My work at EcoMetro is divided into two categories: Writing short articles and editing bloggers on the website, and writing and creating interactive content for the print books (circ. 100,000 in 09)’. EcoMetro is part of Celilo Group Media, a green lifestyle media company.

• Print Guides in 6 cities

• Creation and editing of the ecometro website

• Interactive print content (my favorite!)

For a description of the process and how I work:

• The story of the revamping the print guides in their 7th year

and

• Creating the website from scratch–coming soon. We started from wireframes, up from there.

Plenty Magazine, Issue 14

GreenPrint’s Green Prince, Portland Tribune, Nov 14, 2006

Note: This same article turns up in a lot of other search results for papers within the Pamplin Media Group, such as the Tualatin Times.

A stint working at Ford of Europe, where the printers overflowed with superfluous pages, got Hayden Hamilton thinking, then acting. The result: GreenPrint’s application, which detects the unnecessary pages in a print job and alerts users.

Full text
We expect a lot from computers, but sometimes they deliver things we don’t want, like pleas from Nigerian diplomats, offers for discounted hair loss products and that extra page or two of gobbledygook that often comes out when we print.

Most people just shrug off the problem, but for Hayden Hamilton, those excess pages represented an unnecessary waste of money, waste of paper and an opportunity to create entrepreneurial software. Hamilton’s concern led to his just-launched company, GreenPrint.

The concept for GreenPrint emerged when Hamilton, 29, a Portland native, was consulting at Ford of Europe. He says he discovered in Ford’s office “10 print stations with two or three printers each, overflowing with orphaned pages.”

He already had been thinking about paper waste while on a fellowship to study ecotourism in Southeast Asia in 2000 (he has an MBA from Oxford University), where quality paper was scarce.
Expertise in the paperless realm

The scarcity of access to quality health care had been Hamilton’s cause before he turned his attention to overflowing office printers. In 2004, he founded ProgressiveRx.com, offering prescription drugs on the Web at 80 percent to 90 percent below U.S. retail prices through an office in Bangalore, India. The next year he founded the nonprofit Progressive Health Worldwide, which works to supply medical supplies and techonology to African agencies.

About a year ago, he began working with friend James Kellerman, whom he had met at Ford, to acquire investors and develop a beta version of GreenPrint.

For software development they teamed with Aditi Technologies in Bellevue, Wash. Just over half the company budget has come from Hamilton’s own pocket.

The GreenPrint software, Hamilton explains, “works on an algorithm that screens pages for common waste characteristics — a page with only a URL, or the legal jargon after an airline ticket — and highlights the page.”

In plain English that means that after opening a document and hitting the print button, the standard print window opens. After a few clicks to select the program from the printer list, the waste page appears in red. The elimination is confirmed with another click, and the document sent to print without the extra page.
Users can see savings mount

One especially nifty tool that will appeal to techies and environmentalists alike is a waste prevention monitor. It tracks the number of sheets prevented from printing and converts it to money saved (in ink and paper) and — most entertaining — the number of trees saved.

Users can track their individual savings and their company savings overall. Hamilton estimates that “a large organization could save 10-plus trees a day.”

Another function included in the software is a PDF writer similar to Adobe Acrobat. The function provides a one-click way for users to save documents off the Web, such as receipts or articles, as PDF files, which serve as an alternative to printing.

In addition to saving resources, there is the social impact of a program that reminds users of the environment every time they print.

Kim Silva, a foundation specialist at the Outdoor School of Multnomah County, which will be receiving several gift copies of GreenPrint, says, “Not only will the software save paper and printing costs, but it is also a product that fits strongly with the Outdoor School message. We can demonstrate to our students how to conserve.”

Environmental groups American Forests, Arbor Day and the local organization Friends of Trees also have endorsed GreenPrint. Scott Fogerty of Friends of Trees says his group supports the program because it promotes the idea that “green practices make good environmental and economic sense.”

GreenPrint has growth aspirations including a Mac version, a carbon credit program and a map on the GreenPrint Web site that Hamilton hopes will show “where savings are preventing deforestation and how that is reducing greenhouse gases.”

With a company of 10 based in Portland and a number of environmental supporters, Hamilton has another ambition:“We hope to save 1 million trees by the end of 2007.”

On the Web

• www.printgreener.com

• The home version will be $25 for an introductory month, then it will be $35. The enterprise version will be $70. The software only will be available for download via the Web site.
Vital stats

• Number of sheets of paper per year the average U.S. office worker uses: 10,000

• Number of sheets of paper the average tree produces: 8,300

• Percentage of the world’s paper the U.S., with less than 5 percent of the world’s population, consumes: 30

• Percentage of wood pulp that goes toward paper production: more than 40 pecent

Sources: CNN, www.reduce.org

Junk to Funk is a recycled fashion show that started the year I wrote about it and has since sold out entire show halls!

Appeared in the Portland Tribune Sustainable Life Section, Nov 2006.

Full text:

From trash to fashion
Sustainable Life: Artsy types take rubbish to runway, raise cash for environmental nonprofit

How much funk can be created from junk? At Portland’s first Junk to Funk: Recycled Fashion Show Contest, crafty locals will sashay down the runway in outfits made from curbside flotsam and Dumpster jetsam.

Junk to Funk, which calls itself “a night of trash, fashion, art and sustainability,” will feature 27 items of “wearable art,” including a kimono crafted from windsurfing sails, a mermaid tail woven from bicycle inner tubes, and a crayon suit complete with a Crayola-spiked mohawk.

Portland city Commissioner Sam Adams will emcee the event and will appear in recycled wares. Ticket sales will benefit Orlo, a local nonprofit that raises awareness about environmental issues through the creative arts.

Organizers Lindsey Newkirk and Elizabeth Fowler started the show as an experiment, with an open call for submissions of “fashion made out of found objects, recycled materials, and things you normally might find in the trash.”

In response they received nearly 40 entries, some from as far as New York City and Washington, D.C. Junk to Funk also gained sponsorship from local organizations and from the New Belgium Brewery and ReadyMade magazine, a favorite of the crafty crowd.

The majority of the ensembles were made by locals, most of whom are involved in the arts, but a few are full-time fashion designers. The challenge of using recycled materials appealed to sculptors, arts administrators, and others who saw opportunity in discarded objects.

A panel of local judges from the Metro Council, SCRAP, Orlo, Portland Sweatfree coalition and the Office of Sustainable Development also will be dressed in recycled clothing.

First, we looked at the layout, and divided each page into chunks, or content wells, of varying sizes. A small inset would have a picture and quote or fact. A picture representing the content would appear every other page. Then, we would put interactive pieces, such as a home energy analyzer, on the righthand side where it’s easier to write on the books.

To create a friendly, personal voice, I introduced a “we” and “you” and injected some opinion (”we find this blog useful”). Chapter headings standardized to include verbs. Information went from bullet points into paragraphs, with sentences structured to include urls and phone numbers in parentheses, and with business or blog names in bold. Narrative paragraphs were actually the original style of the books, except without referencing websites or phone numbers for more information, so the slide back to a chatty style wasn’t too much of a leap for readers. Example:

In 2007: Header: Energy Saving Products. Table with headings: Product/Look For/Incentives. Product: Lighting. Look For: Compact fluorsescent lightbubs (CFL) and spot lighting for specific area. Incentives: Receive free CFLs with a Home Energy Review

In 2009: Header: Save Energy. 1 paragraph. Sub-heading: CFLs, better and brighter. Text: Some of the early compact fluorescents emitted a light that some perceived as weak or unflattering for living spaces. CFLs are now availabe in a variety of models with varying qualities of light. Use the interactive (and cool) Choose A Light Guide at Energy Star (energystar.gov) to determine what shape, voltage, and quality of light you need.

To make it possible to write each city, I draft standardized paragraphs about a topic and plug in the relevant local information (for example, a chapter on selecting organic cotton clothing, with a local business plugged in). The chapters covered in each book cover these 12 topics on two page spreads. Linked are examples of each, from varying cities:

• Eating local
• Farmers markets (mostly research)
• Save energy
• Use clean energy
• Gardening
• Green home/green building
• Recycle anything
• Community/volunteering
• Green clothing
• Pets (or kids, depending on the year)
• Go by bike
• Take transit

Admission: I’ve never been to Minneapolis, or Silicon Valley, or Denver (since I was 13), but I write about each in these annual green living guides and coupon books as if I live there. Remote research is surprisingly fun!

Pro tip: I use Google street view to describe something I’m writing about from afar. Zoom in on a park, landmark, or store and you’ll get a sense of the neighborhood and be able to use descriptive, lively words as if you walk the streets every single day.

Each of these books is 25% resource, 75% coupons. Businesses much meet a strict environmental criteria. In new cities, we pass a draft by local government and utilities to ensure accuracy. In following years, we pass a draft by the local marketing team. But much of it needs to be correct the first time, so self editing and fact checking is important, as well as writing material that will be accurate for the one year shelf life.