Reducing the environmental impact of shipping products long distance has long been a concern of catalogers and online merchants. Our last blog post lauded the many ways that Bluestone Perennials addresses the issue. Here are more things that our client, Clean Air Gardening, is doing:
• Clean Air matches donations of up to $10 to Trees for the Future that online customers make during the checkout process.
• In 2006, Clean Air went carbon neutral, purchasing carbon offsets through Carbonfund.org.
• When they moved into new office space, they gave it a green makeover, from cork floors (cork can be harvested without killing the tree), to non-VOC walls (which don’t release harmful chemicals into the air), to low-water use toilets (among the many environmentally friendly products they sell).
• Clean Air now generates close to 1/3 of their own electricity through solar power.
• Packing is done with biodegradable corn starch packing peanuts that dissolve instantly in water. (Not a good choice for shipping plants, but it works for hard goods!)
It’s impressive to see the many ways companies like Clean Air Gardening and Bluestone Perennials are promoting environmental friendliness. We can all learn from each other in this regard. Do you have other examples you can share?
