Thanks so much to everyone who entered the eco-friendly business cards giveaway from our sponsors at UPrinting. It was fun reading all of your comments! We used a random number generator to choose a winner, and the winner is...

Kate who said:

Thanks again to UPrinting and everyone who entered, and congratulations to Kate and her fiancé!  We'll get you connected with the folks at UPrinting so that you can claim your prize.

Image Credit: Creative Commons photo via Flickr by jaaron

Keeping things eco-friendly while promoting your business can be tricky, especially when you're on a budget. Our partners at UPrinting are offering a pack of 250 recycled business cards to help one lucky Green Upgrader reader promote your business with a little bit less of an impact.

UPrinting uses 55 percent recycled paper and soy-based inks to print their cards, and you can choose from lots of interesting die-cut shapes, from your basic rounded corners to a super sassy leaf design.

There are a few ways to enter the giveaway, so head on over to the original giveaway post to get all of the details!

Image Credit: Creative Commons photo by jaaron

When you're trying to run a business on a budget, finding affordable eco-friendly print materials can be a big challenge. That's why I was super excited when UPrinting - the sponsors of this giveaway - approached us about their eco-friendlier business cards. Of course, going paperless is the greenest option, but when you're networking, you sometimes need business cards to give potential clients. What's an eco-minded business owner to do?

UPrinting uses soy-based inks and 55 percent recycled paper in their business cards, and you can design and print business cards online with UPrinting.  The company was generous enough to offer a pack of 250 cards with free shipping to one lucky Green Upgrader reader!

Ready to enter? Check out the giveaway details below!

How to Enter

Remember to leave a separate comment for each entry, so that we can count them all!!

• Leave a comment here letting us know what you'd use the business cards for.
• Follow us on Facebook or on Twitter and let us know with a comment here. If you already follow us, that counts, too!
• Follow UPrinting on Facebook, Twitter, or Google+, and let us know with a comment here.

You can do one or multiple entries, and each one gets you your name in the hat. Just leave a separate comment here on the giveaway post for each entry to make sure they all get counted.

Prize Details

One winner will receive 250 die-cut business cards. There is a 6 business day turnaround on these cards, and they're asking that we limit entries to U.S. residents only. Check out the options to choose from below!

Sizes and Design Options:

• 2 x 3.5" Rounded Corners, 2x2" Rounded Corners, 1.75x3.5" Rounded Corners, 2x3.5" Leaf, 2x3.5
• Rounded one corner, 2x3.5" Half Circle Side, 2x3.5" Oval, 2.5" Circle

Paper Options:

• 14pt Cardstock Gloss / Matte / High Gloss (UV), or 13pt Cardstock Uncoated
• Front and Back Printing

Thanks so much to UPrinting for sponsoring this giveaway! We will choose and announce a winner this coming Wednesday, October 3rd.

Image Credit: Creative Commons photo by jaaron

If you're trying to live a greener lifestyle, chances are you avoid printing at all costs. Between the energy, the paper, and the ink, printing is not the most eco-friendly thing you can do. Sometimes, though, there are things we have to print out. Maybe it's paperwork for our taxes or something for work where an electronic document just won't do the trick.

If you do have to print, stretching your resources is a great way to green up that process. You probably already know to print on both sides of your paper or maybe you even fish junk mail out of the bin and print on the back of that. But what about the printer ink?

PC World did a study back in 2008 showing that when the "low ink" light comes on on most printers, between 8% and 45% of the ink is still in the cartridge. If people all replace the cartridge when the light comes on, that adds up to a lot of wasted ink! There are a couple of ways that you can waste less and make that printer ink last longer:

1. Just wait. Head to the store and pick up an ink refill when the "low ink" light comes on, but don't actually replace the cartridge until your print quality starts to suffer.
2. Shake it up. No, for real. I used to work at a...let's say "frugal"... office, and when our printers would run low on ink, they'd always tell us to shake the cartridge and try again before they'd order a refill. Just be careful - some cartridges will leak if you shake them, so best to do this over a sink or wrap it in a small rag before you shake.

One word of caution: it can be bad for your printer to let it run totally dry of ink, and it would really cancel out your efforts if you had to replace your printer! Once print quality starts to go down, replace the cartridge to avoid damaging your printer.

What do you guys do to conserve at the office? I'd love to hear your tips in the comments!

Image Credit: Creative Commons photo by freestockimages

We talk a lot about eco-friendly paper around here. Of course, the greenest paper option is simply to use less paper. Sometimes, that's easier said than done, so I wanted to share an inspiring paper-free solution from a local Atlanta company.

Over at The Big Nerd Ranch they've ditched paper towels completely. Two of my good friends work at the Ranch, including my running partner, Bill. Last week he was telling me about his P towel.

What?

It turns out that each employee at the Ranch has a personal, monogrammed hand towel with the first letter of his last name on it. Since Bill's last name starts with a P, his towel is emblazoned with a P.

Back when Bill started working there, he made a joke about disliking paper towels, and his awesome employers took it to heart. They quit ordering paper towels and switched to reusable hand towels. Just like that! They even keep guest towels on hand so clients can dry off without using disposables.

Cloth Towels By the Numbers

The Ranch launders the monogrammed hand towels, the guest/extra hand towels, the bath towels, bath rugs and kitchen hand towels once a month at the wash, dry, and fold across the street, and it costs around $20/month. They couldn't remember what they were spending previously on paper towels, since they'd made the cloth towel switch at the same time as they moved to a new office. Keep in mind though that the $20/month covers more than just their hand towels.

Let's say 2/3 the bulk of their laundry is reusable towels. That puts them at around $13 each month. If your company is replacing that paper towel roll once a week, they're probably spending around $7 to $10 on paper. That's just $6 more each month to make a big impact!

That doesn't seem too pricey for an office with 16 employees. What do you guys think?

The monogrammed towels cost $14.99 apiece and the guest towels were $20 for a 20 pack. That doesn't strike me as a terrible up front cost, considering that most companies spend quite a bit of cash to get new employees spun up.

Of course, not all companies are as forward-thinking as The Big Nerd Ranch. If your employer isn't into springing for reusable towels, you could always get yourself a PeopleTowel or some other reusable cloth towel to dry your hands.

Have you guys run across any savvy ways to reduce workplace paper waste? I'd love to hear about them in the comments!

Do you ever have one of those moments where something you were 100% sure was true turns out to be...not necessarily so true? I had this happen to me just the other day when I was reading about how recycled office paper might not be the most eco-friendly choice.

Recycled Paper vs. Managed Forests

I've written a bit about recycled paper before, from my quest to find 100% recycled paper for our home office to making a straight up case for recycled paper.

While in some situations, 100% recycled paper is still the best choice, according to Heidi Tolliver-Nigro over at Inspired Economist, there are times when recycled paper has a higher carbon footprint than virgin paper. How can that be? Heidi says:

What factors impact the carbon footprint of recycled paper?

• transportation of the fiber (distance of the collection center from the recycled mill)
• de-inking process
• bleaching method and chemicals used
• disposal of the de-inking waste (which can be landfilled)
• energy use and production inefficiency of many recycled mills (which can often be older plants with less efficient technology)

These, among other factors, can make the carbon footprint of recycled papers double that of papers made from virgin fiber from sustainably managed forests. (They key here is “sustainably managed.”) Especially if the mill is close to the fiber supply, virgin papers can be much kinder on the environment than papers using recovered fiber.

So, if your options are conventional paper or recycled, that 100% recycled paper is still the best option. For office paper, though, it's sounding like tracking down paper from managed forests might actually be the greener option.

Finding Sustainable Office Paper

It turns out that the Double A paper I purchased back in March might actually have been a more eco-friendly option than the recycled options I was looking for. I do wonder how it measures up if you consider that the paper is produced in Australia, and I purchased it in Atlanta, GA.

If you're looking for sustainably-produced paper, you might keep an eye out for the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) seal. You can also look for paper with the Sustainable Forestry Initiative logo. FSC and SFI are both third-party certification programs.

Instead of Recycle, Reduce!

Of course, as the folks over at GreenBiz point out, the greenest option when it comes to office paper is to just plain use less. It might seem like it's hard to reduce, but every little bit counts. If we all use just a little bit less paper, it has a big impact!

For example, this month is crazy for me with festival applications. Traditionally when you apply for a craft market, you print out the application, fill it out, and drop it in the mail along with your check. While some craft markets have marched into the 21st century with online applications, many still rely on snail mail. This year, I've been sending festival organizers my application as an email attachment, offering to mail the check if they don't accept PayPal. So far, no one has asked me to send the paper application.

Is there something like this in your business? What processes that normally rely on paper could you change to be tree free?

Image Credit: Creative Commons photo by sbeebe

Have you guys seen this commercial for Scotch Pop Up Tape? It's basically a tape dispenser that gives you pre-measured pieces of tape, rather than a roll where you tear off pieces as you go:

There's a 30 second version that goes into more detail about how inconvenient it is to use compared to regular tape. Why spend that extra 3 seconds tearing off some pieces of tape in the size you need when you can pull them right from a brightly-colored, plastic dispenser?

I was preparing to slam Scotch for coming up with yet another way to waste plastic, when my husband pointed out that it might not be any more wasteful than regular plastic tape. Scotch Pop Up Tape offers refills just like regular tape does, so you don't have to keep replacing the plastic dispenser.

Since this sort of tape is really just plastic with adhesive on the back, the greenest option is to use as little as possible, or even better none at all.

One area where the Pop Up Tape fails is that the pre-measured strips stop you from being able to decide how much tape you need. Does it really take a 1" piece of plastic tape to finish off a gift or seal a letter? With a conventional dispenser, you can pull off pieces that are just the right size, which should help reduce waste, if you're trying to conserve materials.

That said, I also wonder how many folks use much more tape than they need. For that set, the Pop Up Tape might actually save materials in the end.

Since I fall into the first category, I'll probably stick to my trusty roll of tape and try to use as little as possible at a time.

I started out feeling pretty negative about this product, but now I'm not sure it's any worse than the tape dispenser we're using now. What do you guys think? And while we're at it, do you have any ideas for alternatives to plastic tape?