I imagine that many of you read Ali’s post today about the environment and things that we can do as scrapbookers to be more earth friendly.  As a consumer, I do my best to buy products with the least amount of packaging.  For example, does a deoderant stick really need to be in a box that is then wrapped in plastic?  I buy the one with just the plastic seal.  And I avoid buying product that is sitting in plasic egg cartons, etc.  But as a the owner of a kit company, it is difficult to avoid buying products with excess packaging that might be something our customers would really love.  I love the Queen & Co die cut felt ribbon but they package it in 1 yard increments in this over the top plastic container.  I think a better method might be to create small spools of it that the owners of stores (or kit companies!) can then cut onsite.  The packaging is awfully cute, but what a waste.  We at Cocoa Daisy recycle every single thing that we can, but at the end of the week there is still a massive amount of packaging that goes into the garbage.  I hate contributing so much waste to our landfills.

I’ve spoken to several scrapbook companies about producing products with less packaging or that uses post-consumer content.  None seemed very interested.  I think there is definitely a market for scrapbook products that are environmentally friendly and yet are still appealing.  If any of you know of such companies, like Ali, I’d love to hear about them.  If that’s something that you are interested in as well, tell the owners of your LSS and let them pass it on to the manufacturers.  Or better yet, send a letter to your favorite manufacturers. 

Kit companies are decidedly resource intensive (the waste, the shipping of products to us and then the shipping of products to customers, etc) and there are days that I think perhaps this is something that we shouldn’t be doing.  We try our best to be as environmentally friendly as possible by recycling, by using biodegradable peanuts for packing and trying to buy products, whenever possible, in bulk. 
If anyone has any ideas on how we could be easier on the earth, I’d love to hear them!

And thanks Ali for the inspiration today!