Coming Soon

One of my major tasks in the upcoming weeks is forming a sustainability committee at Sportsprint that’s…shocker!…sustainable. Since I’m only working at Sportsprint this summer, every step along the way I have to prepare for my transfer of responsibilities, resources, etc. to the rest of the Sustainability Committee. We need a sustainability committee to meet SGP standards, but it works really well for my situation because we’ll already have a group formed and working toward our goals.

One of the first goals of the Sustainability Committee is making a sustainability policy for our company, which we’ll then make available to the public (so expect a grand unveiling via blog posts soon!). Plus we’ll brainstorm an ongoing sustainability project for the upcoming year…stay tuned!

Another fact (maybe a green fact will become a regular on my blog): we use 80,000,000,000 aluminum cans a year. Can you believe that? On a related note, I need to curb my Diet Coke addiction…

Also, Sportsprint has officially jumped on the Twitter craze.  Check us out!  http://twitter.com/sportsprint

Green is the new black

Has anyone heard of “The Lazy Environmentalist”? He’s this author turned TV show host who shows people how to go green by making changes as integrated and easy changes as possible. Before this summer I think I was falling into a lazy environmentalist category: I recycled, changed my light bulbs, and rode my bike often, but I stopped making changes and came to a stand-still. Now that I’m up to my eyeballs in environmental information, I’m once again becoming cognizant of how to become greener.

Something I’ve noticed that I’m really excited about is how our communities are embracing the green movement. I’m specifically talking about Sportsprint’s home (Ferguson), but it also applies to other towns and communities. One example is The Healthy Planet, a green St. Louis magazine (it’s tagline: Please Read —Then Recycle), which provides articles on going green/green events in St. Louis. Even though it seems small, a local coffee shop now has a recycling bin, as it just started recycling this summer. It’s kind of strange how psyched I was to see their recycling bin, but it’s exciting to see changes, however small, on so many levels.

Here’s more information about The Healthy Planet:

http://www.thehealthyplanet.com/

Also, here’s the link to Ideal Bite, a daily green tip email list I’m on. Today I learned about becoming a vegetarian.  Fun fact: apparently Hank Aaron and Dennis Rodman are vegetarians.

http://www.idealbite.com/

No, we don’t sell lard

Something Sportsprint is very good at already is recycling boxes- cardboard boxes that garments arrive in are used for our shipping. This started for cost-cutting purposes, but it has the double-whammy of being very sustainable.

Sportsprint also buys boxes from a resale company who sells overstock or messed up boxes, so we often deliver our shirts in boxes that have names from other companies. One deliverer particularly noticed this when he dropped off huge Kahlua boxes at a school. Then he had to explain it wasn’t actually a Kahlua delivery. Everybody’s favorite boxes seem to be the ones that just had LARD written across them. I’ll have to take pictures of the next batch of funny boxes.

It’s green! And funny even.

A Green Summer

Our blog is now back in action but under new direction for awhile. My name is Brittany Bernacchi, and I’ll be working on the Greening of Sportsprint this summer (so I will be your go-to blogger for the next couple months). I am a rising senior at Washington University in St. Louis, and I am double majoring in biology and psychology. I found Sportsprint through an internship program at Washington University, and I was quickly drawn to their mission of making their company more sustainable. Even though I am not studying sustainability in school, environmental awareness has always been an interest of mine and has become increasingly more important to me in recent years. I’ve always been a green advocate and avid recycler, so I’m excited to be a part of a bigger scale environmental effort!

My primary goal this summer is to prepare Sportsprint for Sustainable Green Printing (SGP) Certification. This is a relatively new certification: there are currently only nine facilities in the United States who are certified SGP printers. However, many facilities are pending certification, and Sportsprint will hopefully be one of them by the end of the summer. Some of certification’s requirements include creating a Sustainability Committee, developing a Sustainability Policy, and implementing sustainable workplace practices. For more information about SGP Certification and specifics about achieving SGP Certification, please see the SHP Partnership website: https://www.sgppartnership.org/index.php

My first few days here will be spent absorbing as much information as possible, as well as making contacts for the rest of the summer. I will keep you updated with our company’s efforts to green our operation, and I look forward our progress this summer. Please feel free to contact me via this blog or my email address (brittbernacchi@gmail.com) if you have any questions or input for me or my project. Go green or go home!

Robin Smith (Channel 4 news) makes a visit to Sportsprint

Robin Smith from Channel 4 news came by our store last week to find out about our green apparel options at Sportsprint! They’re doing a segment on Going Green every Thursday at 6pm, so they wanted to talk about green clothing options. Check out the clip here:

http://www.kmov.com/projectgreen/multimedia/?nvid=286584

(the coolest part is that her assistant called me out of the blue to ask if they could come and do a story on us in 2 days.. didn’t even send a press release or nothin.)

Even floods don’t keep us from being green

Well I really gotta hand it to our team here at Sportsprint. I know a lot of them still think I’m crazy, but at least they don’t think it’s crazy to be green. While I’m sure there were (and still are) some admitted skeptics, overall our bunch of committed folks has really done a stellar job with reducing waste, recycling all we can, and being conscientious about what we’re doing.

But I really put them to the test last week. Our building was completely flooded in the wake of Ike and Gustav and all those other crazy natural disasters our country seems to be having. (global warming, anyone?) It was devastating. Imagine walking into a 20,000 sq ft building that not only holds all of our screen printing and embroidery equipment, but our inventory of blank goods, finished customer goods, racks of samples, office furniture, file cabinets, and computers, and seeing that the carpet is soaking wet, there are puddles of water throughout the plant, and there’s a layer of dirt over most of the floors. Nightmare, right? Well we have to remind ourselves of what others are dealing with in disasters and be grateful that we didn’t lose even more. But it still sucks. Well chalk another catastrophe up to what our company has weathered in our 35 years of business! We survived a fire in 1990 (which burned a brand new warehouse, printshop and showroom down to the ground), a massive wind and hailstorm that blew part of our roof off of our current building a few years ago, and now a flood.

So how did we deal?

Well, our team pulled together and pulled the carpet up and got it out of here (too bad wet carpet can’t be recycled). Then we had to disinfect everything to prevent mold and mildew. Especially on the drywall. But instead of using bleach, which contains chlorine and is a notorious eco no-no, we went for the green version of bleach – hydrogen peroxide! And its antimicrobial, antibacterial properties went to work while our team went to work removing the baseboards near the drywall and spraying everything down with hydrogen peroxide. After that we cleaned with Simple Green cleaning solution. And the next step is a good powerful steam clean.

So yeah, the floodwater came and went. But our commitment to minimizing our impact hasn’t.

Support Healthy & Active Living – Buy an Organic Trailnet T-shirt!

Just got back from a scrumptious lunch at Hendel’s Market Cafe with Cindy Mense, Phil Valko, intern Stephanie, and volunteer Parks from Trailnet, along with several other folks from the Live Well Ferguson! task force. We convened to talk about possibilities for Safe Routes to School in Ferguson, where a group of folks are determined to make Ferguson a healthy and active community to live, work, and play in. It’s great being part of such a committed group of people.

So what does this have to do with the greening of Sportsprint? Well, on the surface maybe not much. But being a small family business that’s always been based in Ferguson, Missouri, we’re pretty committed to seeing Ferguson thrive as much as our own business. So a while back when we launched our line of EarthDance Tees (check them out in an album on our myspace page now: www.myspace.com/sportsprint ), we wanted to do a t-shirt that emphasized biking, walking and generally being active. An amazing graphic designer, Jake Houvenagle, stepped forth to come up with an awesome design for the tees,

Jake Houvenagle's design

and voila, Trailnet has a super cool supersoft organic t-shirt for sale that benefits their programs, including the Healthy & Active Communities program we met about for lunch today. See, so it’s all connected.

If you want to buy one (and I don’t know why you wouldn’t!), check out Trailnet’s merchandise page.

Phil Valko, Active Living Program Director for Trailnet

Sporting the wasabi-green Trailnet tee

 

I AM ALTERNATIVE ENERGY (back of t-shirt)

Energy audit

Well last week was a very exciting milestone in the greening of Sportsprint.. Doug Neidigh of … came to Sportsprint for the day to do a wholistic environmental audit - to look at our operations, investigate greener manufacturing processes for our company, and make recommendations. We are eager to hear his recommendations.

Yesterday Tim Bennett (the production manager), Dave Goebel (our Missouri Enterprise partner), and I met with Rick Weber, a sales rep for Gateway Screen Products, to learn about the more environmentally-friendly screen printing inks that are available in the marketplace. It was a very informative meeting. I was pleasantly surprised to hear that plastisol inks do not give off VOC’s.. BUT the chemical odor that can be smelled in our plant in the heat of the summer is actually the result of the garment dye evaporating. Apparently when t-shirts are cut, sewn, and dyed, the dyeing process is very chemical-intensive. Poly-cotton blend t-shirts especially give off a smell, since the polyester doesn’t really absorb the dye, it just sits on top of the fiber and is more easily evaporated when the ink is cured in the dryer. With organic cotton tees, this is a non-issue, because in order for the tees to be sold as organic, the dyes have to be low-impact in accordance with GOTS (Global Organic Textile Standards).. another reason to buy organic! (not only for the way the cotton was grown, but also for the dyes that go into the garment.)

Uncle Tim sells organic!

My uncle Tim and I have a very endearing relationship with regards to “this organic thing.” I think it started back when we initiated our office recycling program with Pedro’s Planet last fall and Tim gave me trouble about not wanting another thing near his desk (aka recycling bin). Then I got on his case about his daily trips to QuickTrip to get his and several other coworkers’ cold beverage (iced tea) fixes taken care of in the morning. “Tim, can’t you re-use the same cup-carrier every day? How about we just rinse our cups and you take the same ones to refill every day?” I pleaded. “Molly, I’m recycling paper now, leave me alone, and just go plant some trees,” he joked.

So you can imagine my shock and glee when he came in my office today to look for a sample of an organic hoody. I thought he was kidding at first, but since he seemed to be looking for one right away, I asked if he had a customer interested in organic. “I can find what I need!” he insisted. “Well I might be able to help you find it faster if you want. Believe it or not, I do know about those products,” I responded, referring to my lack of knowledge of any of the “regular” products we carry in our showroom!

“Okay, who makes this?” he complied.

“A company called Continental. And it’s really great because it’s actually manufactured using only wind and solar energy! But that’s going to be pricier. Your best bet is Independent,” I answered, happy to be putting all of my vendor and product sourcing work to good use finally! “Hold on, let me get you the info. I think that’s who just confirmed that they could give us case pricing.”

So I jotted down the info for him, and when walking by my office a few minutes later, he said, “Molly, don’t jump out of your skin or anything, but I met your challenge. They just placed an order for some organic hoodies.” (After presenting the sustainable apparel options that we can make available to our customers at a sales team meeting several weeks ago, I challenged each salesperson to make one “green” sale this spring.

“Way to go, Tim! Now you get a green leaf that I can put up above your desk!” I said, gleaming.

“No, I don’t want that. I’ve got a challenge for you now! You have to sell baseball team uniforms now!” (Baseball is my uncle’s forte.)

“Does kickball count? I’ve sold two kickball teams!”

“No, it has to be baseball!”

(And in case anyone’s wondering, the photo in this post is illustrative of Tim & I’s joking-aroundness. That’s me on the right, in full fall kickball gear, for some reason holding a wiffle ball bat, and Tim looking on with amusement on the left.)

More on Lean, Clean and Green program from Missouri Enterprise

Lean, Clean and Green Makes Good Business Sense

The new Missouri Enterprise Lean, Clean and Green Program leverages resources of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Green Supplier Network, the Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) and the Missouri Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to help small and medium-size manufacturers enhance competitiveness, reduce costs and improve environmental performance. It focuses on regulatory issues, waste generation and disposal, hazardous waste reduction and containment, emissions reduction and energy conservation as well as productivity increases and cost savings.
Program Elements

1. Comparison of your company to similar ones in a national database to determine how you rate in nine key areas.
2. Completion of a questionnaire to develop a basic description of your business and preliminary data about your energy consumption and waste material generation.
3. Development of a Value Stream Map to graphically illustrate the flow of material and information in your operations and the potential for improvement.
4. An environmental assessment and records review focusing on air emissions, wastewater discharges, hazardous waste handling, solid waste disposal, recycling potential and indoor air quality.
5. An energy assessment and onsite facility inspection detailing overall energy consumption and energy conservation opportunities.
All of the data gathered in these steps will be collected and a final report will be developed to document improvement opportunities and recommend actions that a company can take.Follow-Up Meeting

Twelve months after presentation of the final report and recommendations, Missouri Enterprise will conduct a follow up meeting with the company to review progress and help sustain the improvements that have been realized.

Qualifications
To qualify for this program, companies must have less than:• $2 million in annual energy costs;

• 500 employees per facility; and

• $100 million in annual sales.

Davis emphasized that all of the data collected in this program will be held in strict confidence.

To help your company begin a Lean, Clean and Green program, contact your Missouri Enterprise Area Business Manager at 800-956-2682.