On the F train this morning, I saw an NYU Continuing Education ad featuring a lady reading what seems to be NYU’s course catalog, with this sentence floating next to her head,

There are already five courses I want to take, and I’m only on page twenty.

Holy schnizel! Somebody get me a copy of that catalog!!

Looking at the courses highlighted by NYU… a lot of business related courses. Nothing on the environment. So maybe it’s too much to ask for all of us to become environmental engineers, but how about some courses that teach us how to be a bit nicer to this land we live on?

In our latest project with Dino, we looked into many options when choosing the paper for their stationary and menu. The problem with recycled paper is that there are not that many different styles (or at least we didn’t find any). We ended up using Neenah’s new Eames paper collection, which uses just 30% recycled material, but the texture is beautiful. For the letterhead and some of the menus, we used their Environment series, or more specifically, the FSC Certified paper. It was a half-educational choice - we are not that aware of the options we have, and looking around on the internet we could glean only so much information. We would liked to have found out more about recycled paper in general, and options in printing. All that paint cannot be good - but what choices do we have?

Or can we think beyond all of this? I personally think business cards are such a waste of paper and ink. Thick business cards are in, and for good reasons - nobody wants a card that’s flimsy. And I understand you want the card to look spiffy to respresent your business. But there must be alternatives. What else in our profession besides paper and printing that we can be more environmentally conscious of?