Long Island GreenFest

Come visit AusPen at the Long Island GreenFest ! If you are near SUNY Farmingdale in the heart of Long Island February 6-7, 2010 stop by our booth to say hello! AusPen is proud to be part of the festival to help celebrate the latest green solutions and products. And we’re looking forward to the live music, local foods, and array of natural and sustainable products. Hope to see you there!

Check out the festival at: http://www.americangreenfest.com/

Precycling, precisely speaking

This year the editors of Webster’s Dictionary added over 100 new words to the official English language, illustrating that English is a dynamic, evolving language. Not surprisingly, a number of the words have hailed from the tech and green industries. We can now say ‘webisode’, ‘vlog’, ‘green collar’, and ‘carbon footprint’ knowing that Webster’s has our back.  Whether they are officially recognized or not, a growing lexicon of new verbs has also cropped up in recent years, leaving no doubt that what we do is different from before. To Google, ping, text, blog, and spam is all done in a day’s work. (Well, hopefully not the spamming part.)

What has recently caught our attention at EcoSmart Products is the phrase, ‘precycling’, soon to make an entrance the way the 3R’s did in the ‘90s. A cousin of the 4^th R (refuse) that joined the gang later on, ‘precycling’ refers to efforts to prevent recycling, or to be preventive in using products that will end up in landfills or even in recycling bins. Buying products with a long user life span, that have recycled packaging, and that cut down on resources used are all ‘precycling’ activities.

The AusPen whiteboard marker will be a happy beneficiary of this emerging catchphrase as increasingly more businesses and schools turn to products that are less resource-intensive, that produce less waste and that are recyclable at the end of its long user life span. One AusPen kit of 6 refillable, recyclable whiteboard markers and their non-toxic ink refills prevents the use of approximately 246 disposable markers. Now that’s precycling!

Trash a Pizza

At EcoSmart, we’ve just discovered Kids at Art, an award-wining website that gives ideas to teachers for art projects with trash and recycled materials. We especially like the Trash A Pizza activity, in which students can keep track of what’s going into their classroom garbage and create a pizza pie chart to show the different categories of trash, such as paper, hard plastics, lunch containers, glass, metals, and food scraps, etc.

Follow up lessons and action plans would reinforce the message that small changes can have a big impact. Experimenting with zero waste lunches, buying recycled products such as 100% post-consumer waste (PCW) recycled paper and replacing disposable items with reuseable ones, such as our AusPen refillable dry erase markers (of course) will teach the students that not all pizzas need to have the works.

Check out their site, it’s great!

Y2K and you

2010. Has it already been a decade since we were excited and scared of a new millennium? The term Y2K entered our vocabulary as everyone, it seemed, panicked about whether every computer on Earth was going to crash with the millennial date change.

We now recall Y2K as the disaster that didn’t happen. I was recently reading an article in which former Business Week chief economist, Mike Mandel, stated the millennium software scare was not a rouse, but that the proactive efforts to “de-Y2K-bug” systems were necessary and effective. It’s just that its effectiveness meant we didn’t notice the problems.

It got me thinking about what it takes to be proactive and make changes when the results of those changes may be hidden. Of course, I thought about schools, campuses and companies that have made the decision to switch from their disposable dry erase whiteboard markers to AusPen markers. When using the refillable and non-toxic AusPen dry-erase markers, you can’t see the non-toxic effects, and you can’t see the volume of waste not generated each year (but you can see the big cost savings when checking expense reports ).

Judging by the enthusiasm and determination of many of our sustainability-minded customers, we think that what it takes to be proactive and make changes that offer otherwise invisible results is you. There is no one else in the marketplace like the environmental consumer. Thanks for your support, and happy 2010!

Xylene

Looks like a good Scrabble word, especially if you can use it on a triple points square. Aside from that, xylene does not score many points at EcoSmart Products. Xylene is one of the top 30 chemicals produced in the US in terms of volume.  It can be found in cleaning agents, paint thinners, cigarette smoke, plastics, airplane fuel and gasoline. And it is often found airborne in our classrooms and boardrooms.

Many dry-erase markers contain xylene. Its fumes are what can lead instructors and students to having headaches or feeling lightheadedness, not to mention difficulties breathing for those with asthma, especially when ventilation is poor.

Virtually everyday we are contacted by teachers, parents, students, office workers and organizations who are looking for a dry erase marker that doesn’t give them any of the symptoms above.

We are happy to say our markers don’t have any trace of xylene.  AusPen markers are also refillable and recyclable, each kit saving approx. 20 pounds of toxic waste from being sent to local landfills. It’s one way thousands of classrooms and boardrooms across North America have cleared the air.

A public health statement on xylene, from the Department of Health and Human Services Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, can be found at: http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/phs71.html#bookmark01

Putting your best foot forward

Last week we blogged about school-wide waste audits as a way to raise awareness about the amount of garbage produced in schools and to create plans for waste minimization. With the recent attention on the climate change talks in Copenhagen, we wanted to highlight another way schools and businesses have been putting their best foot forward, by calculating their carbon footprint.

As part of a national High School Climate Challenge, students from Selkirk, a high school in B.C., just established their school’s carbon footprint, and identified opportunities for the school to reduce its use of electricity, natural gas, water and amount of solid waste.

Carbon footprints are a measurement of the relative impact of our actions and a way to help us contextualize global warming in our daily lives, at home, at the office and at play. Our ‘footprint’ is an estimate of our direct or indirect involvement in carbon emissions from carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases emitted over the full life cycle of the products and services that we use, and our patterns of life. This would include the manufacturing, transportation, use and disposal of any given product. The choices we make in our travel, the food we eat, and what we buy and throw away all influence our carbon footprint.

There are many ways to calculate a carbon footprint and there are several calculators on the web. The Nature Conservancy’s Carbon Footprint Calculator is a quick and easy way to calculate you and/or your family’s total tons of CO2 equivalent per year. (Good on you if you come anywhere near the world average per person!)

Chances are that this exercise will leave you looking to new habits such as eating less meat, working from home when possible, and rethinking your patterns of consumption. In most office places and schools, turning to products that have a considerably reduced impact on the earth, such as the AusPen refillable, recyclable, non-toxic dry-erase markers will significantly reduce the amount of toxic waste in local landfills and help you tread lighter.

For the full story on Selkirk’s Climate Action Team, visit: http://www.wildsight.ca/news/780

Green New Year’s Resolutions

Happy New Year from all of us at EcoSmart Products! Like many others, we rang in 2010 by singing the popular New Year’s Eve tune “Auld Lang Syne”, paying tribute to ‘times gone by’ and looking forward to new horizons. Some of us have made New Year’s resolutions to get to the gym more, eat desserts less, or volunteer more often. And as for our eco friendly pursuits? Here are our 5 favorite New Year’s resolutions for going green in 2010.

1. I will vanquish the phantom load. With the switch of a button on a power strip, I can stop wasting energy that is being sucked through the outlets by electronics and power chargers that are plugged in, but not in use.

2. I will be more dependable in remembering birthdays and bringing my own bags to the grocery store. It is estimated that plastic bags may take 1000 years to decompose in a landfill. Plus, they are made from petroleum.

3. (Of course) I will ‘mark’ the New Year by switching to the AusPen refillable, recyclable dry erase markers at work and school. One kit of 6 AusPen dry-erase markers and their refills is the equivalent of approximately 246 disposable markers, which end up in local landfills.

4. I will drink for free what bottled water companies are trying to sell me. In the United States alone approximately 50 billion plastic water bottles are consumed per year. A funky reusable stainless steel bottle should quench that thirst.

5.  I will shed some light on being energy-efficient with compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs). CFLs not only use 75% less energy than incandescent bulbs, but they also last up to 10 times longer.

Happy New Year and all the best in 2010…and good luck with sticking with any resolutions you’ve made.

Asthma friendly classrooms

Asthma has reached epidemic proportions in the United States affecting nearly 1 in 13 school-aged children. These children lead the way in school absenteeism due to a chronic illness, with over 14 million missed school days per year in the US. The near future does not look more promising, with the percentage of children with asthma rising more rapidly in preschool-aged children than in any other age group.

At EcoSmart Products, we are heartened to receive so much positive feedback from those who have turned to the AusPen whiteboard marker to help reduce chemical pollutants from their classroom air. As a non-toxic, and top-quality, alternative to traditional markers, we are happy that our AusPen dry erase markers play a role in creating asthma friendly classrooms.

In addition to choosing non-toxic school supplies, there are many other ways to clear the air. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has developed an Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) Tools for Schools Action Kit. The kit helps teachers and staff to identify and manage their practices that affect indoor air quality, such as:

• controlling animal allergens,
• controlling pest and insect infestations,
• controlling moisture and mould,
• properly using heating, ventilation and cooling systems,
• reducing dust mite exposure, and
• not using products such as air fresheners, which only add chemicals to the room.