GreenPrint

This is a great idea. I've always told co-workers to use "Print Preview" to avoid orphan pages, but this is a much better solution. Hopefully, a Mac version will be released sooner rather than later.

From the San Francisco Chronicle:
"I worked for Ford a few years ago in Europe, doing innovation stuff, and we had a Costco-size building that was five stories tall," says GreenPrint founder, Hayden Hamilton. "On each floor, there were 25 print stations, and all of them would be overflowing with orphan pages by 10 a.m. each day."

"I was printing something, and got one of these pages, and I thought, 'There's got to be a solution to this," he said. "I started looking on Cnet's Download.com and on Google and didn't find anything."

"Almost everyone has experienced that final page that's just a url, or a banner ad, or two pages of legal jargon that they didn't know would print," he said. "I thought, 'This is really an un-met need out there.' "

Hamilton, 30, who lived in San Francisco a few years ago when he worked for the Global Business Network, returned to his hometown of Portland and started GreenPrint. He hired California Software Labs, with offices in Pleasanton and Chennai, India, to develop the software.

And GreenPrint was born.

Home users can download a trial version for free, and buy it for $35. (For every purchase, GreenPrint will plant a tree in any name you choose.) The big money will be in selling it to large companies, which can save big bucks in reduced paper and ink costs. The World Bank is using it, and 23 Fortune 500 companies have pilot projects. GreenPrint says big companies can save $2 million a year on paper and ink, as well as save 4,000 trees and cut 12,000 tons of carbon emissions.

In addition, GreenPrint sells a custom-designed font, Evergreen, that "will maximize the amount of words you put on the page, as well as make it as readable as humanly possible." It saves more than 15 percent, compared with common fonts like Arial and Times New Roman. The font costs $10, or $5 if bought with the software.


Recycling Fluorescent Bulbs

I'm a big advocate of compact fluorescent bulbs, one of the easiest ways to reduce the carbon footprint of a typical household. Tonight my wife pointed out that recycling fluorescent bulbs is an ecological imperative, and she's right. But it turns out that almost no one is doing it!
According to a report entitled, Household Universal Waste Generation in California, August 2002, there were 15,555,556 fluorescent lamps sold in California in the year 2001. According to survey results published in the report, only 0.21% of these lamps were recycled.
So keep buying those florescent bulbs, but make sure you recycle them when they're used up. Go to Earth 911 to find a recycling location near you.

No Recycling on Chicago Beaches?

Regarding Tuesday's story on All Things Considered about "Big Bellies" in Chicago ("Solar Compactors Make Mincemeat of Trash"), I'm left wondering, what about recycling?

Sure, solar-power is great and keeping Chicago's beaches clean is a laudable goal, but doesn't this program effectively eliminate recycling?

Each compactor holds "200 gallons of regular garbage." Once this trash is compacted, I suspect that it's difficult, if not practically impossible, to extract the cans, glass and paper that could have been recycled.

And how much of typical beach waste is recyclable? 50%? 75%? Close to 100%?

And these compactors aren't cheap at $4,000 a piece.

Wouldn't it be less expensive and more environmentally responsible to simply teach Chicago residents how to recycle instead?

Eco-Chic: How Green is "Green"?

In case you missed it, yesterday's Talk of the Nation on NPR dealt with the current trend of "eco-marketing"," and whether it will positively affect our environment. Guests included a VP of Home Depot and Emily Anderson, author of "Eco-Chic Weddings."
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