Green Business Cards That Work

I was reading this article on the LinkedIN blog guest written by the CEO of Moo.com and was reminded of my own experience creating business cards for Viridus last year.

The picture to the right shows a couple of my Viridus business cards along with an old standard business card from Softbank Capital. The first thing you notice is the size. Our cards are about 40% of the size of a standard business card. My thinking on this was that I wanted to use as little material as possible and I always felt that so much of the information on a business card was a waste (how often do you really use a FAX number?). The size of the card was designed so that we reduced the amount of waste when cutting the paper stock we chose. I did do something "unnecessary" by rounding the corners because it makes the cards look better, they last longer and I figured whether the corners were cut or not that paper was going to be consumed anyway.

Of course we chose soy inks having been educated on their benefits compared to regular ink. The only impact of that was we had to remove a light shadow from behind the logo that was too fine for the ink to pick up well.

Lastly, on the paper choice, we went with a 100% recycled paper which has a slight texture but nothing noticable in the bad way. I briefly considered some paper that was "offset with wind energy" but at 2X the cost seemed unnecessary.

The end result is a great looking card with a compelling story line behind it. And that's really what a business card is about--creating a memorable event. Which, by the way, I've handed out a couple hundred of these cards and not once have I done so without getting a comment. I tell a joke now that, "I originally did it because it was the green thing to do, but now I just say I couldn't afford the rest of the card." Nevermind that these cards cost more than standard ones...

The last thing I'll say about green business cards is that there is likely to be an arms race and I've already seen it. A few months ago I met Tom Szaky, CEO of TerraCycle, on some panel and his "business card" was a rubber stamp which turned out to be totally ineffectual since the only paper I had was the conference brochure which was too shiny for the stamp to stick. That said, it was a memorable moment.