Being a Green business, we are always looking at ways we can keep a minimal footprint while still providing excellent service and photography to our clients.  Recently on NPR, I heard Pulitzer Prize winning writer Edward Humes being interviewed about his latest book, Garbology, and finally got to read it.

It’s a fascinating piece of writing, and really made me want to make Orange an even greener business (we are already the first photography studio to earn the City and County of San Francisco’s Green Business designation).  One of the things I’d like to implement is one of the things mentioned in the book and that’s to use microfiber cloths instead of paper towels to use something that’s reusable.

The top five tips he gives in the book are:

  1. Refuse: refuse things you don’t need – unnecessary items, things you’ll just throw away, etc.  I’ve noticed some delivery places do this with utensils if you don’t want them and I try to ask for no pickles whenever I eat at a burger joint (Greenburgers in SF is great about this!)
  2. Go Used and Refurbished – pretty self explanatory
  3. Stop Buying Bottled Water – definitely on board with this…
  4. No more plastic grocery bags – if you do have some, you can bring them to Safeways and they will recycle them.  Also, if you tie them into knots it will prevent them from blowing away as easily too
  5. Focus on the cost of ownership – another great tip.  Buy products that will last and are well made – I just did this myself by buying my first new bicycle in over a decade to replace my broken one.  It was built by hand here in San Francisco by Raphael Cycles.

There’s a ton of compelling stories in the book though that make it a must read.  It’s pretty amazing to learn that American’s create 7.1 lbs of trash EACH DAY.  It’s definitely something we should all consider in how to lower that number.