Last Sunday a small crew from Nina Designs signed up to help clean an East Bay Park near the Berkeley Marina. I’ll be the first to admit that I have never done anything like this before. I’ve always wanted to, always meant to, but never got around to doing it. I was happy when Anna, head of our new Fun Committee here at Nina Designs, decided to plan this event for Earth Day. Thanks Anna!
Having never done this before, I didn’t really know what to expect in terms of what kind of trash we’d find out their on the bayshore. What I imagined (lots of soda cans, plastic bottles, larger chunks of trash) is not what we found. When we arrived to the shore, we were told to focus primarily on plastic, since it never goes away, but only turns into smaller and smaller pieces that get into the food chain. And, focus we did. We picked up three garbage bags full of tiny pieces of plastic in just a 20 ft. area. Much of the plastic was broken, unidentifiable pieces of this and that. Lots of styrofoam and plastic baggies. But we picked up so many plastic straws and plastic soda pop lids that I have taken a personal pledge to never, ever use plastic straws or drink soda again.
Wish me luck as I know my resolve will dwindle as the year marches on. But now that I’ve done an Earth Day clean up once, I plan to do it every year. An annual reminder of just how much plastic I don’t need in my life sounds good to me. Happy Earth Day to our beautiful planet. I pledge to do as much as I can to keep it that way.
Happy Earth Day to our Beautiful Planet!
Bags of Trash!
Now silver charms and jewelry can not only make us look good but they can do good. Aside from our international charitable donations we are also striving to make local changes and do good right here in the Northern California. We recently became green certified which means we make even more Earth friendly decisions in how we run Nina Designs, like using only 100% recycled paper, never using toxic cleaning products, and about half of the Nina Designs staff bikes to work daily.
Recently Nina Designs donated a beautiful silver bracelet to a wonderful local organization: Breathe California! Breathe California’s mission is to fight lung disease in all its forms and works within communities to promote lung health. Breathe California is hosting its 21st annual Clean Air Awards on Friday, April 15, 2011, in the Julia Morgan Ballroom at the Merchants Exchange in San Francisco. It will focus on positive initiatives that are being taken to reduce global warming and air pollution, with a focus on California. You may purchase tickets, or contribute to this cause here. Don’t miss your chance to bid on this beautiful Nina Designs bracelet and contribute to a great cause that effects us all.
In what small way do you practice being “green”?
Bid on this bracelet at the Clean Air Awards
Our Earth Day Eco-Pledge: Nina Designs will donate $1 to Seacology for every new person who likes us on Facebook by Earth Day, April 22nd. If you’re already a Nina Designs fan, share our Facebook Eco-Pledge with friends and family, then go to our wall and let us know you shared, and we’ll give $1 to Seacology for that effort too! Help spread the word so we can donate as much as possible.
A little bit about Seacology: They are a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving the world’s islands and their cultures. Their efforts include 215 conservation projects on 116 islands in 45 countries around the world, protecting over 1.8 million acres of coral reef, rainforest, and other fragile island ecosystems, along with the wildlife they harbor. This includes 50 projects in Indonesia, protecting both marine and terrestrial habitat.
They do great things like building schools and health clinics in exchange for marine reserves, and setting up fresh water systems to villages that need it!
We think it’s wonderful that silver jewelry findings can help support the efforts to restore the Gulf Coast. Thanks so much to all you Nina Designs fans for inviting your friends to join us on Facebook and supporting the Environmental Defense Fund. We added almost 1000 new friends and fellow designers to our community as a result of your efforts. In return, Nina Designs is sending a check for $1000 to help support the Environmental Defense Fund and their team of wetlands experts in the Gulf Coast who are working so hard to repair the damage and restore coastal Louisiana.
Green Silver is an elusive quest but we have come a step closer by completing our Green Certification with Alameda County! I learned a great deal during the process. One of the things I did not know about was the environmental hazard of triclosan, the most common active ingredient in hand sanitizers and antiseptic wipes. Triclosan persists in the environment (it doesn’t break down) and accumulates to higher and higher concentrations with each step up the food chain. Virtually every creature on earth has a measured amount of this pollutant in its body fat. Triclosan is suspected of disrupting hormone function in both humans and animals. The health and environmental risks are considerable.
We thought we were being diligent by wiping down phones and counters with antiseptic wipes. We also had Triclosan in our anti-bacterial hand soap and lotion. After researching the matter, I replaced our soaps and cleaning agents with Method products, which contain no triclosan, pthalates or BPA. It really irritates me that I can’t trust the products on my grocery shelf to be safe! If you feel the same way, support the bill currently in congress that is trying to ban toxic chemicals from consumer products. Every letter makes a difference. The Environmental Defense Fund does all the leg work for you on this page called: I am not a Guinea Pig.
We are celebrating our green certification with a Facebook campaign to raise money for oil spill cleanup on the Gulf Coast. We will donate $1 to the Environmental Defense Fund for every new Facebook fan that signs up during the first 2 weeks of July, up to $1,000. Tell your friends. Together we CAN make a difference!
The oil spill crisis threatens hundreds of species. Sharing this photo of a clean, healthy pelican symbolizes our hope for a Gulf of Mexico restored to its former environmental equilibrium. The Environmental Defense Fund is committed to working on the ground with local partners and with federal officials to restore the Gulf Coast to full environmental health.
Greening our Business: At Nina Designs we care about the environment. That’s why we became a certified Bay Area Green Business. The work we did to get certified taught us there are many little things we can do to make a big difference, like switching to non-toxic cleaners, choosing recycled office products, and closely monitoring our energy use.
Give Back Campaign Join us in celebrating our commitment to reduce our carbon footprint by helping to restore the Gulf Coast. For every new Facebook Fan, Nina Designs pledges to make a $1 donation to the Environmental Defense Fund to help clean up the oil from the Gulf Coast, up to $1000. Our campaign runs from July 1st – July 14th, 2010. Become a fan by going to our Facebook page and liking us.
If you’re already a Fan, please suggest us to your friends. With everyone’s help we can give as much as we can to help restore the Gulf to its former glory.
We are currently working with a group of students from San Francisco State University to obtain Green Business certification from Alameda county. The program covers solid waste, energy, water use, pollution prevention, waste-water and other general conservation efforts. As we work through the extensive check lists it is gratifying to see that we are mostly doing things right already. (We get extra credit for the flooring made from recycled tires that we installed in our order pulling area). Even so, we are adding new measures and formalizing our green practices.
A few new policies include two double sided printers and bins set next to all printers for those extra papers that get spit out. Now we can reuse them every time for printing or scratch paper. We set up a Green Team to make sure our office supplies are made from recycled materials whenever possible, to monitor bills for sudden spikes in energy or water use and to keep an eye on our daily practices like turning lights off in empty rooms and keeping trash out of the paper waste bins.
I will keep you posted on our certification progress. Right now, I need to research refillable pens and a place we can donate our old electronics to be refurbished instead of recycled…..
How do you save energy and resources?
Please keep an eye on your energy use.
Please print on both sides of papers
Greening is a long journey. It can often feel intimidating, especially in an industry like silver jewelry where so many factors are out of our control. In our office, we have made a commitment to move forward steadily. We are hoping that even the smallest steps will add up. When we remodeled our building, we added skylights and staggered our lighting on two grids. Now we can keep half the lights turned off during the day. We also installed energy efficient appliances in the kitchen. We carefully separate all of our trash for recycling and composting and we shred paper waste to use as packing material. We have not found a way to eliminate the ubiquitous zip lock plastic jewelry bags that the city won’t recycle but we found a Bag Guy who recycles them. The number of people in our office bicycling to work recently increased to the point where we had to install a bike rack.
Last month, I purchased a metal mug to use at the local café. It sounds almost silly, but I calculated that I will save 250 paper cups with plastic tops in one year. According to Hillary Feldman at About Our Planet, Americans use 16 billion paper cups a year. “The real cost of 16 billion paper cups is nearly one million tons of wood, 4 billion gallons of water, and 253 million pounds of waste. Every tree used for paper cups is also removed from the ecosystem and can no longer absorb carbon dioxide, produce oxygen, or filter groundwater.” So maybe its not so silly….. We’ll keep you posted as our greening journey continues! Any tips?
Erin Waiting for the Bag Guy
