A new business means new business cards. And even though our last business wasn’t exactly responsible, our business cards proved our innovation without having to say it. As the unconventional brand communications agency with the unconventional agency name of 86 the onions, we chose to have an unconventional business card. One that not only referenced the restaurant world our name came from, but one that had more than one use. They say you don’t get a second chance to make a first impression, but given the success of our silly little moist towelette/business card, we beg to differ.
The moist towelette/business card was designed after we realized that business cards have a very short life. While many people change jobs faster than they can hand out an entire box of contact info, the time a single card spends in someone else’s possession is often less than it takes them to enter it into an electronic device. In the end, the trash can.
This time around, with ecopop, we started where most concerned companies start: Recycled paper and soy-based inks. Of course, anyone who’s read Cradle to Cradle knows the recycled option just isn’t the best option. We had to keep thinking.
Our second thought was to go around to all the printing companies and reuse any misprints or over-runs that go to waste. Our design on one side. Some random image from its former life on the other. Then our iPhone rang.
We used to own a Treo. Now we own an iPhone. One of the few things we loved about our Treo was the ability to exchange contact information with other Treo users. Of course, most phones can email or text contact information, but it’s not ideal. Ideally, someone would create a piece of technology that allows any cell phone user to be able to beam their electronic business card. If this exists, please let us know. We searched forever and it made us hungry.
Then we thought it could be fun to have edible business cards. We toyed with what appears to be nothing more than paper made from sugar—you know, the ones that you can print photo realistic images and put on your cake and eat it too? The idea was nice, but the reality of sticky wallets, dirty fingers, and diabetes keep us searching.
We thought about inventing our own business card, one that was made from a self-inking rubber stamp that we could carry with us. We’d simply reuse the back of a business card someone had previous handed us, or any random scrap, stamp it, and pass it along. We'd use fewer resources and even extend the life of materials that were already in circulation. Not too bad. We even found a few self-inking pocket stamps online that we could repurpose for our little experiment.
In the meantime, we wanted to have a backup plan so we explored paper a bit more and discovered that there are a number of eco-friendly papers that are made from sustainable and biodegradable materials like onions, hemp, and rice. There is even paper that is impregnated with seeds that, when planted, will grow things like grass or wildflowers. We loved this option and decided to make a few using a single color, a decision we’ve made to use on all our printed materials.
Much like our previous company’s business card, a moist towelette, our new card, one that you can grow wildflowers with, has multiple uses. Of course, this time around, our little buzz-worthy card actually creates food instead of waste.
  
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