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.

We are up to great things and that is for sure! And because we want you to know what exactly are we doing and be a part of our big community, today we will take a break from our usual blog posts and share with you the latest news on what GreenWeb is up to!

Let’s see how it all started. When we first started GreenWeb, as a small team and without much interaction in the business domain, we began by searching big companies in our domain of activity and studied the path they went on, what helped them succeed and what motivated them to go on. After researching this field for a time, we ran into www.startupbootcamp.dk and so we thought that applying to their program wouldn’t hurt anyone. And it paid off!

As we speak, we are in Copenhagen, Denmark, because we are amongst the 10 teams that Startupbootcamp selected for their program this year!

Startupbootcamp is a member of Techstars global affiliate program and it has been put together by Alex Farcet, an “entrepreneur, business angel, board member, startup coach and independent consultant” as they describe him and Rainmaking, which is a partner-based company in the business of starting companies.

We will stay in Copenhagen for 3 months and with the help of a bunch of specialists, mentors and people who want to see us rising higher and higher we will try (and succeed) to develop GreenWeb into a big, solution-finding oriented company that will hopefully challenge Greenpeace. (We are just joking about that.)

What we hope on your side is that you continue to be as supportive with us as you have been so far, wish us all your best and stay tuned to see the changes.

Following our last week’s article, we asked ourselves and we asked you another question regarding the carbon dioxide footprint of new technology and our daily actions:

Which is greener – a digital photo frame or a paper photo album?

Every special event, every happy or less happy moment is marked in our minds more or less, depending on the occasion. But try to remember what dress you wore at your cousin’s wedding, so you don’t dress the same way at her baby’s christening… It all becomes a bit foggy now, doesn’t it? In order to prevent such a fashion disaster like this, or just to genuinely smile on reminiscing beautiful memories from your own wedding, you come down to photos. They enrich our lives with beautiful moments, that otherwise would have stayed in the shadow of oblivion.

We all have photo albums at home, with tons of photos from weddings, birthdays or parties. For example, an average wedding will results in hundreds of photos, although usually only the best of them are selected and printed. The exact number varies greatly from photographer to photographer, depending on their skill and speed, but we can easily imagine ending up with over 1000 raw photos after a whole day of shooting (this figure refers to digital photography, not film). From these, only the best ones are selected, edited and printed and you would end up with around 100 images (more or less depending on how big the final album is).

So, what is the carbon footprint of a 100 photos?

It all depends if the photos are printed at a professional shop or if you print them yourself (it can get up to 4 times cheaper!). Traditional photo processing is very water-intensive, it uses caustic chemicals, and it can release silver into the environment. If you use a color laser printer, or even an inkjet printer and special photo paper, you can also obtain good images at a lower cost for the environment, although the quality is not as good as professional printed photos. According to Yahoo Green, even if laser printers are more expensive than inkjet printers, you also get fewer printed pages per cartridge with an inkjet than you do pages per toner cartridge for a laser printer and the cost-per-page is less for a laser printer. Also, they say that inkjet-printed paper is almost impossible to recycle. Keeping that in mind, it seems obvious that you are better off printing your images on a laser printer.

Other article written by Brian Nadel, makes an interesting analysis regarding the energy cost of a printed photo, saying that printing 10 individual photos uses 0.2 kilowatt hour of electricity, so 100 sheets would consume 2 kilowatt hours of juice. Of course, the number can vary depending on how much electricity your printer consumes, but if we use it as a reference and consider printing a photo per page, our 100 photos for the wedding album will release around 0.91 kg of carbon dioxide only for printing. Keep in mind that this doesn’t take into account the carbon footprint of the actual album, which will add more to this figure.

On the other side, let’s suppose that instead of a classic photo album, you want to use a digital photo frame to display the 100 photos. Digital photo frames are more expensive than photo albums you print yourself, but you can use them to display the images in different ways, with music and transitions. Another disadvantage is that they need electricity to function, so they are not environmentally sensitive. An 8-inch frame consumes 7 watts or 61.3 kilowatt hours of power over a year, according to our Kill-A-Watt testing over a short period of time (says tomsguide.com ), the equivalent of about 27.58 kg of carbon dioxide. Even if nobody is watching, a digital photo frame will need electricity to power it. So far, we didn’t consider the footprint of making a digital photo frame and how are these recycled, but it is clear that classical photo albums or photo frames are more environmental friendly.

After an album is made it has less impact on the environment and lasts for a longer period of time (I am sure that your grandparents still have their wedding photo album, while you lost some great pictures from you holiday last year by mistakenly erasing them from your computer.) Considering the fact that your photo stack increases constantly over the years, you might end up with a bulk of photo albums that, although look very nice in your livingroom and preserve your photos, are heavy to use and it’s even harder to remember what photos are in which album.

However, although a digital frame might cost a bit when purchased, in comparison to the costs of printing all the photos every time you make them, and the fact that the photo paper is not recyclable, it’s a trifle.

Printed photos for most people might be more environmentally sound and have a somewhat smaller carbon footprint. That said, there is much that the photographer can do to improve his or her impact – use more environmentally-friendly chemicals (they do exist), being careful of water use and reusing chemicals where possible. Disposal of used chemicals must be done safely and in accordance to local laws.

Overall, digital photo frames may consume energy over and over again, but this adds up to 61.3 KWH/year, which you can save in a matter of months if you remember turn switch the light bulb off every time you exit a room.

• If you want to watch the same 10 or 100 photos again and again for a long period of time, you shouldn’t even think of a digital photo frame because it consumes energy for no good reason.
• But if you like to constantly change the photos around you, you might consider a digital frame, as it’s costs and CO2 emissions cushion.

The exchange of information via the Internet increases rapidly. This is a fantastic development that has made many things a lot easier, faster, less expensive and environmentally friendlier. The volume of the total consumption of the Internet and IT, however, has become so high that the total strain on the environment has become a factor worth looking into.

When we use the Internet, we consume power. Any website has a carbon footprint and for this reason, it contributes to climate change. A certain site has a carbon footprint because electricity is required to power the servers that host that website, the computers used to view it, and the global networks that connects them. Much of that electricity is created from the burning of fossil fuels, like coal, oil and natural gas, all of which emit carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

GreenWeb is an innovative project, in which we strongly believe, that will help everybody, from mothers that blog about effective methods on how to keep their child healthy, to big companies and every site owner regardless of the content or number of visitors. GreenWeb monitors registered websites against CO₂ emissions and takes effective measures to make those websites energy-efficient and carbon neutral.

That is what we do. How do we do it? By taking in consideration all the power consumption devices that are implied when browsing a website, calculating the amount of CO₂ emissions generated per website usage, purchasing green certificates to neutralize your website’s CO₂ footprint, sponsoring NGOs to plant trees. These few steps make a huge difference. It’s the same like eating an organic tomato or a regular one. Although it might seem that it makes no difference, you know it does differ at every single level: the taste, the smell, the fact that it is a healthy vegetable; everything tells you that it is the right way to eat. That is exactly what we are trying to do with GreenWeb platform: show you that there is an ecological way to blog, chat, work, and talk to friends. And, like in the case of the tomato, once you’ve seen the results, once you’ve ”tasted” it, there’s no turning back.

As we like to do things in the right way, it only comes natural to introduce ourselves. We are a few that hope to make a lot of difference; for any more information that you might consider interesting, please click here.

Here at GreenWeb.org we not only love what we are doing, but also we are certain this will make a difference and we will prove it to you! Apart from the website, where you can find all the information that you need to understand how the GreenWeb platform works, we also bring to your attention this blog page, because this is the interactive part of the project.

Very soon you will be able to find here different poles regarding “What is more eco?” – we love to keep you informed – and for this, we promise to offer you a highly researched answer each time. Later on, in a few weeks, we will hold contests where you can show us that you are an eco-friendly person and you care for the world we live in. We want to get in touch with you, find out what you think, what you believe in, what you want and for that you can find us on Facebook and Twitter too.

We would like not only to bring you a product, but also to be part of your community, friends, and, why not, your life. We want YOU to want to make something good for the environment!