“Green” Office Supplies

Ami Voeltz Do It Green! Minnesota Parts excerpted from Going Green: A Guide to Becoming An Environmentally Friendly Business Without Going Broke, www.tub.com When buying office supplies, it is important to think about durability, energy, natural resource use, recycled content and recyclability, toxicity, biodegradability and packaging. Make a list of …

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Choose Tap H2O

Kim Bartmann Owner of Red Stag, Bryant Bowl & Barbette Restaurants I choose not to sell bottled water in my restaurants, as do many of my peers, like Barrio, Al Vento, POP!, A La Salsa, and many others. I hope you have heard this somewhere else before: everybody on earth …

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Create a Safe and Healthy Business

Tara Wesely Environmental consultants are professionals who understand the codes, laws, regulations and standards for construction, safety or health. This is somewhat of a catch-all title, as anyone who deals with “The Environment” as a profession can call themselves environmental consultants. The job of an environmental consultant might be to …

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Discover Great Printing

Ami Voeltz Do It Green! Minnesota We are all aware of the importance and power of the printed piece. We also know the power we have to make a huge impact on reducing the number of trees being cut down and lowering the amount of toxins in our waters. Energy …

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Eco by Stealth

Wendy Jedlicka Jedlicka Design Ltd. The biggest contribution you can make toward affecting real and positive change is to be a green educated professional working for an UNgreen company. Eco-by-stealth is the most powerful tool for deep change and it’s easier than you’d think. Do what you do best: create …

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Expanding Commerical Recycling

Emily Barker Recycling: Most of us are at least generally familiar with it, even if we can’t always keep straight what goes in the bin and what doesn’t. We dutifully separate our glass bottles, aluminum cans, used paper, and plastic yogurt containers, and as a result, Minnesota has a recycling …

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Good Neighbor Agreements

Justin Eibenholzl Southeast Como Improvement Association Fact: In 2004, over 12 million pounds of Toxic Chemicals were released into Minnesota’s air. – MN Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Program If a neighboring business or facility is of concern in a community due to noise, pollution or other environmental complaints, the …

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Green Banking

By Rick Beeson and Terri Banaszewski Park Midway Bank You have been recycling your household garbage for years. You buy your groceries and cleaning products from your local co-op. Many of your clothes are made from organic cotton. Generally, you live a green lifestyle; however, how green are your banking …

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Green Business is Here to Stay

SARA GROCHOWSKI Do It Green! Minnesota How important is it to you that a business is locally and independently owned, or that it engages in green practices? How important is it to you that you work for an environmentally friendly company? Or that your office space or production facility is …

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Green Career Opportunities

Barbara Parks Green Career Tracks Many business sectors in Minnesota are growing green and becoming more aware of how sustainability is a necessity for their business; see what’s in store for green career opportunities in each sector. Environmental Education and Training Environmental education has moved beyond simply teaching students in …

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Green Careers in a Changing World

By Barbara Parks Green Career Tracks As fast as the green economy grows and market sectors emerge with new sustainable solutions and technologies that can change our world for the better, the American job market still looks grim. Mid-income level jobs “the good jobs” are hard to find. (The equation …

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Green Your Office

Ami Voeltz Do It Green! Minnesota Business-to-Business Mail Businesses and institutions receive a great deal of unsolicited mail, such as catalogs and advertising mail for products and services of all kinds. Even when these materials are wanted, there can be a tremendous amount of waste and duplication. Do these sound …

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LOCAL SPOTLIGHT Butter Bakery

JESSIE HOULIHAN Do It Green! Minnesota Butter Bakery and Cafe owner, Dan Swenson-Klatt, on how his restaurant is working to lessen their impact on the environment. Q: How does Butter Bakery’s product differ from a conventional restaurant? A: It’s our goal to choose as many local and sustainable foods as …

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Money Talks (For Good)

Tara Wesely   There is no denying that we are a consumer society. But is it possible to harness consumption as a vehicle for positive social change? A growing group of investors believe that Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) can pave the way for social change by funding environmentally and socially …

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Money Versus Wealth

David C. Korten MBA and PhD – From Yes! A Journal of Positive Futures, Spring 1997 We are assured that we are richer than ever before and getting richer by the day. Yet we are also told there is no longer enough money to provide an adequate education for our …

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New Green Media

Maggie Mattacola/Ami Voeltz Recycling Association of Minnesota/Do It Green! Minnesota One of the great things ushered in with the green revolution has been the concept of new green media online to get information about sustainable living out to the public. The main benefits of these online websites, e-newsletters, and blogs …

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Planning Environmentally Aware Events

Lark Weller Institute for Social, Economic and Ecological Sustainability There often seems to be an unspoken assumption that business and environmentalism don’t mix. Business functions are renowned as ostentatious shows of excess, but this does not have to be the case! Today, it is easier – and more important – …

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Promoting Your Green Efforts

Angie Bourdaghs and Sara Brown Minnesota Pollution Control Agency If your green marketing efforts need some help, you probably fall into one of two categories: either you have not marketed your green efforts at all, or you have but it does not seem to make any difference. Either way, you …

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Socially Responsible Investing INVESTING FOR A CAUSE

HECTOR GARCIA UBS Financial Services Inc. A growing number of people are investing to achieve change in the future of their communities, the environment and the world. Socially responsible investing (SRI) assets rose more than 324 percent from $639 billion in 1995 to $2.71 trillion in 2007 while total assets …

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Support Communities and Economies: Buy Local

Erika Rood Do It Green! Minnesota For almost a hundred years, people have been buying handmade candy from Widman’s Candy Store in Crookston, MN. People may move from this small town of roughly 7,727 people, but they usually come back for a visit to the candy store. They return for …

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Support Local Businesses throughout Minnesota

Supporting locally owned, independent businesses keeps more of your money in your community. When you spend $1 at a local independent store, an average of 68 cents is recirculated into the local economy. In contrast, when you spend $1 at a national chain store, only about 43 cents stays at …

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Sustainability in the Office

Reprinted with permission from Minnesota Waste Wise _ Offices contribute greatly to the waste generated in Minnesota. According to the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA), each year the average office worker uses 10,000 sheets of office paper, and the average American throws away 1.6 billion single-use pens. The first step …

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The CERES Principles

Tara Wesely   Remember the Exxon Valdez oil spill? Immediately following this disaster, a coalition of environmentalists and investors realized that in order to effect real environmental change, they needed industry leaders to accept responsibility for their company’s impacts on the environment. The coalition drafted the below principles – originally …

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Twin Cities Businesses Make Dirt, Not Waste

Eureka Recycling There is a new movement underway in the Twin Cities… a movement to make dirt, not waste… and you can be a part of it! In addition to helping you compost at home in your backyard or with a worm bin, local waste-reduction nonprofit Eureka Recycling has launched …

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What is “Post-Consumer” Paper?

Dianna Kennedy Eureka Recycling 100% Post-consumer Recycled Content Paper made from 100% post-consumer waste is produced entirely from paper that comes directly out of your office or home recycling bin. Using post-consumer recycled paper helps eliminate the need for harvesting more virgin materials, and also creates a demand for the …

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What is Good for Business is Almost Always Bad for Nature

Tara Wesely Ruminator Review Paul Hawken challenges this truism in The Ecology of Commerce, explaining how his vision of “natural capitalism” merges goals of profitability and sustainability. Business-as-usual will not be sustainable for anyone. Our living systems are already in decline. We cannot continue to sustain our North American levels …

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What is Green Design and Why is it Always Brown?

Holly Utech Shea, Inc. Contrary to initial impressions, what qualifies as "green" design actually has little to do with how a brochure or package looks. Even if the brochure for a given chemical company is on natural looking, speckled paper with a big leaf on the front doesn’t mean that …

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Workers’ Rights

Charley Smith   I was just lying on the grass at Peavy Park on May Day. There were progressive and activist types all around. I felt alienated as always; even on International Workers Day, I was in the minority as a crazy, angry, blue-collar-working trash person. My friend asked me …

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