The 40th anniversary of Earth Day is Thursday, April 22, 2010. Demonstrate your organization’s environmental commitment with products that promote your company’s message while helping to keep Mother Earth clean. Need some ideas?
Offer a special Earth Day 2010 limited edition reusable tote bag and give them away free to customers on that day when they spend a certain dollar amount.
Give away free reusable grocery bags to the first 100 customers (or more!) that come through the door on Earth Day. Better yet, team up with a complementary business for a cross-promotion with punch—and more name recognition through greater distribution.
Offer an assortment of environmentally friendly tee shirts, reusable shopping bags, water bottles, and other green gear for sale. Take it one step further and donate a percentage of sales to a local Earth-friendly organization.
In 2006, Americans drank about 167 bottles of water each but only recycled an average of 23 percent. That leaves 38 billion water bottles in landfills. Host a plastic bottle drive. Invite others to trade in empty plastic bottles in exchange for a free (or discounted) reusable water bottle.
The key to a successful Earth Day is to start planning now! As with any promotion, you ideally want enough time to receive product samples, ensure your choices are in stock, and avoid last-minute rush charges. Our sister company, Funman Promotions offers a wide selection of eco friendly products like organic cotton tee shirts, gardening aprons and cloth shopping bags, stainless steel reusable water bottles, ceramic mugs, and much more—perfect for customers, employees, or resale.
Bob Cappadona manages the fifth-largest recycling facility in the United States: Casella Waste’s materials recovery facility in Charlestown, Massachusetts. That’s where more than 30 area municipalities bring their curbside recycling for processing.
Cappadonna says the biggest issue he has to deal at his facility is what he calls “plastic bag contamination. Single-use plastic grocery bags can clog the automatic sorting machines used to make recycling financially feasible. The bags are such a problem that sometimes Cappadonna has to shut down his 700-ton a day process so employees wielding knives can climb in to the huge machines to cut errant bags out—a delay that can take hours.
Wal-Mart’s greening up three of its Northern California stores. According to The Sacramento Bee, the move is part of an experiment to ease customers into the bring-your-own-bag habit as the huge retailer attempts to reduce its global waste. If they forget bags, they can buy reusable bags from Wal-Mart in two sizes, for 15 cents and 50 cents. The company is also training checkers on how to fill reusable bags to capacity.
The effort is part of the company’s Plastic Bag Initiative, which aims to reduce plastic bag waste at its stores worldwide 33% by 2013. The company says the effort would help it avoid producing 290,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases and prevent the consumption of 678,000 barrels of oil every year.
Before the ban took effect, the stores posted signs encouraging customers to provide their own bags and also began selling reusable bags. The store discontinued free bags altogether on January 16 at the three stores. The stores were chosen because the customers in those communities had already signaled an interest in environmental issues. Beginning January 22, the reusable bags will be on sale at another 52 stores throughout Northern California.
On January 6th , I saw a great interview on The Colbert Report. If you’re unfamiliar with the show, Stephen Colbert is the host and executive producer of the Emmy and Peabody Award-winning series on Comedy Central. I am a huge fan of his and the show is hilarious.
Colbert’s guest was Captain Charles Moore. He’s the person who stumbled onto the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which is believed to be the world’s largest dump. Plastic debris from the world over makes its way into waterways, where it’s carried out to sea and trapped in swirling ocean currents, thereby forming a trash dump in the North Pacific that’s twice the size of Texas.
On the show, Captain Moore made some great new analogies about the issue. He likened a Garbage Patch cleanup to bailing out a bathtub with the spigot still on.
If you are a Maine retailer who already sells reusable bags (or is considering selling reusable bags), join Got Your Bags Maine in promoting awareness and single-use paper and plastic bag reduction in Maine. For a limited time, Bulletin Bag [.com] is offering some of our favorite reusable bags at reduced pricing for Maine retailers and grocers.
Bags feature the official Got Your Bags Maine logo on one side of the
bag, and you can choose to add your store logo or custom messaging to
the other side. Choose from one of these great bags currently on
special:
Blog 
The 40th anniversary of Earth Day is Thursday, April 22, 2010. Demonstrate your organization’s environmental commitment with products that promote your company’s message while helping to keep Mother Earth clean. Need some ideas?
Bob Cappadona manages the fifth-largest recycling facility in the United States: Casella Waste’s materials recovery facility in Charlestown, Massachusetts. That’s where more than 30 area municipalities bring their curbside recycling for processing.
On January 6th , I saw a great interview on 
