That works well with direct mail – not so well with custom reusable bags. But what might work is a mockup of a text message, complete with some of the abbreviations and acronyms that have become so common they’re turning up in encyclopedias. Sometimes they take a little deciphering, but that’s part of the fun. How many times has a custom license plate become a challenge when you’re driving behind one?

Ull C me at Bills Butcher Shop when its BBQ cson!

Frame it in something that looks like a smart phone and you’ve got a state of the art message. For clever tweet letter combinations, we recommend the work of Roland Hedley, the newsman in the Doonesbury comic strip. You probably see an entertaining text message every day – maybe you already have a collection of e-phrases. If not, assemble one and think about how you might use them on the side of a printed bag. The print style and the telephone outline will certainly draw glances.

Then there’s email format, which could be presented as three or four brief back-and forth replies, although the cluster would have to fit on a reusable bag so you’d be limited. But everyone has had an exchange of emails that are snippets of conversation back and forth. If you can express a commercial message or just a humorous string of remarks below your logo, you’ve got a virtual message on your printed bags that looks and reads like it’s electronic.

Recyclable grocery bags are an age-old tool that has become a symbol of a new cultural movement – going green. It makes sense to pair your custom bags with a message that is in a social media format, the new and preferred choice(s) for communication. Tweet your commercial pitch on the side of a custom bag.

You can still get your lunches made just right and do it in an environmentally friendly way. The first thing you will need to do is make sure you arm your pantry with the right tools to get through the year. Here are a few tips that can help you pack a plastic bag-free lunch for your student.

Get reusable lunch bags! There are also many reusable snack containers that can be reused all year long. We at reusethisbag.com sell a customizable insulated lunch bag that’s a hit with the ‘pack your own lunch’ crowd.

Some more tips for make lunches completely plastic free:

Opt for natural wax paper to wrap your sandwiches in, if you don’t want to use reusable containers. Most health food stores offer natural wax paper, which is biodegradable and can be put into the recycling bin after each use.

Skip purchasing single serve items, like applesauce and other fruit cups, opting instead for larger jars. This will help you avoid using plastic, as you put single servings in reusable containers each day.

Send real utensils in lunches, rather than plastic disposables. If you don’t trust sending your good silverware, pick up a couple of forks and spoons at the store or thrift store that can be used just to be packed in lunches.

These tips work for the adult lunch as well as for your child’s lunch. As people learn more about the unhealthy effects that plastics have on our health and environment, they are searching for ways to reduce their use of it. Since you may be making school lunches for 185 days or more this school year, you can save a lot of plastic by opting for more environmentally friendly options.

Anyone who lived through grade school in the 1990s can relate to Jordan’s reminiscing about the heyday of recycled paper and its lasting effects on everyday products:

Consider this: during the early 90s, a green wave hit the marketplace and products such as recycled paper were being pushed as the environmentally friendly alternative. I remember proudly buying some gray notebook paper that was 100% recycled. It was terrible paper — very hard to write on, and easy to tear. But darn it, I was doing my part, as a kid in school, to help reduce waste.

The demand for 100% recycled paper died down. But paper companies continued to use some recycled content in their paper and improve the process. Much of the notebook paper kids use for school today has some amount of recycled content in it, as does a lot of the cardboard used for packaging fast food. The green wave of the 1990s might have died down, but it did bring recycled materials to the forefront as a viable way to create products.

Jordan goes on to apply the same logic to today’s hottest green trend: reusable bags. Though they’ve always been en vogue for those on the front lines of environmentalism, they never really caught on in the mainstream until this most recent wave of green living. Over the past few years, the average consumer has embraced tote bags for everything from groceries to library books with such a fervor that it makes one wonder why they never caught on before. Jordan’s theory: until now, no one ever attempted to make reusable bags appealing to consumers.

The truth of the matter is that reusable bags have been out there for years, but they haven’t been produced at a low enough price that they’ve been attractive to consumers. When grocery stores embraced them during the last “green” wave and began offering them for a dollar a bag, consumers could see the value of having a few. When being socially conscious is cheap and easy, many people are willing to give it a try.

Unfortunately, he notes, the cyclical nature of green marketing dictates that, by and large, the frenzy for environmentally conscious products will eventually die back down. On the whole, however, each new wave seems to raise consumer standards by exponential degrees. This time around, reusable bags seem to have finally taken hold and — like recycled products before it — are poised to take a permanent place in mainstream consumer culture.

When I asked Mr. Simmons regarding their involvement with Keep Houston Beautiful and the Esplanade Project he responded “We are a key sponsor for both Keep Houston Beautiful and Keep Texas Beautiful because we believe that global problems can be solved at a local level.” He was excited that so many community members and families had shown up in support to plant trees and help make Houstonians proud of their City.

Turning Houston Green is a huge proponent of single stream recycling — a process allowing recyclables to be handled in one container (rather than multiple bins for glass, paper, and plastics) making the act of recycling easier and more accessible to the common citizen. According to the blog, single stream recycling has caused a 200% recycling increase in San Antonio, and a whopping 300% increase in Dallas. Are similar outcomes on the horizon for Houston? Simmons has high hopes that people will follow suit.

The competitor in me says that Houston can do better. Right? Mr. Simmons stated that “People want to do the right thing… When recycling is made easy, people do it” so Greenstar works closely with Municipalities to help make recycling convenient for residents. They believe that Texas can be a National leader in Recycling and that single stream recycling is the answer for Houston.

For more on the subject, check out the rest of the interview. Otherwise, chime in: do you think single stream recycling is the way of the future for Houston and other cities like it? Could easier recycling lead to a more eco-conscious population? Let us know!

There are lots of good reasons to recycle and we’ve had many of those addressed. But for me the basic of this bill comes down to an issue of fairness, that we in Utah deserve to receive the service of recycling that we pay for when we buy this product.

E-waste is among the fastest-growing environmental problems in the United States, and it’s something government officials aren’t taking lightly — according to the report, the bill passed 47-26, and is now moving on to a Senate vote where it will hopefully take hold and pave the way for more recycling laws in the future.

Topping the list is air-dying, which tackles the current problem of material waste in the process of dying textiles. New methods are promising to drastically cut the amount of resources needed to color fabrics:

During the dying process, water is used to apply color, but also to push the fabrics through machines. New machines by companies like Fongs are using air to push the fabrics, thus reducing the amount of water used. With this method, the dying of a t-shirt can go from requiring 200 to using only 50 liters of water (Textile World).

Another, more eco sound, alternative is a system called AirDye, which works with proprietary dyes that are heat-transferred from paper to fabric in a one-step process. This can save between seven and 75 gallons of water in the dying of a pound of fabric, save energy, and produces no harmful by-products.

Along with processes, however, are new and sustainable takes on materials. Cork, PET bottles, stinging nettles, seaweed, banana fibers, and recycled fabrics are all finding new life on the cutting edge of fashion:

[Alternative materials] include, for example, fabrics made with nylon recovered from products like nets and carpets by Mipan. An example of the use of this is the swimwear line Eco Panda.

Some factories are also recycling cotton industrial leftovers, which keeps these scraps from incinerators or landfills and creates new materials. One example is the Italian initiative EcotecProject.

Overall, the verdict is in: the fashion world is on the precipice of some major green changes. The big question is whether they will pass as a fad or catch on permanently. Would you wear recycled materials? Are alternative plant fibers really so radically different from cotton? Let us know!

According to news reports, the firm behind the “Octocopter” is readying a future demonstration of their technology for U.S. representatives of the anti-whaling organization. From the article: “Developed over two years, the machine features state-of-the art electronic GPS wizardry and video and still cameras. The ‘octocopter’ – so called because of its eight propellers – is ‘flown’ like a helicopter and can be kept in the air for up to 30 minutes before batteries have to be recharged.”

Excessive whaling is as illegal for Japanese ships as for anyone else in the world, but ships like the Nisshin Maru have been able to skirt the rules under the guise of “research sampling.” An extra pair (or eight) of eyes in the sky courtesy of Sea Shepherd, however, could seriously aid in monitoring illegal on-deck activities–and, perhaps, prove a crushing blow to the whaling industry.

Ted Mininni, columnist for marketing resource blog MarketingProfs, wasn’t startled by most peoples’ reasons to take up the mantle of reusable bags when faced with eco-consciousness or plastic bag taxes and bans, but was–at first–taken aback by the suggestion that reusable bags have crept into the world of fashion:

Reusable bags as a fashion statement? Who knew? As the [Washington] Post astutely points out: “…the reusable bag is becoming part of popular culture, thanks to a stable of companies that have been churning out hip models.”

Really though, it’s easy to see why trendy reusable bags would have such appeal — brought out time and again for weekly shopping endeavors, the bags are as much a chance to make a statement about your personality and fashion sense as a handbag or a change of clothes. Many people end up seeking out bags that are a reflection of themselves–a move that not only gets people more excited about their reusables, but more likely to actually remember to (re)use them on a regular basis.

Osaka University and Mitsubishi Electric Engineering Co. have designed a robot with laser-sensing technology that can distinguish six different types of plastic from all other garbage. The 5-foot 6-inch by 6-foot 9-inch machine identifies the plastic materials by analyzing the reflectivity of five different wavelengths of lasers on the garbage. Once it identifies the material, it sorts the garbage into different piles.

According to green tech blog EcoGeek, this efficient little robot is poised to revolutionize the ease with which we recycle. Currently, the biggest obstacle facing recycling in Japan is confusion over which types of plastic are recyclable and which aren’t, leading to lower recycling rates overall. The superior sorting skills of the robot will take out the guesswork by simply wicking away the unrecyclables from the pile, hopefully leading to heightened confidence in recycling and an increased rate in the long run.

Will this handy-dandy robot be showing up in everyday households any time soon? Probably not quite yet. Only one prototype exists at the moment, and the article quotes soon-to-be-produced models as pricing out at around $55,000–a price tag fit for businesses and industry more than your typical kitchen. That said, it’s a good indicator of things to expect in the future, and robots are always a good start.

Apparently some people don’t have the time or energy for a full-on Earth Day — for them, there is the oh-so-convenient Earth Minute which is apparently makings its debut on May 20.

On May 20 at 4:17 p.m., billions of people around the world will hold their collective breath for a full sixty seconds, preventing tons of CO2 emissions from entering the atmosphere. After Earth Minute is up, they will all go back to their normal lives polluting and impacting the environment, at least until Earth Minute comes back around next year (or until someone comes up with Earth Second).

Scientific question: don’t all those CO2 emissions go up accordingly as soon as those 60 seconds are over and everyone breathes out? Is there any way to measure the supposed lack of carbon emissions? Will frivolous acts only serve to minimize and trivialize the true importance of daily eco-awareness? (People already complained about the futility of Earth Hour, and at least that gave us gorgeous photographs.)

Have you done something special for the environment today? Bigger question: do you make every day Earth Day? Because as important as awareness is, it takes a lot more than just one day — or hour or minute — to make a truly lasting impact.