As owners of small businesses, you can preserve our environment by using recycled materials in your production. From here, you can use different advertising tools to market your product’s use of eco-friendly materials.

In advertising your eco-friendly products, you can use hang tags made from recycled materials. These provide ample space for your company’s slogan and advocacy. You can also use the hang tags in awareness campaign by placing simple facts about how recycling can produce high-quality goods using less resources.

If you’re planning to order hang tags from a printing company, look for the SoySeal, SFI, and PEFC logos in their products or website. These logos certifies that the printing company uses recycled paper and soy-based ink.

To help you understand more about soy-based ink and recycled papers, here’s a rundown of what they are made of and how they help preserve our environment:

Soy-based Ink Vinegar or soy inks are a form of non-food soy that is a healthier, safer and friendlier alternative to regular or petroleum-based ink. These type of ink is produced using 0.5% of the total energy required to create regular ink. Soy inks also have a very low level of VOC (volatile organic compounds) that helps reduce air pollution by minimizing toxic emissions.

Recycled Paper Using recycled papers for your products let you save more energy and produce a lesser amount of air pollution. Though recycled papers are made using chemicals and bleaches, these are still significantly lower than creating paper from wood fiber.

Once you’ve decided to use eco-friendly hang tags for your business, search for printing companies that offer full-color professional hang tags. Since there are hundreds of companies that print hang tags, narrow down your choices by searching for online reviews. These should help you determine which of these companies offer the best materials and services for their hang tags according to people. The faster you do these, the quicker you will be able to order your hang tags and reduce your production costs.

Photo: Jaguar

Under the Hood of the Jaguar C-X75
The C-X75 is a plug-in series hybrid, a bit like the Chevy Volt. But unlike the Volt, it has 4 electric motors, providing all-wheel drive, and when the battery is drained, it doesn’t get recharged by a conventional gasoline engine. Rather, it uses twin micro-turbines, each generating 70 kW by spinning at 80,000 rpm.

The C-X75 has a drag coefficient of 0.32 Cd.

Photo: Jaguar

Power and Top Speed
The four electric motors produce 145 kW (195 bhp) and 400 N·m (295 lb-ft) each, for a total power of 580 kW/780 bhp. Top speed is 330 km/h (205 mph), acceleration from 0-100 km/h (62 mph) is achieved in 3.4 seconds, and from 80-145 km/h (50-90 mph) in 2.3 seconds.

“The mid-mounted 70 kW (94 bhp) micro gas-turbines can generate a combined 140 kW (188 bhp) to charge the batteries and extend the range of the car to 900 km (560 miles)–or, when in Track mode, provide supplementary power directly to the electric motors. The four electric motors provide torque-vectored, all-wheel drive traction and grip, which Jaguar deems essential in a car that produces 1,600 N·m (1,180 lb-ft) of torque.” (source)

Photo: Jaguar

What Makes It Green (Kind of, Depending…)
All this power seems overkill, and I’d much rather see a car that looks just as good but is less powerful, lighter, and gets a longer electric range and then gets better fuel economy once the battery is drained.

But still, the Jaguar C-X75 has an electric range of 110 kilometers (68 miles). Since the average American rarely drives more than 40 miles in a day, and that number is probably lower for Europeans, this means that if this supercar was plugged in every night, it could conceivably be greener (at least when it comes to usage) than a much less powerful car like a Honda Fit or whatever.

All of this is theoretical. The C-X75 might never reach production, and if it does, it would probably stay a small-volume model. But if this design project has helped Jaguar engineers to get familiar with series hybrids and electric cars, and to develop new technologies that can push the field forward, then it’ll be worth it. I’d rather see automotive engineers work on these kinds of things than ever larger V8s like in the 1990s and early 2000s.

China has a booming air travel industry and 350 million smokers. That means a lot of lighters get confiscated at security checkpoints.

At Pudong International Airport in Shanghai, instead of trashing the lighters confiscated from departing passengers, they’re provided for free to arriving passengers. It’s a brilliantly simple way of preventing a lot of plastic from ending up in the trash (and saving people a little cash).

Here in the states some airports sell confiscated items on Ebay or donate them to the homeless, but I’ve never seen this much simpler tactic employed. Would it work with shampoo, too, or are there hygiene issues?

How convenient is it to have a giant 55 gallon bin to throw all of your recycling in to without the need to sort it?

It’s very nice indeed. I have one and love it. But that convenience might actually be destroying the U.S. recycling industry.

This one giant bin method of recycling is called single stream recycling. While this method’s widespread implementation has helped lead to dramatic increases in recycling program participation, it has also led to the rise of the recycling industry’s biggest problem.

Contamination.

Take pizza boxes, for example. Pizza boxes do sport the universal recycling symbol on the bottom, but once they’re used the grease and melted cheese from the pizza itself renders them unrecyclable. The oil causes great problems for the quality of the paper, especially the binding of the fibers.

Before the rise of single stream recycling, this contamination would only affect the other cardboard and paper in the bin. But with single stream recycling the grease has the potential to contaminate the plastics, aluminum, and other material found in the giant bin.

Food matter contamination causes a serious problem for recyclers. In the case of FutureMark Paper, which manufactures recycled paper for publications such as Every Day with Rachael Ray and Outside Magazine, was forced to shut down part of its production line after food-contaminated paper caused a bacterial bloom in its waste paper cleaning equipment.

Recycling companies don’t have the resources to take such painstaking measures in sorting out unrinsed containers or grease stained pizza boxes…but Chinese recycling companies can. In fact, China now buys 70% of the United States’ waste paper.

Some experts even claim that waste paper is our number one export, by pound, to China.

Unfortunately China’s willingness to purchase the waste paper and pay for secondary sorting provides little incentive for recycling collectors to keep cleanliness standards high. This eventually results in higher prices for recycled content products and a shortage of materials domestically.

What can you do to help?

1. Minimize food contaminants. Throw away food-contaminated paper containers (fast food wrappers, pizza boxes), wash out jars and cans and take the lids off bottles and containers before putting them in your recycling bin.

2. Ask for and buy recycled products. The most effective way to promote a green recycling economy is to grow demand for recycled goods. Generally, recycled goods are less resource-intensive to produce than their non-recycled counterparts. For example, in the case of paper, organizations such as the Environmental Defense Fund report that recycled paper takes far less water, energy and chemicals to make than paper made from wood pulp.

3. Support community recycling drives (or organize one for your favorite cause). Recyclables such as aluminum and newspaper are worth money. Many civic organizations, schools and other community groups are sponsoring collection drives for recyclable materials as fund-raisers for their organizations or for charitable causes. Whether they’re asking for Caprisun packets or old magazines, try to support these local recycling drives. They not only provide valuable fund-raising opportunities for neighborhood organizations, they also provide a cleaner supply of recyclable material to manufacturers.

The big bins arrive at doorsteps with instructions to toss everything recyclable in there together, from plastics to paper and metal. There’s no question that the change is getting dramatic results. In Northwoods, the average monthly recycling rate per person has jumped to seven pounds in the year since the bins were deployed — up from an average of less than a pound.

In Olivette, the average monthly rate jumped to 19 pounds per person from 11 pounds per person after 64-gallon bins replaced the previous 18-gallon jobs.

The large bins are pretty pricey, clocking in at about $45 each wholesale. The switch, of course, also requires additional training of waste management workers and possibly new equipment and hires, something that doesn’t come free. American consumers, never quick to catch on to recycling, have to go through a period of adjustment and re-education to make sure things get handled properly.

In St. Louis, some families have already asked to opt out of recycling, versus wanting to pay any fees associated with it. That’s understandable in a time of economic downturn, but it still needs to be pointed out that recycling provides tremendous long-term goods to many, including creating jobs, saving landfill space and slashing our expenditures of energy, water and materials. Recycling is taking a strong step to preserving long-term economic and environmental health and security, especially for our children.

Do you really want to tell your children or grandchildren that the reason they can’t visit Disney World is because sea level rise has devastated Florida, and by not doing your part in paying pennies a month to recycle you contributed to more greenhouse gases? Anyway, stepping off the soapbox…

One of the biggest complaints experts have about single-stream recycling is that it renders too much collected material of substandard quality. Broken fragments of other items lodge into containers, making recovery and processing harder.

It’s unclear whether the best approach to increasing recycling is more education, access and lower cost, or more single-stream solutions. If people could get it together we wouldn’t need to have the single-stream debate.

I personally am on my third or fourth recycling bin in three years, on account of thieves in my neighborhood. (Though I do wonder what they do with the blue bins, especially since they are heavily labeled with my address in permanent marker). Luckily they only cost me $5 a pop (though the hours of pickup are very limited) — I shudder to think if they ran more than $45. Even so, I’d replace them each time anyway, because the benefits of recycling are hard to overstate.

Read more: http://www.thedailygreen.com/green-homes/eco-friendly/recycling-bins-single-stream-460428#ixzz1VnE11BWx

[sniplet inlinead]

The Wat Pa Maha Chedi Kaew temple is about 400 miles northeast of Bangkok in the city of Khun Han close to the Cambodian border. Using Heineken bottles (green) and Chang Beer bottles (brown) the monks were able to clean up the local pollution and create a useful structure that will be a visual reminder to the scope of pollution and the potential we can make with limber minds.

Here’s how: Saw off the bottom of the light bulb screw base using a hacksaw, turning the light bulb evenly. Bulbs with a bayonet base can also be used – in this case, saw off the bottom of the base along the apparent line. Once the base has been cut, insert a thin screwdriver and break the protruding tip of the glass mount, or stem, that holds the filament (be sure to protect your eyes). Then, using a bigger screwdriver, insert it into the glass socket, and give a quick, hard tap to break off the remainder of the mount. Using a rounded file, enlarge the hole and remove the filament. Your light bulb is now empty.

To make a hanging vase, use a gimlet or hole punch to pierce a hole on either side of the light bulb base. Aluminum is very easy to pierce. With a thin piece of wire, create a hanger. Pour in a little water and place a flower in its new home.

To make a pair of salt and pepper shakers, hollow out two light bulbs. Protect the light bulb with a piece of cloth and, using a small hammer, lightly flatten the top of the screw base. This will ensure that the caps fit securely. Find two old plastic soda bottle caps and use a knife to remove the plastic disc lining the cap. Then, pierce several holes into the cap using a large nail. A circle of thick felt or wooden rings glued to the bottom of the shakers will stabilize them. Fill with salt and pepper, and then screw the caps on.

Apple already helps its customers get rid of their old Apple products responsibly through a free mail-backrecycling program.

But now the tech giant is getting in on the game of reuse, with an added benefit for consumers, according toAppleInsider, a website covering Apple news and rumors.

Apple will now pay consumers with unwanted but usable iPhones, iPads and computers – both Mac and PC – the fair market value for their device, in Apple gift cards.

To calculate the electronic device’s value, consumers will need to answer several questions about its condition: Does the battery fully charge, or has the device ever been water damaged? The estimated value of a first generation iPad in very good condition is $165.

If the device qualifies for Apple’s reuse program, the consumer can mail in the product via pre-paid shipping to receive an Apple gift card that can be used at any U.S. Apple retail store or the U.S. Apple online store.

If the product cannot be reused and does not have any monetary value, it will be recycled for free.

While Apple recommends consumers perform a complete backup and erase all data before sending in their old electronic devices, Apple’s recycling contractor will also carry out a complete data wipe on the products.

READ: How to Get Paid For Your Old Gadgets