-consumption of plastic shopping bags and have made a significant impact -- inspiring hundreds of news stories, empowering individuals with practical tools and supporting grassroots activists. We are proud to have been endorsed by An Inconvenient Truth, and recognized in mainstream publications, such as USA Today, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Vogue magazine and many others.

4. In what way do you think that you help people to take a green action and make a difference?

In addition to being a major catalyst in raising awareness on the plastic bag issue, since 2003 we’ve provided consumers with nearly 350,000 reusable bags and bottles, enabling consumers to reduce their consumption of use-and-toss items by an estimated 190 million units.

5. Who is your green hero?

ReusableBags.com was founded by Vincent Cobb, who after researching the issue, was amazed by the sheer volume of plastic bags and the growing negative impact on our environment. He was inspired by his mother, who had long used reusable shopping bags and was a practical environmentalist. She helped fashion the early prototypes on a home sewing machine for the proprietary Acme bags line, which recently won a “best overall” rating as the best reusable shopping bag by the Wall Street Journal. She still continues to use her reusable shopping bags and spread the word!

6. What's your green dream for your business?

To continue to stand out as providing attractive, high quality reusable shopping bags that consumers actually want to use, especially as more retailers begin virtually giving away cheap shopping bags (which may merely replace one “use and toss” with another!). We hope to expand our offering of bags made of truly sustainable (organic cotton, hemp) and recycled materials (such as recycled PET and recycled cotton).

The next nominee: UsedCardboardBoxes.com

And if you missed the parts of the Unofficial Guide we published so far on Eco-Libris blog, please check them out:

Introduction

Part 1 - Natural Pet Home Store

Part 2- Mountains of the Moon

Part 3 - Yoga Nine

Part 4 - Pizza Fusion

Part 5 - Green Living Now

Yours,

Raz

Eco-Libris: Plant a tree for everybook you read!