Stationery Scoop

Making eco choices

So we're doing our part to improve this planet Earth, reducing water consumption, making local food choices and producing plantable paper from 100% post-consumer waste. Then in yesterday's headlines, I learned that there's a debate brewing in our home town over the issue of recycling glass. Seems the alternatives are either collect and ship to another province (at great cost and use of fuel) or send to the landfill where it is crushed and used to "pave" the roads. Frankly, neither alternative sits well with me, but the debate should be interesting and hopefully it will be constructive, yielding some good change.

Our thanks goes out to Jaime of the blog It's Jaime Thing for featuring Botanical PaperWorks' Plantable Wedding Cake Favors in the posting All You Need Is Love...So Plant Some!. And along with Jaime's posting, we have some great news - the price has been slashed to $1.25! We've made some improvements to our order processing, so we've passed the savings along to you.

Have a wonderful Wednesday!
Heidi

Reducing paper consumption

I received a telephone call this morning from someone wanting to send me some business information. I did what I always do - asked to receive the information by email rather than by mail.

Since we're an eco paper company, it only makes sense to reduce our paper consumption - in fact, it's part of the paper reduction strategy at Botanical PaperWorks that includes:

• Using a paperless order tracking system whereby we eliminate paper use by our Customer Care department
• Receiving vendor information by email instead of mail wherever possible
• Using digital communication between our departments instead of printed memos and reports

It's exciting to see how Botanical PaperWorks is contributing to the global effort to reduce, reuse and recycle.

Another great way to reduce paper waste this holiday is with plantable holiday cards and gifts.

Manitoba's Green Future - Special Event

For all Winnipegers and Manitobans, I just received word of an upcoming conference to be held on Tue, Oct. 23, 2007 at the Fort Garry Hotel. Called Manitoba's Green Future, A Dialogue on Climate Change Action and Greening our Economy, it promises to be an important event. Registration is $60, so please consider attending!

Why I love seeded paper and how to plant it

I write a lot about plantable, seeded stationery products because that's the main product of my company, Botanical PaperWorks. Handmade paper, and particularly seeded paper, has been a passion of mine for the last 10 years. When my Mom Mary and I founded Botanical PaperWorks in 1997, we never could have imagined the wonderful staff that we get to work with every day and the excitement and passion that our clients have for our products. It's truly wonderful!

Here's why I love plantable seed paper:

• It's eco-friendly. Instead of creating more paper waste that has to be recycled or dumped, wildflowers grow right out of the paper. The pulp mulches down into the soil and flowers spring forth.
• It's symbolic. I love, love, love the symbolism of growing wildflowers for so many of life's important events. For a wedding, it symbolizes how love grows. For a new baby, it symbolizes new life and all of the possibilities for this little person. For memorial services, it symbolizes the hope of the next life and the beauty of remembering a loved one.
• It's handmade locally. I'm proud that our products are made by hand, with natural ingredients and by local craftspeople.

There are many other reasons that I love seeded paper and stationery products made with it, but these are my top three. To learn more about how to plant Garden Greetings™ seeded paper, read our page that explains how it works.

Eco-favors and eco-invitations

What does the word "eco" mean? At Botanical PaperWorks, we think it is all about making choices - choices to minimize environmental impact, to reuse, to recycle and to do all those good things that keep our world clean and the garbage can from overflowing.

So we call our plantable, seeded wedding invitations and party favors eco-invitations and eco-favors because in choosing them, our customers are choosing products that avoid creating more paper waste.

We're working on walking our talk - last September, our office went "paperless". Instead of printing out reams of paper to take and track your order through our system, we use the computers. We had computers anyways; now we're using them more. This change drastically reduced our paper use.

There will be more changes to report on in the weeks to come as we examine our processes and products, and make tons of changes (little and big) to improve our environmental footprint. Please join us on this important, long-term journey!

Eco Wedding Attire

Check out this article on selecting eco wedding attire. It's great to see resources available for planning a green wedding / eco wedding!

Eco Weddings in the Press

Interested in having an eco wedding? Check out this eco wedding article that references the Plantable Heart Flat Card Wedding Favors from Botanical PaperWorks that were seen on Days of our Lives. The article contains some great tips for planning an eco wedding, including recycled wedding invitations with a single envelope and seed packet wedding favors.