Official EchoMerx Blog » Green Works

Paper or Cloth Bag in Italy

EchomerxBlog — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 06:45:36 +0000

New year will see Italy’s plastic bag ban in full swing. The ban passed in Y2006 will give Italian shoppers only two options: paper or cloth when shopping.

Green work #5: Reuse Costco produce tray to organize warehouse

EchomerxBlog — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 07:20:16 +0000

Over the years, I have asked a few business owners how much they usually spend on storing racks and bins for their warehouses. As I expected, the costs ranged from a few hundred bucks to thousands! If you aren’t quite ready to spend this much money and time, you can get your racks and bins set up in just a few minutes; and best yet, it costs absolutely NOTHING!

I came across some sturdy grocery boxes at Costco, and realized that these boxes would serve as perfect storage bins for many small businesses. Here are a few things I particularly like about these boxes:

1. Since these boxes have open end design, the space between 2 stacked bins allows you to check the contents of each bin, as well as reach the products you need to grab, without having to remove surrounding bins. What I do sometimes is cut off a small portion of the box to get an even bigger “window.” (See 1st image)

2. You can stack up as many bins as you like, since they fit right over each other. Yep, building your own rack couldn’t be easier!

3. Corrugated boxes are very sturdy, many can hold up to 20 lbs.

4. Most boxes are made from recycled materials and can, of course, be recycled as well. By reusing these boxes, you know you’ll be helping the environment at the same time.

5. If you need more bins, just make a trip to your local grocery store. They almost never run out of stock!

Here are some tips: Make sure to pick CLEAN boxes, because you don’t want your merchandise smelling like garlic! Plan ahead by measuring the dimensions of your shelves and checking the size and quantity of your products. You don’t have to bring in hundreds of boxes in just one trip; but keep in mind that there are a variety of sizes and shapes to choose from, and depending on availability, you may not be able to get the same sized boxes each time. And finally, to make your life easier, print out stickers with the products’ SKU numbers and label the outsides of each box for easy reference.

I hope you found this post helpful. Enjoy your new convenient, super inexpensive, and eco-friendly racks and bins!

Self-Made Peanut Bag for Packing

EchomerxBlog — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 07:43:41 +0000

Packing peanuts, sometimes called packing popcorn, are loose-fill packing materials, usually made out of expanded polystyrene foam. In the early days, peanuts were made of styrofoam and could easily be crumbled and broken into tiny pieces, or blown away. So most companies don’t recycle them.

However, some companies do recycle these peanuts and put them back to good use. At Echomerx, we recycle packing peanuts of all grades. We’ve come up with a simple way to pack the peanuts using recycled anti-static shielding bags, commonly found here in Silicon Valley, so the peanuts can be re-used easily.

All it takes are some used plastic poly bags, and a bag sealer. Our anti-static shielding bags were donated to us by a neighbor company when they moved out of the complex. These bags are very durable, and they also look nice (they’re made with a shimmery, metallic plastic). This makes them the perfect tool to use when packing boxes.

Step 1. Fill the anti-static shielding bag with packing peanuts. When you pack them, leave at least a 1″ space near the top so the bag can be sealed. To be more economical with your packing peanuts, fill about 1/5 of the space inside the bag with air.

Anti-static shielding bags can be used to protect electronics from ESD (electronic static discharge) damage. It’s an absolute must-have for those high-tech manufacturers in the Silicon Valley, because they handle so many ESD-sensitive materials. These bags are manufactured by depositing a thin metal coating, such as aluminum, over an anti-static polyester film substrate. The metallized layer protects the devices inside the bag from electrostatic fields, while the insulated layers prevent direct contact with potential ESD hazards.

Step 2. Seal the bags using a bag sealer. Depending on the thickness and materials of your poly bag, adjust the settings on the bag sealer. The perfect setting will seal the bag without overheating it, and it will leave a smooth seamline of about 1/8″ wide where the bag is sealed. Overheating can cause the bag to not be completely airtight, and this will weaken the packing.

Many simple bag sealers come with different settings. To test the strength of the seal, pull the flaps apart with a reasonable amount of force, and see if the sealing comes apart. Sealers work with localized heat to bond the two layers of plastic together, and is a very safe way to close these bags.

Step 3. After sealing, check the sealed edge; if the seal is perfect, these bags should be able to serve the same purpose as airbags. If you don’t have these anti-static shielding bags around, you can also use some regular poly bags instead. However, make sure to dial down the settings of the bag sealer to avoid overheating.

These three steps are extremely easy to follow. By using these packing peanuts, the recipients of your packaging can also follow your lead by re-using them again. It’s a wonderful way of reducing waste and helping to save the environment!

At the time of this post, Mercury News just published the article, “San Bruno polystyrene ban takes effect today, business owners unhappy.” Here is an excerpt from the article.

“The council took aim at Styrofoam because it ends up as litter and isn’t recycled by San Bruno’s waste hauler, Recology,” said city official Jim Shannon. A 2009 fact sheet compiled by national advocacy group Clean Water Action says polystyrene foam breaks into smaller pieces when exposed to the elements. Styrene, which is used to make polystyrene, increases the risk of leukemia and lymphoma, according to the group.”

DIY external hard drive on Earth Day

EchomerxBlog — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 04:36:32 +0000

Earth Day is just around the corner on Apr 22.

This year will mark the beginning of The Green Generation Campaign^TM which will also be the focus of the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day in 2010.

For more information on Earth Day, you can check out Earth Day site that can give you detailed events for this year.

I know a lot of folks out there use the flash memory card in camera, camcorder and use it to save large files of videos and downloads. The price of average flash memory card is dropping fast each year and in the process, many households are ending up with not-so-popular cards in a variety of capacity, 2GB, 5GB, 10GB. The same can be said on laptop computers.

I use flash memory card and love them, but I don’t like the notion that consumer are paying for the revolution and the inter-changebility. So I decide to research this topics a bit, my goal would be to find something that can act as a external flash drive and retrofit it with my old laptop hard drive. Our average laptop drives are manufactured with at least 10GB+ capacity and this would be perfect for replacing flash memory cards and save a lot of money!

The first stop for my adventure is local Fry’s. At the hard drive department, I quickly find they carry many different brands of “hard drive enclosure”. The right type for laptop is labeled “2.5 inch” since most laptop drives are 2.5 inch. So I pick one for about $12.00. Amazon also carry a lot of the external USB 2.0 hard drive enclosure – 2.5 in, here is a shot of what it looks like:

Inside this enclosure is a circuit board that will interface with your USB port, a cable is provided as part of the kit to plug into the USB ports. Installation is easy, all you have to do is to unscrew the case using a jeweler’s screw driver and plug the laptop hard drive to the circuit board. When plugged in, make sure the circuit board is flushed with the drive. If not, most likely the drive is plugged in wrong direction, and you just need to flip the drive and re-plug the drive.

Laptop drive has two rows of golden pin and they are straight. The straightness is very important to mate the circuit board to the drive. If the pins are bend, you will have a hard time to plug the circuit board.

Once you put back the enclosure, all you need to do is just to connect the cable to the USB of your computer and the other end to the enclosure, and this is it – your portable high speed flash drive that is recycled from your old laptop!

The finished flash drive is small and measures 7.1 x 5.1 x 1.5 inches (typical) and 0.8 ounces. It can easily fit into your pocket or attache for easy carry and best of all, you save money and being green on Earth Day.

Green Works #4: Turn glass bottle into jewelry stands, instantly!

EchomerxBlog — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 01:44:49 +0000

Creating your own jewelry stand can not be easier! Get this 2 piece kit on Merx2go.com to create your own jewelry stand by recycling a used glass bottle, in just a second. No tools required.

	Our wire kit includes a brass top wire (6 arms) and a screw (one piece) and a wine bottle cork. Cork is new, we drilled a hole at the cork top to make your assembly easy.
	This is how it looks when you put them together. You don’t need any tools to screw onto to the cork.
	The kit fits in most wine bottle, beer bottle, oil bottle or other glass bottles.Next, dress up the bottle. Simply wrap the bottle with your silk scarf or a small piece of fabric, and secure with a ribbon near the top. Now, you have a one of a kind jewelry stand to hang your jewelry, and remember, by creating this work of art, you are also doing something good for the planet. Look for something fancy? Check out the following images and let your creativity run wild…

Eco-Friendly Hawaii Jewelry Stand	Bridal gown jewelry stand
	You can even use the kit without a glass bottle, e.g., the screw also works with wood object, candle or styrofoam.JewelryNanny.com offers a large selection of mannequine jewelry stands and ring holder shoes and other boutique qualityjewelry organizers. Elegant design and high quality.
Christmas Jewlery Stand

These amazing bottle decorating pictures are originally from pj lighthouse. We added our top wire to these designs, so you can have a good view of how they look as a jewelry stand.

Original pictures are from the following link: http://www.pjlighthouse.com/?p=688&akst_action=share-this

Green Works #3 Dollhouse In a Shoebox

EchomerxBlog — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 01:42:28 +0000

A friend found this amazing work of art on a foreign website. It’s hard to believe that this entire 3 bedroom unit is built inside a shoe box, with all recycled material from used fabric to newspaper and magazine ads. I’d like to share the following with all of you, either you love dollhouse, or crafts work, or care about the planet. Please read on to see a lot of close ups. Enjoy!

Entrance and hallway. The purple cardboard created the shoe shelf and coat area.

Hallway carpet is wrapping paper scraps.

Living room.

Again, the flat panel is an ad on newspaper.

This miniature plant is from a used silk flower. The planter? A toothpaste cap wrapped by a chocolate paper cup!

Glass without bottom. Why? That’s a straw tip.

Water dispenser, hehe. Water container is an eye drop bottle. How about stools? Tiolet paper wrapped by winkled color tissue.

Master bedroom.

Kid’s room.

Curtains are made of a used top.

Dresser in the master bedroom.

Home office.

Books on the shelf are folded magazine stripes.

Kitchen. The handles on cabinet? Staples.

Bathroom

The toilet lid can open! This isn’t an easy task. The seat is a pistachio shell. How creative is that!

Let’s take a look at the entire house again, hope you enjoyed!

Green Works #2: Material Exchange as in CALMAX

EchomerxBlog — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 01:39:50 +0000

Starting business can be an exciting thing, especially when surrounded by like-minded entrepreneurs. In the business park that caters to our business, we have neighbors in wireless, computer parts, toys company and machine shops. Each business is different and along the line, produces different kinds of waste or shall I say, treasure? Many business practices the Japanese shop management of “5S” or Toyota’s JIT. These continuous improvement methods are boosting worker efficiency and cutting down cycle time all along. Besides the management gain of these methods on shop floor, they also call for a swift judgement of material deposition, a judgment that sometimes produces a lot of waste. Just take a look of your neighborhood recycle dumpster, here is a shot from one in bayside.

Luckily businesses in California have a free service called “The California Material Exchange” or “CALMAX“. (CALMAX) is a free service provided by the California Integrated Waste Management Board (CIWMB). The program’s goal is to help businesses, industry, residents, and others locate markets for usable materials that would otherwise be discarded. According to the CIWMB, “the concept behind CALMAX is simple: materials discarded by one business can be a resource for another business”. In another word, Calmax works the way much like Craigslist, where businesses publish want and available ad, except for the ad only for recyclable materials.Their slogan says it all: CalMAX…a simple idea. “One business’s trash is another business’s treasure.” Businesses, schools, and nonprofits can utilize CalMAX to search for available and wanted materials.

If your business like to start a recycle program, Calmax would be your first step to publish surplus or need information. One area that does need some attention since Calmax is a state-wide system, so be more geo-targetting as possible. You don’t want to end up picking from places 50 miles away and spend money on gas. To put this in perspective, leave contact number, what you need (need specifics) or have, best time to call, and business location in your ads. Add a side note as to what you will do to these reusable materials can certainly help donors decide the fit.

Green Works #1: Eliminate server, Gmail comes to rescue

EchomerxBlog — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 01:30:56 +0000

In a small business environment, email is absolutely the single most important thing of communicating with customers. So at the early stage of our IT infrastructure build-out, a reliable and also versatile email server is on everybody's top list. Our missionary search ended back then with an enterprise email solution that does exactly what we want it to do and even more. But we also ended up with two servers, one with a little more green foot print and the other, a power hog.

The setup of email server would require a hierarchy that closely mimic a large corporate setting which in turn require multiple server buildup to avoid conflict and achieve redundancy. The email server provided a web-based access page that everyone can use to check their email, be it at home or out to travel. To keep the server running so we can receive email 24/7, a separate UPS is also added to the duo and our email backed up tens of time in a day to prevent loss. With each server running single power supply, it's comsumption of electricity reached 300Watts/day. This setup worked very well in-house and everyone didn't seem to mind the noise and the bill.

In 2004, Google announced the Gmail amid a flurry of rumors. Its powerful search function and mail capacity of gigs attract attentions, and this time from small businesses. What Gmail does for the small business is not unprecendent. Many webhosts before Gmail also offered some sorts of free web email system that were all so cumbersome to read and archive. Besides, even using the email client like Outlook via pop3 will worsen many problems if the mails were read from different access points. Often times, multiple mails are stored inside the Outlook or important emails deleted because of a different client setting.

With IMAP and its upper hand in search, the emergence of Gmail has embarked a whole new territory for small business to offload their mail server onto Google's cloud computing, not only save time and money but conserving energy. Imagine the server that its sole task is to receive email is no longer needed and keeping email running and well backed up are pushed to Google, small business could efficiently manage their business using emails as the tool.

With its latest release of Google Apps, small business can even create their very own email identity complete with email boxes and alias like info, service etc. And can even use it to manage multiple email boxes that are not in the domain of gmail.