Blog Northwest Florida

Eco-Friendly Business Cards - Working through the Eco-Broker designation has led me to many of what Oprah fans would refer to as "Ah Ha Moments." I had one just the other day as I looked at my dwindling supply of real estate business cards and thought about my need to order new ones . . . SOON.

I do love to hand out business cards and I love to collect them as well. All those friendly faces staring back at me when I open my desk drawer or peer into that seeming black hole of a handbag. Look at all my happy colleagues, all my friends, all of them right there at my fingertips. (I know, you're saying, "She must have been one of those little girls that didn't get any Valentines." ) But, as usual, I digress . . .

Back to the eco-friendly business card search. So I went to Google and typed in something on the order of "Green Business Cards." Now, did you know that you can actually buy a Green Card? That's right, a Green Card as in an official card for a foreign born person to work in the U.S. Well, perhaps you can't actually buy the Green Card, perhaps you can just pay for a consultant to help you procure the Green Card, I got bored with the website before I got the entire gist of it. But, as usual, I digress . . .

Back to the eco-friendly business card search. My super slick, super shiny business cards just don't seem the thing anymore. While I don't want to drop my business card habit completely, I do want to scale it back and lighten the footprint (or ink print) so to speak. So - on a serious note - here are some things I learned while searching for eco-friendly business cards.

If you go to http://treehugger.com/ you can see an actual bloomin' business card, a business card with a plant growing out of it. I kid you not! I really like the idea, but in all honesty I have allergies and I'm afraid that those little scrap of paper with the plant sprouting out of the top might get moldy sitting there on my desktop or in that black hole of a handbag. Wait, my nose is starting to itch. But, once again, I digress . . .

Eventually I found http://www.boingboing.net/ where you can get eco-friendly business cards printed on peanuts. I think they actually use the peanut shells for the cards. This is much too complicated for me to understand (I am blond), much less explain, but if you go to the website I'm sure you will catch on much quicker that I did.  But then there's that allergy thing again.

Perhaps the "Green-ist" business card of all was one I found at http://www.microsoft.com/ - the electronic business card in an Apple Green design!

So . . . I never really found an acceptable (non-allergenic) eco-friendly business card. Ideally, it would be on recycled paper, use soy or some other natural ink, and make me look like - well - Angelina Jolie. If you've seen a source, I'd love to hear from you! Please post it!