by admin | Apr 29, 2015 | Company News, Environmental Green
Rose City Label is proud to be a local, family owned business. We try to support businesses like us as often as possible. Recently, we needed a few specially sized metric bolts in our shop and we chose to use our local hardware store – Wichita Feed and Hardware. These guys are right down the street and the service is excellent. Here are just a few of the reasons to support your local merchant rather than a big box retailer:
- Closer to our shop than the national chain store
- Easy parking
- Small store with very helpful service
- Experts took me directly to the proper drawer to get what I needed
- In and out in 6 minutes
- I only had to buy what I needed – 6 screws
- No packaging to throw away
- Supports local family owned business keeping money in the neighborhood
Better product – better price – better service. Other than that, I don’t see any reason to support your local hardware store!
If you want to support a local family business and get great service like this, please call us today.
by admin | Apr 9, 2015 | Environmental Green
We are proud of our team – they take our Eco Commitment seriously at home and at work. Here you see a home project built from pallets recycled from Rose City Label – we love it. We encourage everyone to keep their ‘green’ hats on at work and at home – help the earth and get yourself some free building materials at the same time. Win win for everyone!
Thanks for all of you that ask us about our green certifications. We remain the only nationally certified label printer in the Pacific Northwest through the TLMI Project LIFE program. If you want to work with an environmentally friendly company that walks the walk every day, please give us a call.
by admin | Oct 14, 2014 | Company News, Environmental Green
We do everything we can to be as green as possible at RCL, even when picking up lunch.
My way of being green is cycling to work everyday, and picking up grub for the gang on
our “Fun day Fridays” from the food carts down the street.
Funny thing is, it’s quicker than driving there.
Want to work with an earth friendly, bike commuting label company? Call us today!
by admin | Jul 30, 2014 | Company News, Environmental Green
At one of our quarterly Eco-Meetings we got a great suggestion from one of our team members. He complained about what a pain it is to recycle your plastic grocery bags at the grocery store. (** Sidebar for out of town readers – in Portland you can’t recycle plastic grocery bags at the curb like paper, plastic, glass and many other items — you have to take them back to the grocery store). He asked if we could find a way to recycle these here — especially since we were recycling the stretch film that wraps all the pallets of paper we get each week.
With that question in mind, I called our Clackamas County recycling guru, Shannon, and asked the question. Much to my surprise and happiness, he said we COULD recycle it with our stretch film — all we had to do was bag it up and put it in with our corrugated recycling. Wow! Now we have a designated recycle bin for plastic bags and many people, including me, use it each week. You never know until you ask! This great suggestion helped us start a program that is more convenient for employees (making them more likely to recycle more) and helps all of us to keep our ‘green focus’ at the front of our minds.
NOTE — your mileage may vary… Please call your local trash and recycle company to find out their specific requirements. I found out recently that even within Portland, different areas are served by different private trash hauling companies, and they can each set their own rules about what they do and don’t take in their recycle pick up. But don’t be afraid to ask! You never know what you may be able to recycle.
Have a question about eco-friendly business practices? Want to learn from our experiences? Please call us today.
by admin | May 26, 2014 | Company News, Environmental Green
Out with the Old Technology – the Green Way!
When we did more offset and letterpress printing, labels needed hours or even days to dry. Drying racks (as shown in the left photo) were stacked all over the shop in order to help ink dry on labels before they were wound into rolls. Today, our inks don’t need that much time to dry, and honestly our customers won’t wait that long to get their orders. The Drying Racks are useless to us – but what do we do with them?
Our creative crew is always looking for good things to do, so we broke them down and recycled them:
- The wood is being taken home to burn by one of our employees
- The metal is being recycled at the scrap metal depot where we take our obsolete cutting dies
This is just one small example of how ‘green’ has been baked into our company culture. If you want to work with an environmental leader, please call us today – we would love to help you.
by admin | Apr 11, 2014 | Environmental Green
Today the Oregonian reported that Portland businesses will have fewer options for composting soon. It turns out that composting, like all recycling, is very dependent on sorting. In order to get the most profitable composting operation – and actually make it a viable business – you need a predictable, clean supply of raw material.
Here is a link to the article for more details.
For most composting businesses, food scraps are the perfect ingredient. Unfortunately, mixing in PLA based (compostable) cups, spoons, forks, knives and plates really hurts the quality of the composting process. Although these ‘green’ flatware, cups and plates are technically compostable, they don’t break down at the same rate as food scraps. And, because it is hard to identify every item in the waste stream, plastic and wax coated cups, boxes, and plates were being mixed into the business compost.
Sadly, because the quality of the raw material has been so poor for the compost processing plants, they have had to spend an unacceptable amount of time sorting their incoming waste – which makes it harder and harder to ‘make green’ while being green.
For now, the Portland compost program will scale back to residential only. No more business compost for now, which will have great impact on local natural food producers, organic restaurants, and several other local green businesses.
We aren’t true recycling or composting experts, but we do work every day to make our business more eco-friendly. We are happy to share our success stories with you. Please call us today if we can help you become a more ‘green’ business.
