Green Earth Mall (GEM) has over 200 green shopping categories boasting over 15,000 eco-friendly items that are either all natural, organic or use green technologies that don’t damage the environment.

“The time has come to stop poisoning ourselves and the planet. And one of the easiest ways to accomplish this is to become an environmentally conscious consumer,” said Doug Gordon, founder and CEO of Green Earth Mall LLC.

Gordon cited that the growing number of global consumers adopting green lifestyles has pushed many businesses to innovate in eco friendly ways, expanding the green marketplace to offer more socially responsible, sustainable, and eco-friendly products.

“The fastest way to accelerate our new green economy is for the average consumers to use their purchasing power to encourage companies to become more green and sustainable,” he added.

“Help save the planet by using your power to buy green,” Gordon stressed, adding that, “there’s no better time to start doing it than now-in this season of giving and sharing.”

Green consumers are clearly looking for an easy way to shop green and now they can with more choices than they ever imagined possible.

More information: http://GreenEarthMall.com .

Copyright © 2011 Neotrope® News Network – all rights reserved.

3D Industries is proud to now offer new GREEN materials to its clients. In today’s age of green friendly, earth conscious consumers, we are now sourcing more innovative, eco-friendly construction materials. Many goods can be manufactured from these materials; everything from technical jackets, requiring heavy duty materials and construction, to lighter fabrics for t-shirts, breathables and swimwear.

“By utilizing new materials like 100% organic cottons, Eco-Lite polymers, recycled plastic fabric blends, soy silks, bamboo fabrics, jute, corn fiber and more, we can offer our clients a more complete resource for cutting edge technologies,” said Corey Herde, 3D Marketing Director.

“Many items can be produced in these materials at relatively the same cost of production, but offer a clean alternative and an advanced selling point. So, we are pretty excited to be offering our customers these new construction methods and the many different advanced fibers being produced by eco friendly resources,” Herde adds.

About 3D Industries:

For over 30 years, 3D Industries has manufactured custom technical clothing, sportswear, and accessories for OEM’s and top aftermarket brands worldwide. Headquartered in Lake Forest, CA, USA, their team of designers, developers and production professionals are experts that understand technical apparel and accessories; from ascetics to the performance logistics for many sports and apparel industries.

3D industries factories are capable of producing a wide range of technical apparel products and sportswear and are compliant to the highest level of quality standards and timeline assurance in the business.

For more information please visit the 3D industries Website: www.3d-ind.com .

“We are thrilled with the initial response to our first holiday collection,” said Susan Aplin, CEO of bambeco. “As an eco-friendly retailer, we don’t print catalogs, it simply feels incompatible with our core message of environmental stewardship. Therefore, we are gratified that customers are finding us through alternative marketing methods including social and traditional media and online special interest forums. We are also seeing a high rate of repeat customers, who are in turn referring their friends.”

Following are bambeco’s top selling green gifts:

* Bike Chain Bottle Opener. Perfect for an eco-friendly beer aficionado, this colorful bottle opener is made from recycled bike chains and anodized aluminum and is available in red, silver, green and blue ($10.00).

* Business Card Case. This flip-top design is reminiscent of the 50′s but has a modern twist – it’s made from stainless steel produced with environmentally friendly methods using recycled scrap steel ($15.00).

* Slate Trays. Formed under pressure over hundreds of millions of years, slate is revered for its beauty and durability. These natural slate trays originate in a well-managed quarry and have endless uses as serving boards, cheese boards and more ($15-20.00).

* Recycled Glass Wine Carafe. This classically styled wine carafe is a triple threat: It’s made of 100 percent recycled glass, has a large mouth and slanted rim for easy pouring and filling, and is hard to tip thanks to its wide base ($19).

* Trail Tree Skirt and Stockings. Printed by hand with non-toxic, water-based, eco-friendly inks on a premium fabric made from hemp and blended with organic cotton (Trail Skirt Sold Out. Stockings $25.00).

To find out more about the standards and practices that bambeco applies to all of its products, partners and manufacturers that earn them the bambeco earth-friendly seal of approval, visit www.bambeco.com or join them on twitter.com/bambeco or Facebook to learn more.

Bambeco is the home furnishings and decor company where your eco-conscious self intersects with your home and lifestyle needs. Bambeco curates the best green products and presents them in one easy-to-navigate shopping experience for the consumer who knows you don’t have to sacrifice style and value to be green. Launched on Earth Day 2009, bambeco celebrates bamboo, the planet’s most renewable and versatile resource, and ecology, the essential relationship we have with the natural environment.

The Vivesan consumer lineup includes a fume-free, streak-free, Glass Cleaner, an odor-free Laundry Soap, and a low-suds Carpet Cleaner that can be used in extraction machines or as a stain remover. The Global Cleaner is a maximum-strength, all purpose solution for nearly every area of the home. These formulations complement Vivesan’s industrial cleaner / degreasers for auto, marine, and other heavy duty jobs. Additional custom formulations can also be created for retailers’ specific requirements.

According to a 2009 Green Seal buying report, only one in 10 consumers blindly trusts green product claims, but they do pay attention to listed ingredients.

“‘Green’ has become a meaningless term that consumers are beginning to tune out,” says David Tiber, President of Waterstone Ventures LLP, the manufacturer and distributor of Vivesan. “People who use a Vivesan cleaner can see how well it works — which is by far its most notable feature. But they only need to read our label to see that it’s a better choice for people and the planet.”

Vivesan’s U.S.-made products derive from a proprietary blend of plant extracts and oils. They’re also free of carcinogens like dioxane and detergent irritants such as sodium laureth sulfate. Tiber stated, “Vivesan appeals to those who want to make a safer decision based on better ingredients, better information.”

Ohio’s Mustard Seed Market & Cafe chain are the first stores to carry Vivesan consumer products.

“Because there’s so much innovation in their formulation, we expect to see Vivesan cleaners supersede the use of conventional, petroleum-based chemicals,” added Tiber. “We believe Vivesan is the first brand of cleaners that truly delivers when it comes to safety and efficacy.”

Vivesan carcinogen-free cleaners are 100 percent plant-based, highly-effective formulas for commercial, industrial, and consumer use. Vivesan products are distributed by Waterstone Ventures LLP, based in Cleveland, Ohio.

More information: www.Vivesan.com .

Who better to provide tips for greening your holiday than a company focused on sourcing and developing the best products for the home, from furniture to decor, that meet the highest standards of sustainability and earth friendly practices. “From the beginning, we did not want to preach or tell people to be green. We wanted to offer consumers a competitive and appealing eco friendly choice when it comes to furnishing their homes,” said Susan Aplin, founder of bambeco. “As we get ready to dive into the holidays, we want to provide some easy, achievable tips that will encourage all of us to re-think those longstanding family traditions that can be easily modified to be earth friendly.”

Following are 10 easy steps that all of us can do to make our holiday season a little more green:

* Rethink holiday cards. Think about sending an e-card. We love iomoi.com for stylish design driven holiday wishes. If you like a traditional holiday card, look for recycled paper with earth friendly dyes.

* Green your lights. Switch from standard tree lights to LED tree lights. Think about a light timer to minimize usage.

* Bring nature indoors. Adorn your home with natural holiday decor. Decorate with earth friendly ornaments. Pick ornaments and decor made from natural objects or recycled materials, such as reclaimed metal, natural wool, recycled wood, hemp or other natural materials.

* Balance carbon footprint. Buy carbon offsets for your holiday travel. These offsets don’t cost a lot of money. We like CarbonFund.org, the largest seller of carbon offsets, www.carbonfund.org/Calculators#Home .

* Wrap with care. Buy beautiful holiday paper made from recycled paper and earth friendly dyes.

* Think local, edible. Look around your area and find a farmer or local market that sells produce. Nothing says thoughtful and delicious more than farm fresh edibles. Anything produced and bought locally comes to your home with reduced emissions from unnecessary travel time.

* Recycle Christmas tree. As soon as the presents are unwrapped and the Christmas dinner is over, turn attention back to everyday tasks like recycling. Take your tree to a chipper.

* Trade-in old electronics. Don’t buy anything new unless you can recycle the old. Companies like Radio Shack are recycling your old electronics.

* Give a gift, get a gift. Have your children recycle their gently worn toys and donate them to local family shelters. When they write their Santa letters, make sure they have a list of toys they are willing to donate for every new toy on their wish list.

* Carry holiday shopping bag. Say “No, thank you” to every store clerk whenever they offer to bag your holiday gifts, especially those glossy shopping bags that are rarely produced with recyclable paper.

To find out more about bambeco’s standards and practices applied to all of their products, partners and manufacturers that earn them the bambeco earth-friendly seal of approval, visit www.bambeco.com or join them on twitter.com/bambeco or Facebook to learn more.

About Bambeco:

Bambeco (www.bambeco.com) is the home furnishings and decor company where your eco-conscious self intersects with your home and lifestyle needs. Bambeco curates the best green products and presents them in one easy-to-navigate shopping experience for the consumer who knows you don’t have to sacrifice style and value to be green. Launched on Earth Day 2009, bambeco celebrates bamboo, the planet’s most renewable and versatile resource, and ecology, the essential relationship we have with the natural environment.

By implementing the “bokashi cycle,” commercial operations can divert tons of waste away from landfills and compost sites, converting that waste into high-quality fertilizer.

Bokashicycle completed its first full commercial fermentation process on New Earth Farm in Hillsboro, Ore. The farm accepts food waste from several cafeterias managed by Bon Appetit on the Intel campus.

New Earth Farm is also intimately associated with a growing operation, Abundant Harvest, which manages a CSA (consumer-supported agriculture) store.

“These CSAs are common across the U.S. People contract with farmers to provide them with fresh produce, fruits and vegetables that are organically-grown and typically boxed so they can pick up a fresh and healthy supply of food each month,” Green says. “And, adding a Bokashicycle step completes the circle of sustainability.”

So, how does it work? The farm collects organic waste from area restaurants. That food waste is sprinkled with Bokashi culture mix and stays in a barrel for seven to 10 days. The contents (nutrients) are then poured into the farm’s soil and covered with dirt for 14 days.

Subsequently, that soil is used for Abundant Harvest crops. No pesticides or growth hormones are ever necessary making it ideal for organic-certified farms.

“We also shred that waste to eliminate items like pineapple tops and large bones since they take longer to process in the soil,” Green adds. “New Earth Farm will sell its enriched soil to neighboring farms and the general public.”

Bokashicycle provides steep culture mix discounts to New Earth Farm; the average cost per ton of food waste processing is approximately $33.00 which translates into huge savings for local restaurants and cafeterias. They have now diverted that organic waste back to the farm at a cost way below the area’s “standard” garbage disposal programs.

For commercial/industrial use, Bokashi culture mix is available in 25 pound bags accompanied by 55-gallon barrels with lids specially configured to be anaerobic (no oxygen).

For more information, visit: www.BokashiCycle.com .

According to Smith, “If every shipper switched to environmentally-friendly pallets, it would have a profoundly positive effect on the ecological health of the planet.” And Smith isn’t the only one who thinks the planet would benefit from greener shipping procedures. Wal-Mart and other big players are deeply involved and committed to green supply chain initiatives.

For instance, Wal-Mart recently issued a vendor questionnaire that asks suppliers specific questions about green and socially responsible issues. Their answers impact their choice of vendors.

Among those questions are:

* Have you measured your greenhouse emissions?

* Have you set publicly available solid waste reduction targets?

* Have you established publicly available sustainability guidelines?

* Do you have a process for managing social compliance at the manufacturing level?

In a recent survey of supply chain executives, 70 percent said that environmental issues are of prime importance in their decision process and 57 percent expect that their eco-initiatives will return financial and public relations dividends.

How do you determine the greenness of your pallets? Smith’s advice is to choose the one with the smallest footprint. “You have to look at the environmental trail before you decide. Plastic pallets begin their life in an oil well, travel long distances in an oil tanker, then go through a manufacturing process with a heavy environmental footprint.”

Smith adds, “Our wooden pallets are made from the excess trim of the lumbering process. If this trim didn’t go into the manufacturing of wooden pallets, it would end up in an already overcrowded landfill. That makes the manufacturing of wooden pallets actually an environmental plus because it uses waste instead of creating it. At the end of their life, our wooden pallets are ground up into garden mulch. They’re green from beginning to end.”

For more information on PALNET and its products and services contact the company at 1-877-PALNET-1, or online: www.palnetusa.com .

Eco-friendly energy savings are only part of the story. Enclosed cases maintain a more comfortable store temperature, while providing a barrier to protect food freshness in the event of a power outage. Also, insulated glass covers maintain product integrity by keeping temperatures constant, for greater consumer satisfaction. Goods remain uniformly frozen in the refrigerated display cabinet and optimally visible.

The Maine-based Hannaford Supermarkets is the first supermarket chain in the world to achieve LEED Platinum Certification. The Platinum designation is the highest rating a company can strive to obtain from the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental design (LEED). Hannaford’s first-in-the-world environmental designed Augusta location opened on July 25, 2009. They plan on using the store as a research laboratory to test new innovations that decrease energy usage, waste and water consumption, while improving air quality, storm-water management, and the use of sustainable materials.

The REMIS AMERICA, Remiglas Ecosafe covers have been engineered to custom fit individual case specifications. These proven systems are in use in over ten thousand retail stores throughout Europe, via the sister company, REMIS GmbH of Cologne, Germany.

REMIS AMERICA, headquartered in Elkhart, Indiana, is the result of a joint venture between, DEHCO, Inc., Elkhart, Indiana, and REMIS GmbH of Cologne, Germany.

Hannaford currently operates 169 supermarkets in Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York and Vermont under the name Hannaford Food and Drug or Hannaford Supermarket and Pharmacy. Hannaford is owned by Belgium-based Delhaize Group, a global company that is one of the world’s largest food retailers.

More information: www.remisamerica.com.

A recent statement issued by the National Wooden Pallet and Container Association says, “An examination of 12,084 Intelligent Global Pooling Systems (iGPS) plastic pallets collected by NWPCA members at locations across the U.S. and awaiting pick-up revealed that 9.7 percent of those plastic pallets do not carry the Underwriters Laboratories (UL) or Factory Mutual (FM) marks.” Smith raises the question should iGPS pallets be allowed to carry the UL and FM marks if their entire pool is not compliant? This is misinformation at its best.

What’s more, the letter written by an FDA consumer safety officer stated, “If pre-cooling solution is recycled and/or there is vertical racking of the dripping pre-cooled pallets, there is the possibility that decabromodiphenyl ether (also called deca-bromine) may become a component of the produce being shipped.” The FDA letter also warned that deca-bromine is “not authorized for this use and in order for it to be used in contact with food under the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act, it must have pre-market approval.”

What’s the solution?

Smith says, “Select pallets that are environmental from beginning to end. Wooden pallets are a natural choice. They honor the three ‘R’s’ of recycling: Repair, Recycle and Reuse, which is the natural cycle of a wooden pallet.”

Wooden pallets also help companies sustain their bottom lines. “They are usually bought not rented. The cost of a lost, rented plastic pallet can be significant, often resulting in an unexpected bill that can run into thousands – if not millions – on an annual basis,” says Smith.

For more information on PALNET, visit http://www.PALNETUSA.com or call 1-877-PALNET-1.

According to Smith, “One of the ‘greenest’ moves you can make is choosing wooden pallets made from the excess trim of the lumbering process. Instead of ending up in a landfill, these wooden pallets are continuously reclaimed, repaired, reused, and when no longer viable, end up as mulch. That’s cradle-to-cradle at its best.”

Plastic pallets are another story. “The new plastic pallet whose eco-claim is based on their recyclability,” says Smith, “is really a baseless claim because it is well documented that plastic has a heavy environmental footprint. Anything based on a petro-chemical usually does.” Smith believes eco-friendly wooden pallets are the perfect foundation for a green supply chain. “It’s going green from the bottom up,” Smith says.

Smith offers some additional tips for greening your supply chain:
* Rethink your packaging and your suppliers too. Double packaging is often unnecessary. It’s wasteful ecologically and fiscally. Labels, paper, ink, bottles and boxes all have green alternatives.
* Think about hybrids next time you have to replace a vehicle.
* Tele-conference when you can. With a webcam you can have a face-to-face without moving from place to place.
* Allow your employees to telecommute a portion of their work week.
* Get your trucks to stop idling whenever possible.
* In your office, use nontoxic cleaning products and get rid of flooring that off-gasses harmful VOC’s (volatile organic compounds) into your work space air.

According to Smith, “Green thinking is smart thinking. More and more, all of us are realizing that smart environmental practices are smart business practices which result in real savings, not to mention a smart sales pitch.” Smith adds, “Now, you can make a sales call and say ‘We’re so green, even our pallets are green.’”

For more information on PALNET, visit http://www.PALNETUSA.com or call 1-877-PALNET-1.