This is a guest post by John Simonetta, owner of Proforma Simonetta Freelance, an eco-friendly promotional items consultancy (see proformagreen.com). John’s blogs are designed to keep us up to date on the “greening” of his industry
I like beer. I like pubs.
I guess that is why I am still talking about eco-friendly coasters. As I mentioned before we are doing some research on eco-friendly coasters for Intrepid Travel and now that research has lead me to cork coasters.
And this is the thing, cork has been around forever. According to the dictionary the origin of the word itself dates from between 1275–1325 AD.
This is an old material, but how many of us think of it as a green material? Hemp and Jute have also been around for a long, long time and they are considered green. Why not cork?
The thing that got me thinking about this are these core coaster from Americanna. When I asked Americanna if they had an eco-friendly coaster they immediately came back with cork.
When asked why, they wrote:
“CORK IS A COMPLETELY NATURAL, RECYCLABLE, RENEWABLE, AND BIODEGRADABLE MATERIAL. HARVESTING CORK DOES NOT HARM THE TREE AND IT IS DONE ENTIRELY WITHOUT MACHINERY. OUR CORK IS FROM PORTUGAL’S CORK FORESTS WHICH ARE A PROTECTED RESOURCE THAT PROVIDES HABITAT TO MANY BIRDS AND OTHER ANIMALS INCLUDING RARE SPECIES OF STORK AND EAGLE.”
Who knew?
Also this is in line with the Wikipedia entry which reads in part “The cork industry is generally regarded as environmentally friendly. The sustainability of production and the easy recycling of cork products and by-products are two of its most distinctive aspects.”
Again who knew?
A little more digging showed that in our own catalog we have a lot of items that incorporate cork in some way.
Really, you learn something new each day in this job.
If you want more info on cork coasters from Americanna please visit their website – the cork coasters come in all the same shapes as their recycled jar openers made from old tires – or contact us at info@proformagreen.com
Adventures in Green Marketing 
Thanks for stopping by my “under construction site Green Biz Plan.” I also have the Long Beach Green Business Association site your blog is fantastic lots of great information. Thanks for stopping by and the Green Business Plan site should be finished or rather well underway by the end of the week. I do hope we can connect in the future. I will be having a “Green Your Bottomline” workshop at the Lakewood Chamber of Commerce on November 12 but I doubt you would benefit from it you have plenty of info! OK take care Meredith