Green America, a non-profit that encourages ethical consumerism and business practices, announced March 10 that it has honored three American small businesses for the environmentally-friendly “do-it-yourself,” or DIY, products they create.
The People & Plant Award is a $5,000 prize given quarterly to American small businesses that operate with environmental and social implications in mind. The winning companies and the products they make are as follows:
Colorado Yurt Company
Based in Montrose, Colo., Colorado Yurt Company sells custom hand-made kits for building yurts, tipis, tents or other types of housing. Green America said Colorado Yurt differs from similar companies because its kits use fewer natural resources and have a relatively small footprint.
Not only does Colorado Yurt produce an environmentally-friendly product, but it operates in an extremely green workshop. All of the facility’s electricity is produced by a grid-tie photovoltaic system on its roof and an electric co-op that leverages wind for power. The company is able to function on this amount of electricity in part because its need for lighting has been mitigated by a variety of skylights and windows that provide passive solar and natural lighting. The company also said it recycles or reuses any item it can, from cardboard to scrap canvas.
From a social perspective, the company said it pays a living wage, provides unique benefits, and attempts to give its employees a larger role within the company.
Garden Tower Project
Garden Tower Project claims to run a “socially responsible” company focused on the evolution of home gardening, urban farming, and other operations that promote more sustainable ways of growing healthy foods.
The company’s aspirations are best conveyed in the “Garden Tower 2,” which, just likes it sounds, is a standing garden. Up to 50 plants can be grown in the 4-square-foot garden, providing a solid growing option to city-dwellers or others who suffer from space constraints. The product features an “integrated vermicomposting column,” which allows users to repurpose food scraps as fertilizer. Water and nutrients that aren’t used for the plant growing process fall to a “nutrient collection drawer,” which can later be dumped back into the tower, effectively eliminating the waste of resources.
The tower is made of food-grade plastic, all of which can be recycled. No BPA, plasticizers, phthalates, or impurities go into the structure.
Garden Tower Project, which operates out of Bloomington, Ind., is testing sugar cane-based bio-plastic resins that it said will further reduce the environmental impact of producing the Garden Tower 2.
The Real Milk Paint Company
The Real Milk Paint Company has created a paint that is not only easy to dispose of, but is also beneficial to the environment. After wrapping up a painting project, consumers are encouraged to discard the paint into soil, where it works as a fertilizer.
The Real Milk Paint Company’s social impact extends beyond the United States—the company supports a mural development project that helps under-privileged Haitian children to decorate school walls. The Real Milk Pain Company has also helped college students to create sustainable paints and host retreats for painters.
Dwayne Siever, owner of the Tennessee-based business, said the $5,000 award will be used to further expand the company and to make DIY videos that teach the public how to paint.
