One of the things I am striving to do with this new website is to straddle the line between scrapbooking and art. With so many talented companies out there, our online store strives to be just a little different than the typical scrapbooking website in that we are only going to carry companies and products, which, have committed to a mission of being green.
Its always been some sort of a play on words to see if it is possible to create green as scrapbookers, as our main supply is paper and the whole concept of “green” and “environmental impact” is becoming something that no industry can ignore.
Which poses this question to me, is it really easy to be green in the scrapbooking industry?
While most scrapbook companies will swear that the easiest way to be “green” is to switch into that digital world, I myself am torn. While I love the idea of digital scrapbooking, I am a paper artist, I like to use paper, I like my books to be real, and I like to design on th floor of my apartment with a cup of coffee, and a glass of wine, and somehow being digital means I need a computer to scrapbook, so not my style!
Of course, many digital scrapbooking advocates will be happy to tell you that digital is the ultimate form of green scrapbooking. Since there are no physical products to manufacture, package, and ship (we’ll skip discussing the impact of computers themselves) the environmental impact is minimal especially if pages aren’t printed out. But since dedicated paper scrapbookers are unlikely to give up their beloved hobby and go digital just for the sake of the environment,we’ll stick to discussing the paper scrapbooking market for the purpose of this article.
Just an FYI- last years theme at CHA-Winter 2009 trade show & convention in Anaheim in January was “It’s Easy Being Green: Discover The Possibilities”. CHA wanted to help its members start moving to capture a share of the growing “green” market. Despite CHA’s initiative, in the time I spent on the show floor, I didn’t see very much at all being done by scrapbook companies to appeal directly to that market.
Past that, when I walked the floor at CHA, I couldnt find one single recycle bin on the entire show floor to dump the water bottle I had been holding onto for 2 hours????? There wasnt a single recycling bin at any of the make n take booths to discard/save left over scraps? So while we are all looking to be green, we might consider this ( scrapbooking has always been a consumer driven industry, why arent we driving these companies to be accountable?)
We can do better!
With todays economy, and the cost of our beloved hobby just increasing, there are ways to reduce, and to cut the costs of our supplies. Recycling and being green isnt just about bottles and cans. There are quite a few companies getting on board with the green intitiative, and we plan to bring them to you!
We also plan to explain what we choose and why we choose them. Not eveything we carry is going to be 100% recycled, but we do plan to show you companies which are unique, and have made a promise to do what they can to be green.
How can we as consumers drive our industry into what really means to be green?
That’s a question I will constantly ask myslef when I choose products to be included in our store and on our site.
