So, the last few weeks we’ve been looking into potential suppliers that can print on 100% recycled paper using soy based or vegetable based inks. Initially we were looking at online printers, some in the US, but we have decided to go locally. And since this will cut down significantly on shipping, we will be creating a much smaller carbon footprint.

We contacted a few local printers, and have narrowed it down to two printers, Hemlock Printers and Green Printer. Hemlock printer is Canada’s #1 environmentally friendly printer. They use 100% recycled post-consumer waste paper, and they do very high quality printing. They’re also FSC certified, which is a huge bonus. However, for the size of the jobs that we will be doing, we cannot use soy or vegetable based inks. Also, since we’re unsure of the type of volume we’ll be getting to start out, it wouldn’t be cost effective for us to use them as a printer initially.

Green Printer is a smaller local printing company that we’ve decided to use as our initial supplier. They have 100% recycled paper that is either 50% or 100% post-consumer waste, however the print quality of the 100% PCW paper is not as good as that of the 50% PCW. So we have decided to go with the latter. Although they are also unable to print with vegetable or soy based inks for us, they do have a printing process that is waterless and chemical free, thus lessening the impact on the environment. It’s great that we’ve found a local supplier that meets our needs. And with every order they also let us know how many trees we’ve saved. How cool is that???

Now that we’ve got our supplier nailed down, we’re looking forward to our next steps to get up and running.

Last Saturday we were at Jericho Park doing some native planting for an early Earth Day celebration. It was a lot of fun, and was a much larger event than we expected. Along with Evergreen who hosted the event, there were expert gardeners, the Jericho Stewardship Group, and Starbucks giving out free coffee to tree planters. There were even stilt walkers and no trophy bear advocates in cutesy bear costumes.

We started out the day with helping Evergreen setup by putting up signs, and taking shovels and gloves to the different sites. After setup we looked at the different booths, watched a tree planting demo and proceeded to our assigned site.

So just this past winter I was in Malaysia for two months visiting my parents for the holidays, as they’re temporarily working there.  While I was there I had a lot of time to do nothing so I did a lot of thinking.  I’m not particularly satisfied with my current job and it’s definitely not a long-term thing.  I was thinking of different things I could do when I get home in order to further my career.

One thing that came to mind was starting an online business designing and selling wedding invitations.  A lot of my friends have been getting married over the past couple of years, and since they know I’m a graphic designer I’ve been asked a number of times to design their invitations for their wedding, along with other printed materials (thank you cards, wedding programs, seating charts, etc.).  It seemed to me that there was a demand for this, so when I came home I proposed the idea to Jahzel.  She was interested immediately. 

We started doing some research and planning our company.  We wanted to do something that would set us apart from a lot of other companies out there.  We discussed having a separate line of invitations that would be environmentally friendly, but decided to do exclusively eco-friendly invitations instead.  We also noticed that there are a lot of “fru-fru” wedding invitations out there, and we wanted to create designs that would be trendy, clean, and modern; to avoid the grandma-style invitations that seem to be so prevalent. 

So far, things have been going pretty smoothly and we’ve been getting a lot of positive feedback.  I’m excited to for our next steps and to actually get the company up and running!

When Corinne and I decided that we would make a wedding card company together we didn’t plan on making it eco-friendly. But after some thought we decided it just makes sense. Invitations are essential to every wedding; however cards are often dressed in multiple layers of papers, ribbons, and even plastic. Though such embelishments make for pretty cards, many of them will end up in a landfill. An eye catching design printed on recycled material can be just as beautiful as their elaborate counter parts. For my wedding I went for an overly dressed card because I thought that was how wedding cards should look like. Thinking back now I realize that the over the top nature of the cards did not justify the potential waste it created. 

So, where do we start? There is a lot of information about how to be green on the Internet. We were overwhelmed. But it’s simpler than we made it out to be. Recycling is a regular habit, so much that we don’t even think about it anymore! Our first goal is to find a local printer that can print our designs on post consumer waste recycled paper. We have some potential printers lined up. Hopefully we will have a decision by next week.

This blog will follow our experiences in creating a company and learning about being environmentally responsible.