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Orbit Baby on Hot Mom's Club

We're very excited to see Orbit Baby topping the list of great eco friendly baby product companies on Hot Mom's Club Earth Day special. 

You can read the list by visiting the Hot Mom's Club website.  The HMC editors chose the Orbit Green Edition Pram for it's Earth friendly components, it's superior functionality, and for the fact that it benefits the Nature Conservancy.  You can pick yours up at the Orbit Baby website.

Event Planning: putting together an eco-friendly party

Last night Social Vibe launched their eco friendly and socially conscious brand to the press with a green party at Le Deux in Hollywood.  Attendees included Mena Suvari, Kelly Joy (shown here), Jessica Kinni, and William Romeo. 

The party was perhaps most notable because it benefited the Surfrider Foundation (a grassroots group that helps protect oceans, beaches and surf spots around the world from pollution), and it was eco friendly.

The green party trend isn't new, but it's definitely building steam--especially as we get into the summer months--as a predominant theme for launches and premieres from coast to coast. 

What constitutes an Eco friendly party? Some decorate with sprouted grass and bamboo in pots, offer organic vodka and napkins made from recycled paper, and call it a day.  Others go all out, planning every detail down to the type of dye used in the decorative fabric draped above the room.

The Los Angeles Times recently ran an article about green event planning, based on that list, here are my tips:

Invitations -- Use recycled or tree-free paper and soy-based inks. Or use the web based invitation  service from Pingg.com which allows users to create gorgeous electronic invitations, send them via email, sms, facebook, personal web page, and more.   

Flowers -- Use flowers and plants from local and organic farms. Donate flowers to a worthy cause after the event.  Localharvest.org is a great source for finding local growers. 

Food -- Locally grown organic foods are fresher, pesticide-free and less fuel is burned transporting them. To avoid waste, don't over cater. Send leftovers to a composting program. Again Localharvest.org can help source regionally grown foods.

Beverages -- Use bottled water in biodegradable bottles -- biotaspringwater.com, serve organic wine, and vodka.

Venue -- Outdoor venues use less power for air conditioning and lighting, or choose a Eco friendly hotel or building.   

Favors and goodie bags --  source Eco friendly and organic products such as candles, soaps, services, and other ingenious goodies.  Place in reuseable bags.

For more on event planning information and ideas, please visit our CLPR Events Blog.

get those catalogs out of your mailbox!

I'm sure the catalogchoice.org website practically crashed this morning after this story ran on NBC's Today Show. 

The package details how to cancel unwanted catalogs using catalogchoice.org...a great service for the individual, that hopefully, will translate into a boon for the environment.  I'll bet it'll take a fair amount of time for the companies that produce these catalogs to actually reduce the number that they print each year. But this is a push in the right direction - hand it to school children to do what parents are too busy for. 

In the meantime, for my office, just getting smaller bundles of bizarre mail each day will be fantastic.  Since we do PR we subscribe to a myriad of magazines that pertain to a range of subjects.  These magazines in turn, sell our address to relevant marketing sources, making for a strange array of catalogs coming in.

I understand all the infant clothing catalogs, and the many home furnishings mailers.  But how I got on the Pyramid Collection's mailing list is a mystery to me - I do confess that I enjoy reading Tarot cards (for fun only) but The Pyramid name cullers couldn't possibly know that.  The only real connection I can make to the Wiccan jewelry and dragon statuettes (see image at right) they offer is a visit to the Renaissance Faire a few years back.  It is an amusing book to look through, but I can look over the website just as easily.   

Then there's the FarmTek catalogs that come in with regularity.  While I do own horses, I think the chicken warmers and cattle guards they offer are a little more than I need for my place. 

Other titles, like Neiman Marcus (I get at least one catalog from NM every day), Pottery Barn, Williams Sonoma, Victoria Secret, are fabulous but come far too often for comfort. 

Since catalogs tend to cater to the more passive shopper - those who aren't searching for goods so much as are tempted by items that land at their doorstep - it's my view that marketing managers need to get more instep with their online outreach, retail presence, and agressive PR efforts in order to stop the gap that sending out fewer catalogs will create.          

Orbit Baby part of Project7Ten

Project7Ten, a living teaching tool for environmental architecture, has included our client, Orbit Baby into their environmentally friendly kids room (shown left).

The objective of Project7Ten was to build an environmentally conscious home that would achieve a Platinum designation from The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System, in Venice, California.

The home, located at 710 Milwood Avenue in Venice Beach, emits no harmful gases into the atmosphere; solar panels incorporated in the cutting edge design of the house produce its own energy; was built with numerous recycled materials, including insulation, concrete, counter tops, Forest Stewardship Council certified lumber; it reuses rain water and recycles grey water to irrigate landscaping; is surrounded by trees to provide shade in the summer and sunlight during the winter.

Project7Ten architects chose Orbit Baby's Bassinet and Rocker system, as well as the Orbit Infant System (which will be included in the sale of the house) due to the company's excellent environmental policies.

The proceeds from the sale of Project7Ten will benefit Healthy Child Healthy World. 

On Treehugger.com - Orbit is a must for gifting new parents

It's probably the best researched and reported environmental news on the web.  So when treehugger.com serves up their Green Guide of Gifting in November each year environmentalists everywhere pay attention.

This year, we are pleased to announce that our client Orbit Baby was picked as a "dark green" must have in the New Parents category. 

Siting Orbit Baby's ingenious design which creates a complete baby travel system in just three parts, the Treehugger editors loved the fact that that’s all that's needed to go "from home to car to walk to car and back home again".

New parents should know that Orbit also has a environmental policy that's second to none.

The company is carbon neutral, purchasing carbon offsets that fund sustainable energy products. 

Orbit also practices environmentally conscious manufacturing practices by working with a  product producer that is RoHS compliant and recycles nearly all scrap aluminum, foam, paper, fabric, and powder coating materials.

Orbit Baby has also instituted a first of it's kind product recycling program.  Through this program, parents can recycle the pieces that their children outgrow.

Orbit Baby is also the first baby gear company to rid its supply chain of PVC, chrome plating, and oil based packaging inks, along with deletions or reductions in a host of other bad-for-us and bad-for-our-world chemicals and materials.

And if all that is not enough, they'll be launching their Green Edition Pram soon which features a non-treated Organic Wool lining, highly recyclable pieces, and funding for the Nature Conservancy among other things.