Earth Day is just around the corner (April 22nd) and companies keep asking for me for the best item to give away for that event.

Although I sell tons of eco tote bags, biodegradable sports bottles, and items made from recycled tires, denim, plastic, etc. – I sell hundreds of thousands of live tree seedlings for Earth Day Promotions.

These live seedlings come in either a recyclable 10″ plastic bag or tube—with a logo on them.

Here are 12 reasons why live tree seedling are the perfect gift for any Earth Day event or promotion:

1. An average tree absorbs ten pounds of pollutants from the air each year, including four pounds of ozone and three pounds of particulates (Source: Center for Urban Forest Research, Pacific Southwest Research Station, USDA Forest Service, Davis, California)
2. A full grown tree provides an estimated $273 a year in reduced costs for air conditioning, erosion control, storm water control, air pollution, and wildlife shelter. (Source: City of Portland, Oregon)
3. Shade from trees can cool buildings up to 20 degrees in the summer. (Source: City of Portland) One medium-sized tree planted within 60 feet of the west side of an average-sized home in the reduces carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to global warming and lowers the home’s cooling costs by about $260 over a 40-year lifespan, assuming an average cost of $.07 per Kwh. (Source of calculation formula: Center for Urban Forest Research, Davis, California.)
4. A typical tree produces about 260 pounds of oxygen each year. Two trees can supply a person’s oxygen needs. (Source: David Nowak, USDA Forest Service, Syracuse, NY)
5. Unlike some other investments that depreciate, a tree’s value increases with each passing year. Trees increase home property values 7 to 21 percent, depending on the number and size of the trees. (Source: City of Portland)
6. The leaves of a mature tree intercept an average of 760 gallons of rainfall a year. Each tree that lives about 40 years saves $10 a year in reduced water flow treatment. (Source: Trees for Green Streets, Metro)
7. Trees have a positive impact on the incidence of asthma, skin cancer and stress related illness by filtering out polluted air, reducing smog formation, shading out solar radiation and by providing an attractive, calming setting for recreation.
8. One acre of trees grown to maturity would absorb the carbon emissions of 100 average family cars driven for one year, about 2.6 tons of carbon dioxide per year.
9. Every tree we plant today will save more than a thousand dollars in storm water management, pollution abatement, and energy costs. (Source: Center for Urban Forest Research, Davis, California)
10. Trees contribute to neighborhood livability by reducing city noise and glare, and by calming and slowing traffic.
11. Trees improve habitat for endangered fish, migratory birds, and other wildlife.
12. Trees stabilize soil, reduce erosion, and mitigate flooding.

For under $3.00, your company or organization can give away live tree seedlings with your custom imprint and logo – and make this a greener world.

By giving away 500 trees, you can help reduce 5,000 pounds of pollutants for the air in your community – every year. In 20 years, the result will be 100,000 pounds of pollutants removed because of your Earth Day promotion.

Live tree seedling trees are truly the gift that keeps on giving – Earth Day and beyond. Click here if you want more information about live seedling trees for promotions.

Happy Earth Day!
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Robert Piller, President of Eco Marketing Solutions, has over 25 years of experience in running and implementing green marketing campaigns and is a leader in the recycled promotional products industry, including offering one of the largest selections of reusable and organic tote bags, recycled and biodegradable water bottles, recycled pens and pencils in the country.

His company’s website, EcoMarketingSolutions.com, features over 25,000 eco-friendly promotional items in all price ranges, for any business or organization interested in going green. The site’s handy search tool helps you easily find biodegradable, organic and recycled imprinted promotional items in your price range and time frame.

You can also reach him by email (robert (at) ecomarketingsolutions.com) or comment on his blog postings at GreenSpotBlog.com or below at his Twitter link.

April 22 will mark Earth Day, an annual event celebrated around the world as the greenest of holidays. Established in 1970, it was created to call attention to the environment.

Earth Day coverage has grown exponentially over the past decade and will get substantial coverage in most media outlets — including national television, radio, newspaper, magazines, blogs, etc.

Earth Day creates an excellent opportunity for companies to promote their environmental activities and concerns to a broad base, as well as to their local community.

What will your company do for Earth Day to stand out to its base and capture the attention of its public? How will you let your customers, prospects, employees and/or shareholders know about your efforts to reduce carbon emissions, use more eco-friendly materials, reduce waste in packaging, start a recycling campaign, cut emissions, etc?

My suggestion: Don’t forget the kids. Children are Our Future.

A national research study commissioned by the National Environmental Education Training Foundation noted that children placed the environment third in a list of 10 issues behind only AIDS and kidnapping. This contrasts greatly with adults, for whom the economy, crime, and drugs are of greater concern. Children worry about long-term issues such as damage to the ozone layer and destruction of the rain forest.

Did you know that 99% of children in America today have access to environmental classes in school, and 31 states require schools to incorporate environmental concepts into virtually every subject in all grade levels?

Reach out to children. Children have influence over parents’ buying habits. as well as being an influencing force for recycling and conservation activities.

If you have a local business, work with a school district and get imprinted eco-friendly promotional items, which are educational, into the students’ hands. Try to target elementary or middle schools for best response and maximum impact.

Many of my clients have given out live tree seedlings in imprinted recyclable bag to the local elementary school principals to be handed out to the classrooms during their Earth Day discussions. The students will take the trees home with them and plant them—reminding the entire family of your company’s kindness and desire to re-green your community.

Other great eco-friendly promotional items for students include: reusable backpacks or cinch bags, biodegradable water bottles, pencils and pens made from recycled material, coloring books about recycling and even magnets made from recycled cardboard.
If you are a regional or national company, work with your distributors or regional offices to get your products placed.

Bonus Tip: To save money, contact some non-competing businesses in your area and try to split, or co-op, the cost of the imprinted gifts. You can split the size of the imprint two or three ways—depending on imprint area, which will cut your costs dramatically.

Earth Day will be celebrated and discussed in nearly every school on April 22nd. Don’t miss your chance to promote your business in a green-friendly way.

Happy Earth Day!
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Robert Piller, experienced in green marketing campaigns and environmentally-friendly promotional products. His web site includes a comprehensive eco-friendly advertising specialty search, featuring over 250,000 eco promotional items in all price ranges, for anyone interested in going green. The site’s handy search tool helps you easily find recyclable, biodegradable, organic or recycled imprinted promotional items in your price range and time frame. View the Go Green website at EcoMarketingSolutions.com and comment on his blog postings at GreenSpotBlog.com.

Business people who spend money on advertising and marketing will be surprised to learn that advertising one’s name on a reusable tote bag is over 15 times less expensive per impression than any other form of advertising.

People who receive an imprinted reusable tote bag use them an average of 9 times per month, according to the June/July 2008 survey of 618 businesspeople on behalf of the Advertising Specialty Institute. Since the bags have a large imprint area and are displayed in a visible location, the advertising message will be seen an average of 1,038 impressions per month; nearly 12,500 people will see that message each year –per bag. Give out 500 imprinted bags, and in one year, over 6.2 million people will have seen your imprint.

At an average cost of $3.00, a tote bag imprinted with a logo and message on it will be viewed 12,000+ times in a year –making the cost per impression (CPI) only $.00025, which is about one fifteenth the cost of an average city billboard ($.003), and 1/28th the cost of an average cable TV commercial ($.007) and the 1/76th cost of an average half-page black-and-white newspaper ad ($.019).

Because imprinted bags, such as totes, are a useful item, they are kept for an average of 9 months, according to the survey. It also points out that 53% of those who received an imprinted tote bag indicated that their impression of the advertiser had become either significantly or somewhat more favorable after receiving the item.

Reusable bags are good for the environment—as they prevent plastic bags to be used. Those made from recycled materials or from natural cloth or jute, are even more eco-friendly. Plus, they are traveling billboards for your message. Imagine the impact of 500 or more people carrying your mini-billboard around –wherever they go.

Reusable imprinted bags are both good for the environment and good for your budget—it is a winning combination.

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Notes:
1) The ASI survey was a series of interviews conducted in June/July 2008 in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Philadelphia regarding promotional products they had received. The purpose of the interviews was to understand how advertising specialties influence end-users’ purchasing decisions; determine the number of impressions of popular advertising specialties; and analyze the Cost Per Impression (CPI) of advertising specialties compared with other popular advertising media. Further, during October 2008, an online panel survey was conducted among recipients of advertising specialties to augment the non-wearables sample from the in-person interviews. Results have been combined in the report where appropriate. There were 213 completed Web based interviews, for a total of 618 completed surveys for this study. Respondents were asked if they had received any promotional products in the last 12 months. Most respondents were business/professional people (84%) and all were age 21 or older. Research provided by the Advertising Specialty Institute, Copyright ©2008, All Rights Reserved.

2) The CPI of billboards and cable TV rates came from Los AngelesMobileBillboards.com and the CPI for the other forms of advertising came from The Nielsen Company for 2008.
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Robert Piller, experienced in green marketing campaigns and environmentally-friendly promotional products. His web site includes a comprehensive eco-friendly advertising specialty search, featuring over 250,000 eco promotional items in all price ranges, for anyone interested in going green. The site’s handy search tool helps you easily find recyclable, biodegradable, organic or recycled imprinted promotional items in your price range and time frame. View the Go Green website at EcoMarketingSolutions.com and comment on his blog postings at GreenSpotBlog.com.

The results are in… and the June/July 2008 survey of 618 businesspeople on behalf of the Advertising Specialty Institute prove that imprinted promotional products return the best return on investment of any advertising medium.

A summary of the conclusions of the report are:

• Instant recall: More than 8 out of 10 (84%) respondents remembered the advertisers of the promotional products they’re received.

• Very impressionable: 42% of respondents had a MORE favorable impression of an advertiser after receiving the item. And nearly a quarter (24%) said they are MORE likely to do business with the advertiser on the items they receive.

• It’s all business: Most respondents (62%) have done business with the advertiser on a promotional product after receiving the item.

• User-friendly: The majority (81%) of promotional products were kept because they were considered useful.

• Staying power: More than three-quarters of respondents have had their items for more than 6 months.

• Bag it!: Among wearables, imprinted tote bags were reported to be used most frequently with respondents indicating that they used their bags an average of 9 times per month. They also deliver the most impressions: Each bag averages 1,038 impressions per month.

• Most impressive: The average CPI of an advertising specialty item is $0.004; as a result, marketers get a more favorable return on investment from advertising specialties than nearly any other popular advertising media.

With budgets tight this year, doesn’t it make sense to utilize a proven medium to keep your name and message in front of your clients and prospects?

Imprinted advertising specialties, from tote bags, pens, shirts, caps, USB’s, mugs and other imprinted gifts can help you to increase and maintain business during this tough economy. While some of your competitors are cutting their promotional budgets or spending their money on more expensive forms of advertising, your company can gain top-of-mind market penetration for pennies per impression through proven promotional products—delivered in a way to maximize its impact.

Promotional specialties can be used as a gift with purchase, as part of a customer loyalty or incentive program, as a thank you gift or as part of a trade show campaign.

Choosing the right imprinted gift, and the proper distribution of it, can help you maximize sales and gain more referral business this year – at a fraction of the cost of other forms of advertising.

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Note: The survey was a series of interviews conducted in June/July 2008 in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Philadelphia regarding promotional products they had received. The purpose of the interviews was to understand how advertising specialties influence end-users’ purchasing decisions; determine the number of impressions of popular advertising specialties; and analyze the Cost Per Impression (CPI) of advertising specialties compared with other popular advertising media. Further, during October 2008, an online panel survey was conducted among recipients of advertising specialties to augment the non-wearables sample from the in-person interviews. Results have been combined in the report where appropriate. There were 213 completed Web based interviews, for a total of 618 completed surveys for this study. Respondents were asked if they had received any promotional products in the last 12 months. Most respondents were business/professional people (84%) and all were age 21 or older.
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Robert Piller, president of Eco Marketing Solutions, is experienced in green marketing campaigns and recycled promotional products.  He has worked with thousands of retailers across the country to get them to offer reusable imprinted tote bags for their customers, to help reduce the landfill waste caused by plastic bags.

His company’s website, EcoMarketingSolutions.com, features over 25,000 eco-friendly promotional items in all price ranges, for any business or organization interested in going green. The site’s handy search tool helps you easily find biodegradable, organic and recycled imprinted promotional items in your price range and time frame.

You can also reach him by email (robert (at) ecomarketingsolutions.com) or comment on his blog postings at GreenSpotBlog.com or below at his Twitter link.

Changing people’s recycling habits can take many years, since people have different “levels of greenness”. As I had discussed in my article, “Are all consumers ready to ‘go green’?”, people have different attitudes about both their desire and need to become more environmentally concerned and aware.
Many states and cities are launching recycling campaigns to help educate consumers about the importance of recycling – and to create awareness of the importance of recycling.
Some of the tools used for these go green campaigns are television commercials, billboard ad, radio commercials and eco-friendly promotional products –like recycled rulers, biodegradable pens and pencils and recycled refrigerator magnets –given out to school children during community outreach programs.
But not all campaigns are as effective as possible. How do individual states rank in respect to their recycling efforts? According to the report, “Do Mess With It“, by Steve Spacek, residents of the Northeastern states of Connecticut, Vermont, Maine and Massachusetts do the best job of recycling, as they had the least amount of per capita waste disposal.

Here is the entire list, in order of the state with the least amount of waste to the most wasteful state. The number beside the state’s name represents the daily per capita waste thrown away in pounds, according to 2002 numbers.

1.Connecticut 0.4510
2.Vermont 0.5840
3. Maine 1.0348
4. Massachusetts 1.4575
5. New York 1.5250
6. New Jersey 2.4698
7 Minnesota 2.5871
8. Maryland 2.9465
9. Hawaii 3.6754
10. Idaho 4.4523
11. Missouri 4.6106
12. Washington 4.9711
13. Florida 5.2001
14. South Dakota 5.3127
15. Montana 5.3165
16. Alaska 5.4872
17. Alabama 6.1666
18. Louisiana 6.2151
19. Delaware 6.2535
20. W. Virginia 6.3716
21. Iowa 6.4104
22. Rhode Island 6.6646
23. Georgia 6.6713
24. California 6.7999
25. Nebraska 6.8072
26. Oklahoma 6.9690
27. Wyoming 7.2168
28. Texas 7.2457
29. New Hampshire 7.3430
30. North Carolina 7.4116
31. Arkansas 7.5971
32. Mississippi 7.8556
33. Colorado 7.9048
34. Tennessee 8.2213
35. Illinois 8.4773
36. Ohio 8.7336
37. Utah 8.8063
38. Kansas 8.9314
39. Arizona 8.9871
40. Virginia 9.0122
41. Oregon 9.0161
42. Wisconsin 9.4417
43. North Dakota 9.4650
44. Indiana 9.7873
45. Kentucky 9.9515
46.South Carolina 10.2101
47. Michigan 10.4388
48. Pennsylvania 12.9517
49.New Mexico 15.6367
50. Nevada 16.9415

Let’s hope that the education campaigns continue and both consumers and businesses can work toward a 10% reduction in waste per year—which is very attainable.

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Robert Piller, experienced in green marketing campaigns and environmentally-friendly promotional products. His web site includes a comprehensive eco-friendly advertising specialty search, featuring over 250,000 eco promotional items in all price ranges, for anyone interested in going green. The site’s handy search tool helps you easily find recyclable, biodegradable, organic or recycled imprinted promotional items in your price range and time frame. View the Go Green website at EcoMarketingSolutions.com and comment on his blog postings at GreenSpotBlog.com.

When it comes to environmentally friendly trade show give-aways, few items give more bang for the buck than imprinted tote bags. Trade show attendees are constantly looking for quality bags to put their catalogs and handouts into, and a heavy-duty tote bag will be used over and over again—long after the trade show has ended. Tote bags are light in weight, fold up easily and they help prevent dozens of plastic bags from ever being needed.

Robert Piller, president of Eco Marketing Solutions, notes, “Imagine the return on investment that a reusable tote bag offers, when you factor in the hundreds of people who will be carrying your billboard sign around a trade show floor promoting your company.”

With all the choices of eco-friendly promotional tote bags, how do you choose which is the best tote bag for your budget? Below are the five most popular types of eco-friendly tote bags and information to help you choose the correct tote bag for your needs.

1. Cotton/Canvas Tote Bags: Cotton/canvas tote bags are probably the strongest and most durable of all tote bags. Cotton tote bags come in various weights and offer possibly the best value, as well. For trade shows, choose a cotton tote bag made with a minimum of 6 ounce cloth in order to carry and support substantial weight from catalogs, thus ensuring that the tote bags will actually be used. You can order these in natural color or dyed, depending on the impact of your logo and message. The canvas material is not smooth, so small fonts and detailed logos should be avoided.

2. Organic Cotton Tote Bags (Organic Canvas Tote Bags): Organic cotton tote bags have all the characteristics of regular cotton/canvas tote bags, only they are made from organic cotton rather than natural cotton. Be sure to only choose natural color organic tote bags or you will be defeating the purpose and “organic” message you are promoting. Even with natural dyes available, always choose the neutral or natural fabric color when using organic cotton tote bags. Of the five types of environmentally friendly tote bags, organic cotton bags will usually be the most expensive option, but have the most appeal to the die-hard environmentally-conscious recipient. Because of the cost, organic tote bags are best for high end products or services, such as spas, real estate, salons, etc.

3. Recycled Tote Bags: Tote bags can be made from a variety of recycled materials—including denim, soda bottles and other plastics. The plastics are processed and refined and the appearance has a shiny, smooth finish and tight weave, so your logo and imprint will look crisp. Most recycled tote bags come in dark colors so these are best for a light colored imprint where your message can stand out from a distance.

4. Jute Tote Bags: Jute tote bags have become very fashionable recently. Jute is a long, soft, shiny vegetable fiber that can be spun into coarse, strong threads and the material is often referred to as burlap. Jute tote bags often come in natural color, or can be dyed with Azo-free dyes to ensure that it remains environmentally-friendly. Jute has a loose weave with a coarse surface, so an imprint with larger graphics and fonts often work best with this material. Jute bags tend to be more expensive then cotton so they are better suited for higher end products or services.

5. Polypropylene Tote Bags: Although tote bags made from polypropylene are not natural, they are often considered to be environmentally-friendly because they are extremely durable and can be recycled. This plastic material is ideal for keeping products from getting wet or for packaging products that may “sweat” or that may leak. Polypropylene tote bags have a smooth and shiny finish and are ideal for all types of graphics and colors. In large quantities, polypropylene tote bags can usually offer the lowest cost.

Tote bags are ideal for trade show giveaways. You can have an imprint area the size of a mini billboard that will be carried from place to place – each time promoting your company to an audience. Choosing tote bags will help reduce waste and prevent plastic bags from ending up in landfills. An eco-friendly tote bag will help promote your company in a positive light and is one promotional item that will be appreciated and used immediately.

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Robert Piller, president of Eco Marketing Solutions, is experienced in green marketing campaigns and recycled promotional products.  He has worked with thousands of retailers across the country to get them to offer reusable imprinted tote bags for their customers, to help reduce the landfill waste caused by plastic bags.

His company’s website, EcoMarketingSolutions.com, features over 25,000 eco-friendly promotional items in all price ranges, for any business or organization interested in going green. The site’s handy search tool helps you easily find biodegradable, organic and recycled imprinted promotional items in your price range and time frame.

You can also reach him by email (robert (at) ecomarketingsolutions.com) or comment on his blog postings at GreenSpotBlog.com or below at his Twitter link.