We at Turn Loose The Art do our best to keep our business low impact on the environment, especially in the office. Besides keeping the majority of our office paperless, we’re moving towards more environmentally friendly products as well.
Packaging:
All of our packaging is either recycled or dual purpose. Seriously, that pile of boxes we keep in the workroom isn’t staying there for aesthetics! We keep the boxes our lab, album suppliers, and even the boxes my tea supplier sends so we aren’t wasting cardboard every week. We also keep all those little packing peanuts, an always messy task that we may one day win. When we wrap our prints in tissue paper it is recycled paper and when we wrap our albums in pretty papers, they’re also recycled.
Albums:
Some of clients still love the traditional feel of a leather-bound album, so we aren’t getting rid of them by any means. But this year we’re adding silk and brocade-covered albums to our lineup. In addition, two of our album options are printed on fine art papers and not adding to the pile of chemicals from photographic prints.
Prints:
Starting soon, we’ll be offering only prints smaller than 8×10 as traditional luster prints. 8×10s and larger will only be available as fine art prints on environmentally friendly paper. We’re currently testing papers with our lab made from sugar cane and bamboo, and will soon be offering our favorites. In addition to this, we have a few framing options made from 80% recycled materials.
In the office:
In December we changed energy companies! We’re now using Energy Plus, along with the “green option” which generates and delivers our electricity solely from 100% wind power domestically produced.
We’re getting better at the whole paperless office thing. We’ve been using on online client management system for two years, do all contracts and payments electronically, and email for about 98% of our business communication. All our client proofing is done online or via projection.
All of our credit card statements, bank statements and utility bills are electronic statements. We also reduce, reuse, and recycle most of our office supplies, office waste, and packaging material from our vendors.
We keep our heat to a minimum in the winter, and use fans rather than A/C in the summer as much as possible. We use compact fluorescent light bulbs. We sleep our computers when not in use and turn the displays off if we’re running batches but not otherwise using the computers.
See more about our “green” photography: How Green Is Photography
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