Today we write about a company that has learnt about us and our blog posts via Charles Orgbon and decided to give this opportunity a try. We are talking with Margie Campaigne, the owner of Project HOUSE/Green Irene (Household Opportunity to Upgrade & Save the Environment).

She began working on the HOUSE project in the 1970s in an attempt to make households realize and reduce their use of resources such as energy, water, gasoline, packaging materials, etc. She then joined the Global Warming & Energy Committee of her local Sierra Club in early 2007, when she realized that the goals of the HOUSE project and the goals of the Global Warming & Energy Committee were exactly the same. Therefore, Marge decided to bring this project in the 21st century and turn it into a website. „By Earth Day, 4/22/07, Project HOUSE was live.” we love this expression.

But the adventure only began here. Later on, people who were introduced to Project HOUSE asked Margie if she could come into their homes to give personal assistance with becoming greener, so she began to investigate how she might do that, when I discovered Green Irene, LLC. Green Irene was a green project with the same vision and similar goals, the only difference was that they had training and green products to offer. „I took their training in January 2009, and have been active ever since, doing a number of Green Home Makeovers, selling green home products, and tabling at many eco events in the area.”

So, what does HOUSE do? In a few words, but big ideas, it promotes the reduction of our individual, household, community, commercial, and government carbon footprints. This is done by some using the website to help people find tips on how this can be done, by having Margie present at workshops or other events, or having her come to people’s home or business to perform a Green Makeover. What is a Green Makeover, you may ask? (So did we…) „That includes a total assessment of the savings opportunities available throughout the home, yard, and/or business, and then offering recommendations and green products.”

Regarding the green-ness of the person behind the company, Margie states „I am absolutely green!” and it couldn’t be different. She has been eco-conscious for over 30 years. In 2006, she also had a major amount of work done to her home to make it more energy efficient. The result of this makeover that she did to herself is as it follows: „I now have a year’s worth of data on the resulting energy savings, from my local utility’s website showing my home’s energy use over the past two years. My gas usage in terms decreased by 25%. My electricity use in kWh decreased by 44%. Not too shabby, and I still have things to tweak!”

She admits having some help from a couple others on the Sierra committee, and from people she met, who were also presenting green workshops where she was presenting, but this was at the beginning so Margie is „on her own” now and is doing more than great!

In terms of advise, whether to open a green business on your own, or not, her mind speaks simply, but so very eloquent: “Do some research, follow your passion, and go for it!”

This has been the interview for today. Margie taut us that there is nothing you can’t do if you are passionate and consistent about it, so go and get Green!

P.S. Also, on our Facebook account, you can see a story on Margie and Project HOUSE/ Green Irene on CBS News.

Today we continue our Go Green All the Way series with an interview we took to Charles Orgbon, Founder and CEO of „Greening Forward”, an absolutely remarkable person first and foremost for the fact that he is a CEO at the young age of 14.

Charles first started „Greening Forward” when he was only 12 years old and his company is based on educating people in the green spirit, sometime by the power of self-example, sometimes only with kind words or encouragements.

Upon seeing how much litter is on the streets of North Georgia, and in the world in general, and also when he saw the many ways in which nature is neglected by people in general, he took the leap and started this company, which is specialized in educating the masses into living a greener life.

„We work specifically with education, inspiring, and empowering global citizens to make a difference in their environment. We do this through our informative and popular website and community programs. Greening Forward works with school environmental groups, community groups, and other non-profit to pull off events like litter-pick ups, graffiti paint overs, letter writing campaigns, and financially supporting many other events.” says Charles, proud of his accomplishments.

Their organization has gradually grown over the years and also, what is the most important at the moment is that they are in the early stages of planning to apply for 501(c)3 status and this is a huge step. Furthermore, they are trying to help the community by offering a few jobs that are available at this moment. You can see them here: https://sites.google.com/site/greeningforward/employment-oppurtunties.

Being so young of age, Charles admits that he needed the help of some grown-ups to support him and get him where he is today. „I began this organization by myself I had 7 e-mail newsletter subscribers ,but now I have 100 subscribers and 1,200 social networking supporters, two volunteers, two person staff, and 10 board members.”

We must admit that is a lot of work involved in this project, especially coming from a 14 year old High School Student. And such an ambition!.. He first began with an interview at a local TV station but now, 2 years later, Charles in known world-wide as the boy who helps the environment.

When asked about his competitors, he answers as simple as snow: „There are a lot of non-profit organizations like us out there, but how many are managed by a High School Student?” Moreover, his advice to anybody who would want to start a green business is the following: Networking. „You might not be in directly contact with people who can greatly benefit your campaign, but there is someone you know who knows someone. It’s these invaluable connections will help strengthen your work.”

Charles found out about Greenweb on the social platforms – Facebook and Twitter, and we have been talking ever since we got to know each other. One one thing we can say about him is the following: he is an amazing person!

Hello there dear friends,

This is an open letter to all of our friends. As you have seen from the title of the blog post, we interrupt the „Go Green All The Way!” series yet again, so that we can make some statements.

Ever since we began the GreenWeb project, we have received a lot of criticism (and we don’t mean constructive criticism by that) at what we do, and also a lot of „this is not good/not helping nature/ this is only your financial gain and interest” insults (because we consider this insults).

Well, our statement is the following: We are here to stay! We are not here for the money, we are not interested in the fame of being a member of the green word-wide community, and we also do not claim we are perfect in what we are doing.

We have already created our small community of readers, of friends which are interested in us, in our activities, in our articles and we do not want to lose or disappoint them. When we started GreenWeb this spring, while we were doing our researches for the platform and the blog, we saw a green organization, we won’t say it’s name, which, due to the lack of finances was about to close. A number of people were to become unemployed, and the NGO was about to disappear from the face of the earth. But the community that surrounded this NGO stood up and made donations from their own small or big salaries, or maybe from their vacation funds, who knows? The NGO resolved the financial issue, they grew larger and bigger and that was all possible due to the big hearts of the community that surrounded them, due to the kind hearts of people like you.

We were so touched by this event, that we set as a goal for ourselves to have a community that would hear us, help us, and stick to us whenever we would need it. This is our dream, our goal, our target and we try to do as much as possible daily in order to achieve it.

This is our goal, this is our objective for the near future, we don’t care about the money, the publicity. Instead, we want you to feel you belong with our friends.

We want to thank you for supporting us so far, thank you for reading us and thank you for being a FRIEND.

Summer is almost gone and with it, all the goods our earth has to offer. Therefore, before that happens we turned our eyes in search of someone that does not let those goods perish in vain, but actually makes a good use of them in an eco-friendly way.

Today we talk with Rebeca Krones, the Co-owner of Tropical Traders Specialty Foods, LLC. What does she do, to be more specific? Well, that’s where the title of today’s post kicks in: Tropical Traders produces the Royal Hawaiian Honey brand (www.royalhawaiianhoney.com).

Rebeca started the company in 2005, along with 2 other co-founders: her father, Michael Krones and Luis Zevallos. Together, they formed Tropical Traders, in order to fill the need for locally-produced, raw and organic honey within the state of Hawaii and the U.S.

But who gets buzzed by all the bees? you will ask. That will be her father, Mr. Michael Krones. He keeps all the bees in good shape so that they offer as much honey as it is possible, while Rebeca and Luis pack, market and distribute the products.

As it would be normal, when running a business like the one above, the company is not the only green thing in Rebeca’s life. She is an extremely eco-friendly person herself. Besides running a business that is dedicated to supporting sustainable farming, she is “dedicated to conscious consumerism and consumption, while recycling, composting and re-using as much as possible.” Also, another key advice in order piece of advice on her behalf, when owning a green business is making it authentic. “Make sure you can make the process and story behind your product transparent.” Rebeca tells us proudly.

If the green-ness of her business isn’t quite explicit on its own, here is a certification that will prove to you that she means it: the raw and certified organic honey they produce at Tropical Traders is the first product in the U.S. to obtain certified Carbon free status: 100% of the emissions generated by the packaging components, and in the production and distribution of our products is offset by investing in reforestation and renewable energy projects.

Although 2005, the moment when it all started seems a million years ago, they have succeed in this field because of the dedication and hard work they put every day in their products, but also because “we constantly watch the bottom-line and make cash-flow a priority”, says Rebeca.  And the only kind of motivation they need (and they get it day by day) in their customers’ gratitude and addiction to the products. “When I get a phone call or an email telling me someone absolutely loves our honey, it makes my day!”

We wanted to know if they know their competitors and if they ever had any minor quarrel with any of them, but Rebeca, as the kind and gentle person she is, (and she needs to be when handling thousands of angry and stinging bees) tells us that she not only knows very well all her competitors, but also admires them very much and admires their work as well. “I know them, and I admire them, because I know it takes a lot of effort to do what they do.” Thumbs up for the fair play!

She found GreenWeb on Facebook, here: http://www.facebook.com/greenweb and followed the impulse to send us a request to write about her green business story. We hope she isn’t sorry!

So, there you have it: the story of a family who donated their time, efforts and money for the greater good of us having the sweet nectar of buzzzzzing bees at our table anytime.

Today we go back writing about green businesses, businesses that make a difference, which start with a spark in one’s mind and end up with millions of fans and activists. It is important to know that we have no benefit from this, all we want to do is build a community of people that are interested in someone else’s work and ideas and start talking about each other, because communication is the essence in everything.

Today we have the opportunity to introduce to you a very special person, from who we learnt a great deal of new and interesting things. His name is Craig J Clark and he is the CEO at Craig Clark Corporation.

When we first laid eyes on his website, http://www.craigclarkfoundation.org/, we admit we didn’t understand much of it, but when reading more carefully, we realized that he made us understand chemistry in a few simple words and opened our eyes upon simple and very easy-to-do truths.

Craig first started experimenting with splitting water when we was 14 and that is when he realized the power and importance of Hydrogen in everyone’s life. In spite of that, his Hydrogen dream took life in 2010, when his online foundation came to life.

The Craig Clark Corporation, at this stage, is only a hobby business, but his plans for the future are as high as mountains. The main and most important goal is to roll all donations into the construction of solar/hydrogen farms in order to supply the world with solar hydrogen, while the second big plan is to “lift three billion people out of poverty and into a standard equaled to the living standard of Americans”.

What made us raise our eyebrows, metaphorically speaking, on his story, was the fact that he does not consider himself to have a green business (although it is), and he would rather avoid the word “green” in what he is doing, as he does not want to attract anybody’s attention with the “green business” title. “It’s like the title the second coming of the Messiah. Many have claimed this title, but no one in the world has been awarded that title by 1,000,000,000 Christians” says Craig. “I’m not going to add the green label to my web site, just to be successful.” Even though he does not say his business is green, Craig has a CO2 reduction formula that reduces 589 grams of CO2 for every $3, 19 donated.

At the stage he is at, he only takes the business one day at a time, due to his fresh start, but we found out important information about him, that will surely help him develop his strategy in the near future in the best manner he will possibly can. One of these facts is that he is the world’s only binary programmer. “My first binary program was 32 bit digital color which gave birth to the entire digital age. My next invention in the field of binary programming is 1024 bit binary running on a 68 bit processor. This invention corrects my mistakes with the digital age and will cause the entire digital age to be build.”

He has an advice to anybody who wants to start a green business: Be Honest! Build a website, use 100% correct scientific method which will lead to 100% correct scientific conclusions. This is being true to yourself, your business, your clients, and true to the Earth!

New month, new week, new post, new approach – new everything! After the “What is more eco?” and “Green Doodles” series, which we love and really tried to bring to you any amount of new information through them, today is a new and inciting beginning for us again!

In the few months since we started this blog we met a lot of interesting people, companies and projects all interested in being green. Unfortunately, maybe the “eco” trend has flown away or green is not the new black anymore, we don’t know the causes, but the fact is that it is tough to be a green activist in these days. People, either doesn’t care about what you do, or think that is not so important.

Therefore, we sat and think what we could do to help new and interesting green businesses to be heard, and so came the “Go Green All the Way!” idea. It is very simple: we give anybody who wants the opportunity to tell their story. The green one. We want to give everybody the chance to express their beliefs, methods, and means of being green and helping the environment in the best way they can. Maybe you learn from them. Maybe there is something new in the “green business field” that you didn’t know, or maybe you are just curious. Whatever of the three above, we are sure that something will get you interested!

We have first met Andrea through Twitter, when she mentioned that she monitors her website’s CO2 emissions with the help of our script. We thanked her politely and then searched her on Facebook to see her page. We liked it and told her a few words. This happened more than a month ago and since then, not a day has passed without a least saying “Hello!” She has become more that a customer to us, she is our friend. That is the reason why it went without saying that Acailawen Designs was the first green business to talk about.

After we talked to her a few times, it became obvious that Andrea Acailawen has been an environmental activist ever since before she was brought to life. Unlike many others that use green as a marketing method, she has embraced the green way of living in her own personal life, alongside with her husband, photographer and partner to Acailawen Designs, Christopher Wright.

Andrea first started in the jewelry fashion business in 2005, when she was doing prop pieces for photography, but it was much later, in January 2009 that she opened her own jewelry design pieces for customers, without leaving the people she has been working for all those years, though.

“Acailawen Designs offers its customers an elegant selection of couture jewelry and accessories in a growing series of collections that are hand-crafted with a commitment to environmentally responsible design practices” says Andrea, but what exactly makes her work environmentally friendly?

She works in an industry that is traditionally known to be dirty in the eco way. Sources materials that she works with, as well as manufacturing processes have a lot of issues surrounding them, so, in order to minimize the impact of her company over the environment, she has experienced and learned to do things in a much safer way.

Firstly, she makes sure that the materials used in crafting the jewelry is coming from a responsible source. Also, as a designer, she took the No Dirty Gold pledge and she refuses to use gold that comes from dirty mining practices. In addition to that , and maybe the most important thing, all of the silver and more that half of the copper, bronze and brass that she uses in her art are reclaimed from recycled materials.

The process in which she obtains the materials she uses is unique to those that work with metals. The metals are reclaimed from recycled materials. It’s a meaningful distinction in the jewelry community, because it defines how the material is collected. There’s more to it than recycling an old object into a new one. The process involves a mixture of metal extraction and reuse of unused scraps – making it unique.

Metals can also be reclaimed from leftover scraps that are saved from other jewelry and metal projects. She collects up all of the leftover scrap metals from each project she does, including wire, sheet scraps and even metal shavings. When she has collected enough of it, she melts it down and turns it into ingots that can then be pressed back out into new wire or sheet. She also obtains leftover scrap metals from others who would normally just discard them.

Last, but not least, organic and biodegradable alternatives to toxic chemicals are used, whenever it is possible.

These are a few of the practices that she does in the studio to reduce her company’s CO2 emissions, but surely not all of them.

Since she is so dedicated to helping other artists and artisans, as well as anyone activating in the green field of business, she also gives everyone an advice that is clearly to be heard: “First, assess the type of business that you run and determine its strengths and weaknesses, from an environmental standpoint. Then, look for ways to build upon your company’s strengths, while reducing its weaknesses. Writing a green business plan to grow your eco-friendly business is incredibly helpful.”

At the end of our discussion we asked her what was her opinion about Greenweb, and especially about monitoring your website’s CO2 emissions. “It’s too important and easy not to.”

Today is our forth and final (until further notice and request) part of out Green Doodles. What we must say is that we had enormous fun writing them, and even more fun researching upon them. And we really hope that you have fun too reading them.

Some of the things we wrote here were out of our curiosity for them, but some of them were written as a request from our readers, which wanted to know more on green tea, aliens, the green M&Ms and so on.

Green Tea

We have to start by saying that there is no other food or beverage that is known to have as many positive health benefits as green tea, and to prove it there are record showing that the Chinese used it as a medicine ever since 4000 years ago. Green tea has been used as both a beverage and a method of traditional medicine in most of Asia, including China, Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, Korea, India and Thailand, to help everything from controlling bleeding and helping heal wounds to regulating body temperature, blood sugar and promoting digestion.

The secret of the green tea lies in its high content of anti-oxidants, which are extremely efficient in preventing and also curing cancer, lowering the LDL cholesterol and inhibiting the abnormal formations of blood cloths that lead to thrombosis.

What makes green tea so special, among the other forms (black, oolong) is the way in which it is processed. Green tea is made from unfermented leaves and reportedly contains the highest concentration of powerful antioxidants called polyphenols. By contrast, black and oolong tea leaves are made from fermented leaves, which results in the EGCG being converted into other compounds that are not nearly as effective in preventing and fighting various diseases.

Since we don’t want to go any more into its curative properties, we are sure you know all the diseases green tea is good for, or into its etymology since it is far too complicated for us, we thought that might be of interest are the various tea drinking customs.

There are several special circumstances in which tea is prepared and consumed, some of which you can find here:

• Serving tea as a sign of respect – in Chinese society, the younger generation always shows its respect to the older generation by offering a cup of tea.
• Serving tea at a family gathering – Chinese family values are shown by how often younger and older families meet and serve tea together.
• Serving tea to apologize – in Chinese culture, people make serious apologies to others by pouring tea for them.
• Serving tea to express thanks to your elders on one’s wedding day – in the traditional Chinese marriage ceremony, both the bride and groom kneel in front of their parents and serve them tea. That is a way to express their gratitude.
• Serving tea to pass on the tradition.

In Japan though, tea has been brought about 1000 years later, in the 9^th century, form China, by the Buddhist monk Eichu, this according to the legend. The form of tea popular in China in the era when Eichu went for studies was “cake tea” – tea compressed into a nugget. This then would be ground in a mortar, and the resulting ground tea decocted together with various other herbs and/or flavorings.

Quotes about “GREEN”

Green has not only been a source of health, food, beverages and many more, but it has also been an inspiring source of different quotes and funny sayings, some of which, we will give you right now:

• If you refuse to be made straight when you are green, you will not be made straight when you are dry – African Proverb
• If I keep a green bough in my heart, then the singing bird will come – Chinese Proverb
• Lord, keep my memory green. – Charles Dickens
• O! beware, my lord, of jealousy; It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on – William Shakespeare
• An optimist is a person who sees a green light everywhere, while a pessimist sees only the red stoplight… The truly wise person is colorblind. –  Albert Schweitzer
• You could cover the whole earth with asphalt, but sooner or later green grass would break through – Ilya Ehrenburg
• A hedge between keeps a friendship green – German Proverb
• The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. – Dutch Proverb
• One piece of green wood is enough to stop the others from burning. – Bahaya proverb
• Green maize abounds at the houses of those without teeth – Shona Proverb
• Three things cause sorrow to flee; water, green trees, and a beautiful face – Moroccan Proverb
• Green with envy = appearing jealous; appearing envious.
• Sure as God made little green apples = absolutely certain.
• Have a green thumb = to have the ability to grow plants well.
• Green around the gills = looking sick
• Give somebody/something the green light = to give permission for someone to do something or for something to happen.
• The green-eyed monster = the feeling of being jealous.
• The rub of the green = if you have the rub of the green, you have good luck, especially in a sports competition.

Why are aliens green?

Why we chose “aliens” as our final topic for today’s doodles? Apart from being a requested topic, we were interested ourselves to find out why, in the acceptation of so many, are aliens always depicted as green little monsters. Here is what we found out!

Considering the fact that aliens are, in fact strange to our knowledge, we can only think of the answers to this question. And for that, we have three variants. The first of them is that taking into consideration that nobody has yet seen creatures from outer space, and that at this point into history they are imaginary, green is really the alien color for skin. Coloring their skin green, in our imagination is nothing but the attempt to separate them, in our minds, from the society. So in early space fantasies and science fiction stories, one way to make them appear extremely different from us was to imagine them as having a completely nonhuman color.

The other hypothesis, that is somehow related to the one stated above is that if you stick to nonhuman colors for skin, you can stay completely away from any racial associations or symbolism, in much the same way that Sesame Street has a lot of blue guys and other toy colors for people.

Finally, once “little green men” became a cliché for Martians, the cliché kept repeating itself. In cartoons, all you have to do is show little green guys with some kind of weird things around their heads or faces, and the audience knows you mean space aliens. It’s an easy kind of shorthand for humorous purposes.

If, in fact aliens do exist, we believe it is a matter of one’s choice. So far the skeptics have their disbeliefs, while the believers have reason to think they are true. What is true is that we have now finished our green doodles’ chapter number four and we really believe you loved it!

Although many people use the word “green” several times a day, constantly, how many of you have ever researched a bit over what green really means or has meant in the past. We were curious to find out the answer, so starting today we will try to sum up the most important features that must be known by everyone, when talking “green”.

The color green
Of course, we have to start with the most basic of all meanings, and that is the color green. According to Wikipedia, the color green is not a primary color, since it is created by mixing blue and yellow, or cyan and yellow. Looking at it on a RGB color wheel, the complement of green is magenta; while on a color wheel based on traditional color theory (RYB), the complementary color to green is considered to be red.
There are 57 different shades of green attested in the world, and when you look at them, you can actually see the difference! The natural greens, from forest to lime, are seen as tranquil and refreshing. Green is considered the color of peace and ecology and it affects us at a physical level in different ways: it relaxes us mentally, as well as physically, it helps us get over depression, nervousness, and anxiety and it offers us a sense of renewal, self-control, and harmony.

Green Holidays
The most well-known holiday all around the world that uses a bunch of green is Saint Patrick’s Day. This holiday was originally a Roman Catholic feast day for Ireland’s patron saint, celebrated only in Ireland since before the 1600s. But it evolved into a secular holiday in the 1700s, when Irish immigrants had the opportunity to make a political and cultural statement along with celebrating St Paddy’s Day abroad.
Nowadays, it evolved into a transcontinental holiday, being celebrated all over the world, from Taiwan to Oslo. But why the color green? According to some sources, blue was the first color associated with St. Patrick’s Day, but that started to change in the 17th century. Green is one of the colors in Ireland’s tri-color flag, and it has been used in the flags of several Irish revolutionary groups throughout history. Ireland is the “Emerald Isle”, so named for its lush green landscape. Green is also the color of spring, the shamrock, and the Chicago River, which the Midwestern city has dyed green on St. Patrick’s Day for the past 40-odd years.

Green in urban legends
This urban legend about green that we learned from Urbanlegends.com it has first seen the light of day in America, in the 1970s. What do chocolate, green, ladies and fertility symbols all have in common? Our urban legend of today: green M&Ms are aphrodisiacs.
We all know the graphical representation of the red M&M and the yellow one, but how many of you have seen the Mars Company representation of Green M&M? Not many, I know, because a lot of controversy has been floating around this particular sweet candy. I’ve have heard it theorized that the color green has been a symbol of fertility from time beyond history, but nothing convinces me that tale has a solid truth behind it.

The interesting part of this story is that in 1991, “a smart cookie with a head for a fast buck”, Wendy Jaffe, picked up on the ‘Green M&M’ myth and went in business producing generic green chocolate filled pill shaped candies she named simply ‘The Green Ones’. In order to advertise her candy as much as possible, she started affirming “They make you horny”. Just to prove it, she went on a TV show, “Studs,” and dated two men from the show. One man she gave a package of her candy, the other she didn’t. One man got much more action than the other. This proved positive the magical power of her candy. But this didn’t matter for Mars Company, which decided to sue her for her action.
In the end, the good folks over at Mars denied the Green M&M having the power to seduce anything more than that big dumb M&M yellow peanut.

This completes our doodles for this week. We hope you had fun finding out new and interesting things about Green. Check in with us in the next weeks, to find out more and more about it.