Necessity is the mother of invention…and cool stuff too!

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The world of recycling is producing some rather ingenious creations. It’s a good thing too. Without the availability of products that savvy consumers, such as yourself, are itching to own, it would not be possible to create a strong market, therein completing the recycling process, aka “closing the loop”.

In my cyber travels, I have come across a plethora of companies offering everything from snappy and stylish home décor to hearty construction materials.

Let’s take a look at a few of these products and companies putting creative genius to work.

One of the coolest uses for recycled material comes from Smile Plastics. When they aren’t engaged in high tea, this UK based company is jodhpurs deep in rubbish – taking recycled plastics and other recycled materials and pressing them into sturdy sheets of building material.  They have created these durable building sheets using objects vast and wide ranging —  everything from second hand willies (slang for rubber boots), old coffee grinds from coffee shops, underground gas and water pipes, CD cases and Bank of England notes suspended in headlamp plastic.

My personal favorite is the sheet made of old cell phone cases .  Jolly well done ole chaps!

If you’re in the market for a super sleek, stain resistant countertop that has the look of soap stone or concrete check out Ecohaus. They offer a product called Squak Mountain Stone that fits this very description.

As posted on their site, “This countertop was developed by a local entrepreneur as part of her master’s thesis. The basis of the project was to produce a building material made out of locally sourced and recycled materials. After graduation, she continued to work to commercialize the new material. The final result of her work is Squak Mountain Stone, a soapstone or limestone-like countertop material made out of Portland cement, waste flyash, waste glass dust, mixed waste paper, and pigments.”

It’s quite possible that after taking a gander at the Squak, you’re beginning to envision a kitchen renovation in your future. A company by the name of Homasote creates a variety of building materials whose content range from 98 – 46 percent post-consumer waste.

Their 440 Sound Barrier, which controls sound in floors, walls and ceilings, is comprised of more than 98 percent of post consumer waste.

Each year Homasote building products help conserve more than 1,370,000 trees and eliminate more than 100,000,000 pounds of solid waste each year.  On top of that, all water used to manufacture Homasote® products — hundreds of thousands of gallons per day — is completely recycled in a “closed loop” system.

Once you renovate, you’ll want to add a few stylish items to you delightfully sheik kitchen.

Inhabit.com has all your eco-friendly, home décor needs covered. What better way to illuminate your new kitchen countertops than with a lamp made from Tupperware? Or how about a few chairs crafted from old car tires to slouch in while you sip your morning joe?

The room just wouldn’t be complete without a fresh coat of eco-friendly paint from Greenliving.com.

Well, now that you’ve spruced the old girl up, you’ll undoubtedly want to invite all of your friends over to enjoy a delicious meal in your glorious new eco-friendly kitchen. Look no further friends; Bacchus Press is here to help you create your Certified Green invitations.  What better way to inspire a successful soiree!

Until next time, keep it Green!

The printing press was inspired by ink stained hands.

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Ok, Ok…that might be a bit of a stretch, but it is possible that Ma’ād al-Mu’izz, caliph of Egypt, inspired the very innovation that led to one of our most influential inventions. Apparently the calif had grown weary of ink stained hands and cloths and demanded that something be done about it.

Hence the fountain pen was created.

The invention of ink began as a simple concoction of ground carbon and glue, molded into sticks – or some such variation of this – and was commonly used among Chinese and Egyptian civilizations.

With the passing of time, ink evolved. But it wasn’t until about 1440 that a suitable recipe for printing press ink was discovered. I say “discovered” because it is rumored in 1410 the famous artist Jan van Eyck had been experimenting with the cooking of painting oil. Inks made with the heat-bodied linseed oil had the ability to stick onto a metal surface.

Well, clever Gutenberg musta got a hold of the formula, which proved to be a vast improvement over the inks of that time. The clarity of the print was vastly improved, significantly reducing the blurriness of the text.

Inks, being oh so ambitious, continued to improve. The use of linseed oil and other vegetable oils rich in polyunsaturated fatty acids produced something akin to varnish, speeding drying time and providing more viscosity.

In the 19th century, petroleum distillate was introduced. The solvents in this vehicle, shortened the drying time even greater. We’d soon discover that it too had its drawbacks.

With the shortage of petroleum and mounting ecological considerations, research into an alternative inspired the use of soy oil. This magic bean effectively reduced harmful VOCs associated with petroleum.

Today, it is quite common to see soy/vegetable based inks listed on the home page of many printing websites.

You should keep in mind, that digital presses do not use soy and vegetable based inks. These can only be used on an offset print job. But digital printing is great for small run jobs. It creates less waste and uses less energy, thereby decreasing CO2 emissions.

Check out Bacchus Press, next time you’re ready to go to press. We offer both offset and digital.

Until next time, keep it green!

Customer Service – a modern day dinosaur

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We have real, live folk answering our phone. What a concept!

Few things drive me as bonkers as dialing an 800 number, only to be greeted by an electronic voice guiding me through a series of questions and button pushing. It begins to feel like obstacle course whose only design is to annoy me to no end – wasting my time and rarely delivering me to a human voice without some secret alpha-numeric code I supposedly set 12 years ago.

Insert expletive here_______________!

Some days it seems as though customer service is a dated technology long since forgotten, along with the 8 track cartridge and the Bakelite TV. Though I must say, I have run across some very inventive uses for vintage television sets, my favorite being a fish aquarium.

Finding a host of bad customer service stories is like shooting fish in a barrel…or a Bakelite TV. This age old colloquial is likely misleading, but its intent is fitting.

Running a search on Google, you will find pages of testimonials dedicated to consumer outrage and frustration over poor customer service.

You’ll also hear praise for the great!

What you won’t find is someone going out of their way to share their experience regarding service that had absolutely no impact whatsoever, which more than likely constitutes that majority of our interactions as consumers. It’s acceptable, but not something to list as a selling point.

“Harvey’s Burgers – come get your grub on where service is adequate…most days.”

If those burgers rock, business will too, until the day that bad service spoils the fun for everyone.

Let’s face it, we all have off days and no doubt the very best among us fall prey to waking up on the wrong side of the bed. Putting the occasional slip aside, shaking off bad attitude is job numero uno for Customer Service. They are the life blood of a company. Great service can keep your business afloat even in the worst of times.

Unless you corner the market, holding hostage your patrons as the single manufacturer of the wizitwack – the pinhead sized memory dot for the new credit card sized laptop – well then, your patron will find someone else, someone who probably does it better than you…and cheaper. Snap!

No one wants to give their hard earned dollar to jerks! Seriously…no one.

It is no difficult task to generate a rather lengthy list of what annoys us most in our dealings with service professionals – all of which come down to one point, we would all like to be treated graciously or at the very least innocuously. We don’t expect the folks at the counter to make our day sunshine in a cup and it is an absolute thrill when they do, but we sure as shootin don’t expect them to make it worse!

Great customer service absolutely can turn someone’s day around, unless you’re dead inside. In which case you should just go to Harvey’s Burgers and leave the awesome customer service representatives for the rest of humanity. We happen to appreciate the unwarranted smile.

In addition to the many qualities exemplary customer service embodies, solving problems and better yet anticipating them is at the top of the list.

Depending on the line of business, it may not be important for customer service to be a wealth of knowledge. Pleasant manners and the ability to locate information is all that is necessary. But many services that we rely on depend upon informed and experienced folks running the service helm.

Why?

In printing for instance, numerous factors apply. It is indispensable in the reducing of hair loss to deal with someone who knows their business and will catch issues before it goes to press. Let me repeat, before it goes to press. Especially if you need that annual report on the fly! You do not have the luxury of extra time.

The complexity of some designs and the associated considerations could make your head spin – substrates, spot colors, binding, bleeds, crossovers, crimping, folds – the list goes on and on and on. Expertise and experience will make your life far more delightful.

Next time you’re ready to go to press give Bacchus a call. Not only do we answer our phones, you’ll be happy we did. We’re a pleasure to work with and we know printing, so you don’t have to!

Till next time, keep it Green!

A Brief History in Color – Part II

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“It is sometimes said that scientists are unromantic, that their passion to figure out robs the world of beauty and mystery. But is it not stirring to understand how the world actually works—that white light is made of colors, that color is the way we perceive the wavelengths of light, that transparent air reflects light, that in so doing it discriminates among the waves, and that the sky is blue for the same reason that the sunset is red? It does no harm to the romance of the sunset to know a little bit about it.” – Carl Sagan

Poetic and brilliant Carl – it is indeed part of our very nature to attempt to understand the world around us. The perception of color has stirred many a great mind.

As a follow up to last week’s exploration of man’s creation and use of color, we shall now dive into man’s desire to comprehend the mechanics behind one of nature’s greatest gifts…color.

Aristotle’s early studies of light and color yielded the discovery that by mixing two colors, a third is produced. He achieved this by placing a blue and yellow piece of glass one on top of the other, noticing that as light passed through, a third color green was produced.

In 1666 Isaac Newton made a study of color resulting in the Newton Wheel, a tool devised to illustrate the relationships between primary, secondary and complimentary colors. This chart was conceived from his experiments with sunlight by noticing that white light divides into seven different colors when passing through a prism, an effect he coined as spectrum.

Artists adapted this chart to what they knew empirically – modifying his diagram to create a color wheel consisting of the three primary colors- red, yellow and blue with the complimentary color opposite each.

Because Newton did not understand the difference between additive and subtractive color mixing, his observations were argued to be inaccurate or incomplete.

In 1775, a German printer by the name of Jakob Christoffel Le Blon solved many of the practical problems surrounding Newton’s chart. He invented a way of using three different printing plates to create a color picture. Each plate was inked with one of the primary colors, red, yellow or blue – occasionally adding black.

Le Bon was the first person to clearly state that there is a difference between additive and subtractive colors. His method has become the basis for the tri colored printing we do today.

In the 1920’s, working independently, John Guild and W. David Wright set out to determine how the average person perceives color. Two beams of light, containing the three primary colors, were cast on one side of a box while an observer was situated on the other. Looking through two holes, the observer was instructed to adjust the light of one beam until it matched the color of the other.

They found that the same color could be created by many different combinations of red, green and blue lights. This property of color is called metamerism.

Based on Wright’s and Guild’s work, the International Commission on Illumination or CIE set out to define color mathematically for the first time. The intent was to create a language for color which would accurately communicate each variation exactly. In 1931 the CIE color system came into being – using an abstract mathematical model to describe the way colors can be represented.

The CIE color system became the international standard and is still used today.

It is amazing the multitude of experiments, inquiries and discoveries which have lead up to the way man translates color. Our use of color, in an ever expanding range of medium, was first born out of prehistoric man’s motivation to convey the world around them with merely a chunk of dried earth applied to a cave wall.

We have evolved well beyond the cave wall, and the color range far exceed that available to our ancestors. Achieving this range with precision requires skilled technicians when printing.

When you are considering your next printed piece, look to Bacchus Press. We haven’t been around since the stone age…but we’ve got 31 years under our belts!

A Brief History in Color – Part I

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The Red Coats are coming, the Red Coats are coming!

It’s reasonably argued that Paul Revere did not shout this infamous phrase, nor any other, while galloping through Boston in 1775. What is verifiable is that British Army was indeed referred to as Red Coats, for obvious reason. Color!

And color is what we are here to speak of today.

Alizarin , the first color to be synthetically reproduced, was used as a red dye for the English parliamentary “new model” army. The distinctive red color, invoking the reference Red Coat, would continue to be worn for centuries.

What spawned humans’ affinity with color? It’s not as though with the creation of life came tubes of Winsor & Newton’s Alizarin Crimson dangling from fertile tree branches like ripe fruit.

Not only did Alizarin Crimson not blossom out of thin air, ready to be plucked and slathered onto our cave walls, it wasn’t even derivative of a source one could readily see. Its lusty red is produced from a single compound extracted from the roots of a plant by the name of Rubia Tinctorum.

Humans’ first experiments with color weren’t so difficult a process to achieve as was the case with Alizarin. More than 32,000 years ago cavemen began to use color to decorate their cave walls, mark objects and possibly even the skin of their clan. There weren’t men in white coats boiling pots of roots and bark, extracting pigments. Nope. They preferred to keep things simple. Clumps of red and yellow earth – the color we now call Ochre – along with white chalk and soot from the fire pit were all the medium they required to produce their spectacular cave creations.

As time progressed, our process for attaining color became more complex. We didn’t simply grab a handful of clay and paint the town red. We desired richer, more distinct colors that required a bit of labor and ingenuity to achieve.

The Aztecs created a red using the female cochineal beetle. Talk about labor intensive! The color is derived from carminic acid with is released by the beetle to keep other predator insects away and must be extracted from the body and eggs of the lil critter. The Aztecs were so fond of cochineal red that they considered it more valuable than gold. Can’t imagine the beetle was too pleased about being so popular!

The Aztecs weren’t the only ones to go to extremes in order to colorize their world. The Romans had to crush four million mollusks to produce a single pound of their favorite royal purple.

The ancient Egyptians went to great lengths as well. They created many difficult to achieve colors from a variety of vegetables and minerals. The blue we now refer to as cobalt was created from blue glass ground into a fine powder. Ofcourse this required the initial step of creating the glass from sand and copper.

As a language, color has been also used to describe mood and establish authority…among other things.

Romans in high office would wear purple robes indicating power, nobility and thus authority.

The color black, regarded as grief, was a clear choice for Queen Victoria to communicate her sorrow over the death of her husband – a fashion choice which became quite iconic. We’ve certainly all heard the phrases, “I’m green with envy,” or “You’re yellow bellied,” or “I’m feeling blue”.

In addition to being a tool for artistic expression, color was commonly regarded to have healing properties. Multiple civilizations, including The Egyptian, Aztec and Chinese, created documents denoting specific colors as being treatments for various ailments. A 2000 year old Chinese chronicle, The Nei/ching, recorded color diagnoses within its lengthy text.

Today, we see an array of products, literature and therapy devoted to the belief that color effects health, mood and vitality; an ideology based on a theory that each color exists on different frequencies and vibrations. The appropriate color may allow our feelings and emotions to return to a balanced state. One of my favorite items I stumbled upon while researching color was a snappy pair of glasses designed to lift mood through color.

Interestingly, with all of this, anthropologists discovered that many languages contain only two color terms, one being equivalent to white and the other black. For the millions of colors that exist, nearly all have names borrowed on the examples of them, such as avocado, tan, peach and gold. English contains the highest number of unique naming at eleven; black, white, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink, grey and brown.

With so many things volleying for our attention, we likely don’t realize our attention to color, but someone does! There are teams of marketing genius devoting time and study to color in an effort to determine what shade of fuchsia will be best received by their target audience. You can’t just go dropping in a bit of dye all willy-nilly and hope that folks will respond kindly to their tennis balls being colored a shade of pink or their masking tape green.

Achieving perfect color has been a long lived pursuit of man – and not an undertaking for the timid. Even for seasoned pressmen, color can go astray. There are numerous elements skulking in the dark shadows waiting to bungle the ink. The subtleties of some shades take an expert eye and steady hand to mix. It truly is an art.

Entire budgets can set aside for the designing and printing of items as seemingly simple as a company logo. Make no mistake; it takes a high level of skill.

When you’re ready to print, look to Bacchus Press. Our pressmen are experts in color!

*Thanks to Artist & Craftsman Supply in Berkeley
www.artistcraftsman.com

Reference:

hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu

www.brendasemanick.com

www.colorbasics.com

www.winsornewton.com

History_of_painting

A Brief History of Printing

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Gutenberg’s Bible wasn’t first…heresy!

Let’s all take a deep breath. Lower your pitch forks. No need to organize a mob or gather a few choice stones to hurl.

I think we can all agree on one thing- that the invention and subsequent spread of the printing press are among the most influential, if not the single most influential, events in the second millennium AD, revolutionizing the way people conceive and describe the world they live in.

In recent years, Printing has fallen in popularity as a form of communication. With Global Warming and the protection and sustainability of our planet and all her resources being one of the biggest issues we face, many have turned to the digital world for its speedy, chemical and paper free trail -though the electronic world has its own adverse impact on the health of our planet- hazards which are now becoming evident.

As often is the case, that which holds our highest regard is susceptible to the proverbially fall from grace. But before we turn our backs on that which has aptly recorded our worlds’ history, diligently taught our children, provided endless hours of reading pleasure and cushioned the contents of our cardboard boxes marked fragile- crumpled wads of its Sunday best, systematically wedged between wine glasses and porcelain figurines- let’s take a moment to reflect.

Stroll with me along memory lane, revisiting the birth of this incredible tool and uncovering the true identity of the 1st printed book in history.

The printing press, invented in the Holy Roman Empire by the German Johannes Gutenberg around 1440, produced what some authorities have commonly cited as the first printed text –Gutenberg’s Bible. Whether one can say with conviction that this statement is indeed true may depend on whom you ask and what they consider the definition of printing to be.

One may consider the transfer of any characters to paper, clay, fabric and other materials to be a process of printing – a system established thousands of years ago. Taking this position, woodblock printing would certainly make the list of the earliest forms of printing. Many nimble fingers worked arduously to hand carve wood blocks for every page of the Diamond Sutra – which is the oldest surviving example of a printed book containing a verifiable date – dating back to 868 CE.

For those to whom wood block printing does not fulfill their definition, let’s keep trucking along.

Obviously, the more common association to the term implies mass production, involving plates, blocks and moveable type used to transfer ink onto a surface at repetition. Movable type certainly cuts down on the sheer volume of work. With no need to whittle wooden pages, countless fingers are spared the painful affliction of blisters! All of these characters and letters can just be reused and rearranged for the next print.

There is some evidence that the first movable type –which was ceramic–was invented in China by Bi Sheng around 1050 CE. Unfortunately there are no surviving texts, but it is very likely that the oldest printed books are Buddhist texts from the 11th century. It is thought that the ceramic type didn’t have a long shelf life and the Chinese returned to wood block printing as the primary method.

So who brings home the gold? Korea. They can claim the distinguished honor of producing the very first movable metal print book. Printed in 1377, Jikji – a book of Zen Buddhist teachings- passed the finish line a whopping 78 years before Gutenberg’s Bible. The Jikji originally consisted of two volumes totaling 307 chapters. What remains, is safely stored at the National museum of Korea.

In this modern age of speed and technology, take a moment to revisit your own relationship with the printed word and all the wonders and joys that this invention has brought into our lives.

For me, the iPad just doesn’t compare to losing yourself in your favorite second hand book store, leisurely strolling along the isles of previously enjoyed gems -or the anticipation, building as you walk home, debating which of your newly acquired treasures you’ll dive into first.

You curl up with your new paperback, settling into an oversized chair– a few pages in you begin to see the pages dog-eared and well creased from previous readers. You smile. This literary journey has been enjoyed and passed on for you to discover as will the next reader who pulls it from the shelf.

Whether it be electronic or paper, remember that all choices have a cost and benefit. We at Bacchus Press will continue to work towards keeping the option of printing an eco-friendly choice – providing printing you can feel good about.

Until next time, keep it Green!

Another Great Source

Mayhem at the Press – a hero’s story

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“Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds…”

It is the very sentiment that inspired Herodotus’ to write these words – which are inscribed on the James Farley Post Office in New York City – words which brings to mind a tale of heroic proportions – one filled with horrendous storms, plummeting power lines, a book bindery up in flames and the little printing press that could.

What began as an eleventh hour order for a 200 page smythe sewn, bound book –commemorating the 70th anniversary of a notable engineer / architectural firm – quickly morphed into nail biting race to the finish line.

The project, normally requiring a full ten weeks to fulfill, Bacchus Press agreed to complete in three weeks. Ah, but the client ran an additional five days late. Yikes!

With prepress complete, the printers’ proof was ready and the designer was on her way to sign off as the pressmen stood by, waiting for the start gun to fire.

The project was chugging right along with no time to spare.

Hallelujah, the paper arrived and the truck was pulling in, in preparation to unload. Sounding off its safety beep as a warning to oblivious pedestrians, the delivery truck began backing in. Apparently, the high voltage utility pole wasn’t paying proper attention and failed to step out of the way.

CRASH! The truck plowed into the hefty pole while moving at a swift clip, successfully causing the wooden beast to tilt.

Like a bungee cord, electrical lines carrying 10,000 volts temporarily sagged then snapped back, pulling with them the adjacent utility pole. This tug of war ended in severed lines, thrashing and spitting like viperous snakes as they fell to the ground – zapping empty cars and hurling threats at fleeing onlookers.

As though an underground gargantuan creature had been released with proportions so massive even ole nessie would shudder, the ground trembled and quaked with a deafening rumble.

Bacchus Press was down for the count, as were all the neighbors for two blocks in every direction! The computers went black, the presses screeched to a halt as the street exploded and sparked.

The owner stood slack jawed, gaping out the window, watching as electrical lines slammed down atop his car and the delivery truck – releasing venomous sparks and snaps. With no way to warn the truck driver to stay in his vehicle, he could only cringe and hope the young man would know better – which he most fortunately did!

“Ring, ring”, the cell phone went off. The designer was trying to get through but the roads were blocked. Being the Mad Max that she was, she parked and trekked through the treacherous Thunderdome – successfully making it to our door and giving us the green light to proceed.

Not only was there no power to run the job, but the pressmen rolled up their sleeves and embarked on an eight hour task of manually cranking the presses to clean – if not, the rollers would be destroyed.

24 hours lost; the power returned, the paper was finally unloaded from the delivery truck and prepress began the daunting task of creating the 500 plates required to print the jinxed book.

With the presses loaded and running at top speed, our pressmen worked around the clock.

There was no time no time left to ship; a truck was rented, the printed pages loaded and off they scurried through the dark night eight hundred miles to our bindery in Arizona. With deposit paid and time reserved, there was no room for delay. The bindery had courageously committed to completing the impressive task of binding 700 books in three days – mere mortals require three weeks. Our affiliate binder is clearly from the planet Kal-El.

With pages printed and delivered safe and sound, everyone released a sweet sigh of relief…right? No!

The usual calls were made, checking on the status of road weary pages. “Hm, that’s odd. No one is answering the phone at the bindery.”

The first day comes and goes with no word to be had. The bindery is radio silent! 48 hours to go and the client is worried but Bacchus Press kept its cool.

The lonely sound of crickets soon disrupted by the sound of the phone -it’s the bindery atlast!

“A what ripped the roof off?”

“A tornado – a tornado ripped our roof off!”

At this point, one might imagine that god himself…or herself, had taken real issue with this smythe sewn, hardbound commemorative book and the chance of even a single copy of this demon print arriving at the scheduled GALA event celebrating this momentous occasion was bleak.

Against all odds and formidable forces, the powers of Bacchus unite and the book was printed, bound and rush delivered on time.

It is this level of service, impeccable even by the ancient Persian Empire standards, which inspires our clients to return again and again, knowing that their print job, big or small, will be delivered on time and looking oh so very excellent.

Do not underestimate Bacchus Press. Go ahead, take your best shot.

You order…we deliver!

Until next time, keep it Green.

What do spam and Green house gas have in common, besides not being delicious!

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Now let’s just clear one thing up before we get started, Spam the canned meat IS delicious, particularly when you are on a hiking trip. I promise you’ll salivate after a long day of hoofing up them thar hills as a slice’a that is roasted over a roaring camp fire – its unidentifiable juice dripping down the length of that twig you have skewered through it. Yum is right!

Indeed, this satisfying canned substance is not the topic of today’s discussion. The spam I speak of is the sort you find in your email inbox, if not effectively filtered and directed into your trash. These lil buggers are not only annoying, but harmful and costly.

Over 183 billion spam emails are sent hurling through cyber space each day. That’s a lot Carl Sagan!

What in the world does that have to do with Green House gas? Well, it takes energy to generate, screen delete and store these pests. Let’s not even talk about the havoc that could be wreaked upon your operating system after opening an infected one. I know, I know. They call to you like sirens at sea, begging to be opened with tantalizing subject lines such as the following gems I discovered on cracked.com

1. Maintain your weight. amputate.

2. Two days of great sex for under $5

3. Just sign up and understand that your life was suxx before.

4. Hey girl how are things I once was a post man

Enough with the silliness, let’s get back to the topic at hand – the dangers of spam.

Admittedly it is tough to measure the amount of energy consumed by such a tiny lil thing – but it has been estimated to contribute greenhouse gases equivalent to over two billion gallons of gasoline each year. That would be equal to the carbon footprint of driving your car around the globe 1.6 million times.

And those computers we use to receive all these bits of spam often end up in landfills. Less than 20% are recycled. The electronic waste which ends up in our landfills are in danger of leaking toxins – lead, mercury, and cadmium make their way through the soil and into the water we drink and are ingested by the fish we eat. I imagine the fish won’t be too pleased when they catch wind of this. Keep alert on your next fly fishing trip. Those forty pound rainbow trout could be staging a coup.

Let’s talk about storing all those uber important emails we receive. Lots of juicy stuff stored at the data center. These facilities require an enormous amount of energy to heat, cool and power. According to the New York Times, data centers around the world consume more energy in one year than the entire country of Sweden.

In the midst of our rapidly advancing technology, we forget that everything has a cost. Even burning a CD or DVD generates 4 times the amount of CO2 than printing a 100 page four-color report. Those shiny little spheres are very difficult to recycle to boot!

Here’s another fun fact, Swedish researchers found that reading the news online for 30 minutes produces more CO2 per year, per reader than reading a printed news paper. Yes, it actually produces less CO2 to create your news paper each day, all year long. Admit it, you miss sending your four legged, floppy eared pal outside to fetch your paper while you brew your first cup of coffee – your dog, not your significant other. Jeeze you people are twisted!

As responsible folks, we try our darndest to make environmentally sound decisions, but our busy lives require us to take a few shortcuts along the way – shortcuts that Mother Nature doesn’t particularly appreciate. Don’t be hard on yourself. You’re doing your best and you should know that you do make a difference with even the smallest of efforts!

Consider this next time you sit down and prepare to craft a heart melting love email or a sexy text promising a rumpus to remember for under $5 – an actual love letter has been averaged to linger for over 65 years, a text or email, 5 seconds. Or worse, your smoldering hot email might just be rerouted to junk where it will wallow in a sea of spam.

Personalized, eco-friendly cards printed at Bacchus Press would never suffer such a tragic fate. They’d be way to sexy to ever toss. Drop us a line, we’ll help ya create something fetching…you smoldering Casanova, you!

Till next time, keep it green!

A few great sources of information for this blog:

McAfee “The Carbon Footprint of Email Spam Report”
newyorkgarbage.wordpress.com
Environmental Defense Fund
ewasteguide.info
New Page Paper

“It’s not easy being Green!” – Kermit the Frog

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“It’s not easy being Green!” – Kermit the Frog

That ole frog said a mouthful. It’s not always easy being Green. Not to mention downright difficult to ascertain the validity of such claims by others.

Even picking up a few basics at the local grocer can cause you to scratch your head. It gets pretty darn confounding perusing the variety of classifications listed on egg cartons alone – neatly displayed on your grocer’s refrigerated shelves. Organic, Cage Free and Free Range, what’s it all mean? Attempting to decipher the multiple distinctions is enough to make even the brightest feel a bit doltish.

I imagine many of you feel equally mystified around the topic of eco-friendly printing.
Manufacturers make all sorts of claims without proper regulations being enforced. Recycled paper is certainly no exception to the rule; the percentage of post consumer waste used in the production is varied. All recycled papers are not created equal.

How does an average Joe like you and I go about verifying the environmentally friendly status of products and services without spending hours of research?

Luckily, there are a quite a few organizations devoted to the protection of our environment – many of whom you can look to when choosing a printer. The high standards required to garner their affiliation and certification can act as a beacon, guiding consumers to the very Greenest of Green.

Many printers claim to be eco-friendly, advertising recycled paper and soy/vegetable based inks. While these steps are important and certainly do make a difference, these alone do not a Green company make.

A Certified Green company, like Bacchus Press, has made significant changes to their business operation in order to pass a stringent set of requirements set forth by Green organizations.

For companies like ours, it can cost as much as $300,000 to become a Green Certified Business. Lighting, plumbing, electrical – these are just a few on a long list of upgrades necessary to ensure the highest conservation of energy and resources– thus reducing waste and carbon emissions.

Ok Rockefeller, what next? Well, let’s take a look at paper.

FSC and Canopy are two prominent organizations who ensure the safety of our ancient forests and responsible forest management. If either of these logos are associated with the paper your printer provides, you can rest assured that they contain a high level of post consumer waste and come from responsible sources. Please note that just because your printer is FSC Certified, it does not mean that all of the paper they offer is FSC Certified. Don’t worry.
You can always ask your printer for advice. We are very helpful!

As if all of that wasn’t enough; let’s take a look as offsetting carbon emissions. Companies like Carbon Fund, offset energy consumption and carbon emissions by supporting third party projects directed at renewable energy, energy efficiency and reforestation. The dollars contributed through Carbon Fund help finance the future of alternative resources.

Next time you’re ready to place your print order, look to Bacchus Press. We take the guess work out of eco-friendly – providing printing you can feel good about.

Until next week, keep it Green!

Wondering if the term “mill broke” is slang for laid off…it’s not.

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Before we dive into the riveting topic of mill broke, I must inform you that I was unable to uncover a slang term for laid off. I did, however, find a plethora of entertaining urban substitutes for getting fired – all of which pertained to very specific conditions under which the termination was delivered.

Before we begin today’s lesson, allow me to share a few of the gems I found on www.urbandictionary.com.

1. Adobbin – getting fired via mail courier cause you don’t answer your phone.

2. Cyber Sacked – getting fired via email or social networking site.

3. Bangalored – getting fired from a job because it was outsourced to an offshore company

“Ok Bacchus P., enough fun and games,” you may or may not be saying to your computer screen, “what is mill broke?”

Besides being my number one vote to fill a rather important slang gap, it is in actuality the paper trimmings and other paper scrap generated at the paper mill.

WOW is right!

“What happens to the mill broke?” you ask.

Well, it doesn’t receive an unemployment check, but rather it is put right back to work. In various amounts, it is added to paper which has been recovered from responsible recyclers like you and then magically transformed into recycled paper.

Now here’s where the distinction “recycled” gets a bit fuzzy in definition. Hold on to your hat folks, the story is about to peak.

All recycled papers are not created equal. There, I said it!

There are four ingredients that can be used in varying percentages when making recycled paper –

1. Mill Broke – which we’ve covered.

2. Post Consumer Waste– the paper products you recycled. You’re so responsible!

3. Pre Consumer Waste – the paper products that exited the mill but never made it into your shopping cart, such as magazines collecting dust on rack at the checkout stand – though I have seen you secretly leafing through that National Enquirer!

4. Virgin Pulp – wood pulp made from newly cut trees.

Paper manufactures can get pretty liberal with the use of the term recycled. The percentages of recycled material used can range from 10% to 100%, though by E.P.A. (Environmental Protection Agency) standards, recycled paper should contain atleast 30% post consumer waste.

To top it off, some papers don’t even contain post or pre consumer waste. It may only contain mill broke and maybe not much of it.

Here you are loading up your reusable, hemp grocery bag with recycled goods, gleefully skipping down the road thinking to yourself, “Look at me buying recycled paper. I sure do feel good about it!” And you should, despite the fact that you just got bamboozled by a pack of paper touting the recycled logo. Despite the trickery, you can still sleep sound knowing that there are some pretty amazing organizations out there committed to keeping our majestic redwoods and ancient forests safe – organizations like Canopy and FSC.

And, though yes, trees were indeed harvested to make that pearly pack of paper, it may be of some relief to know that most non-recycled papers come from trees specifically farmed for use in paper products, though not cutting more trees is the preference.

To find out what percentage of the paper was made from previously used paper, check the package – it should be listed. You can also ask your printer what percentage of post-consumer waste is used in the papers they offer. Certified Green Printers, like Bacchus Press, generally offer a vast selection of recycled paper, most containing 80% – 100% post consumer waste.

Keep in mind that the right paper makes a difference not only for the environment but for the finished quality of your project, and 100% recycled paper might not be the right one for the job. Our super awesome customer service representatives would just be tickled pink to help you in your paper selection. Really!

Just remember, you can trust Bacchus Press for an eco-friendly and excellently executed print job – the results of which will impress your boss, undoubtedly leading to job security and in turn you won’t find yourself in the unemployment line…mill broke.

Till next time folks, keep it green!

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