It may be a little uncharacteristic, but I wanted to give a shout out to my friends over at BIG INK, who have converted their entire fleet over to Priuses. I’m obviously a big believer in individual action, but it’s great to see when that action trickles up to the company level. I think they’ve done something really creative to help the environmental movement and show off their car-wrapping savvy, plus I just love the motto “Little things make a BIG difference.” Anyway, congratulations to these guys, I hope more businesses follow in their footsteps. You can read more in the press release below:

Prius Fleet Drives BIG INK’s Green Business

Eagan, MN, August 26, 2008. During a brainstorming meeting the BIG INK
summer intern, who drives a hybrid Toyota Prius, half joked about
putting graphics on his car to launch the company’s Eco-Green campaign.
The idea took off and BIG INK partnered with Image Haus of Minneapolis
to create green inspired vehicle graphics that would garner customer and
industry attention to their green efforts.  The cars feature one of four
integrated designs and the simple yet powerful message of, “Little
Things Make a BIG Difference.”  Aside from being driven around the Twin
Cities, cars are being used for client visits, as well as being
strategically parked at local business events and the response has been
tremendous, people have taken notice.

Although the digital graphics industry is not well know for
environmental initiatives, BIG INK decided to start where it could.  An
internal Green Team was assembled, simple changes were made and the
company immediately felt the results.  “Even the small changes we made
had impact,” notes Tom Trutna BIG INK president. “From the onset we
started recycling over 2400 pounds of scrap waste each month along with
600 pounds of office paper.”  In order to educate the industry about the
initiatives they took, Trutna wrote an article entitled Kermit Was
Wrong! It Is Easy Being Green(er) that was published in Digital Graphics
magazine, encouraging other printers to adopt the easy practices that
make a difference.

With the internal processes in place, BIG INK started wondering how to
educate clients about green options as well as how to fulfill the needs
of eco-forward clients.  With that in mind, they launched more
environmental substrate options and a Zero-Waste recycling program to
customers.  “Event, trade show, even retail graphics are often used for
a short time and then tossed,” says Trutna, “with our Zero-Waste
Recycling Program, we’ll take back anything we produce and have it
recycled, keeping tons of graphics out of the waste stream.”  Customers
have taken note, the Eco-Green page of BIG INK’s web site now gets four
times more traffic than the other pages, bloggers are commenting on the
program and customers are starting to send items back to be recycled.
Notes Trutna, “the Prius fleet has proven to be a great marketing
vehicle that has brought attention to our many green efforts.  It drives
the ‘Little Things Make a BIG Difference’ message, features graphics we
produced, gets people thinking about being green and puts a smile on the
face of everyone who sees it.”

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