Holiday specials abound at several Green Alliance Business Partners!

Several Green Alliance Business Partners are offering significant discounts to Green Cardholders during the 2011 holiday shopping season. These include substantail savings on premium wood stoves at Greenovations; on gift memberships at the Children's Museum of New Hampshire; on countertops and cabinets from Visions Kitchens; and on 2012-season gift certificates on The Isles of Shoals Steamship Company. If you are not a member yet, now is the perfect time of year to join, or buy a Green Alliance Gift Package chock full of green savings, including a $10 gift certificate to Acorn Organic Salon in Dover and Exeter and a duruable GA tote bag made from 50% recycled materials that you can pickup at the new GA office (75 Congress Congress in downtown Portsmouth, NH). Then come to the Green Alliance Holiday Bash on December 15 and ring in the holidays with new green friends!

1st, while we've had a remarkably mild November, colder air is on the way, and with it comes the need for heat. Instead of firing up the furnace and resigning yourself to expensive monthly heating bills, why not consider a gorgeous Rais wood stove, available at Greenovations, Portsmouth's premier green building supply store? Plus, owner Christopher Ring is offering Green Cardholders $325 off a Rais wood stove when you purchase one between now and Christmas Eve! Take advantage of the warmth and beauty of a Rais stove while you heat your home or office with wood, New England's original renewable energy source. 

If you're a parent, family member or guardian who wants to give a child a gift of education and exploration that keeps on giving, consider this special deal from our friends at the Children's Museum of New Hampshire. They're offering Green Cardholders 10% off the purchase of ASTC/ACM Reciprocal Gift Memberships through December 31, 2011. This membership offers a full year of admission to the Children's Museum of NH for a family of any size, plus complimentary admission benefits at more than 400 children's museums and science centers around the country! Normally priced at $120 per year (already a bargain), this membership will be available to Green Alliance members at the discounted price of just $108 per year. This museum membership makes a terrific long-lasting gift for friends or family members with young children, or for child-care providers and teachers. Gift memberships packets, including museum information and lists of participating museums, can be mailed directly to recipients or sent to the buyer. Memberships are activated on the date of the recipient's first visit. For more information, call 603-742-2002, and have your valid Green Card # handy.

4th Annual Shop Local Event coming to Newmarket, NH

Riverworks Tavern and Restaurant invites you to "Skip the mall and keep your holiday dollars local!" by buying gifts at their 4^th Annual Shop Local Event.

"Local craftsmen and artists will come together in our upstairs dining room for a unique and eco-friendly holiday shopping experience," according to the restaurant's staff. 

The event runs from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM on Saturday, December 3, 2011. Riverworks Bar and Tavern is located at 164 Main St. in historic downtown Newmarket, NH. 

While you’re there, enjoy a hearty meal. Green Alliance members save 10% on all food at the Riverworks when you use your Green Card. Not a member yet? Stop by our booth at the 4^th Annual Shop Local Event and join the GA for just $25 - that's $10 off the usual cost of membership.

This year's Shop Local Event is part of Christmas in Newmarket, an all day event. Start your day early on December 3 with a holiday edition of the Newmarket Farmers' Market. Spend the afternoon shopping for arts and crafts before attending a traditional tree lighting ceremony in the evening, followed by music and a fundraiser for KIVA at the Stone Church. Visit the Christmas in Newmarket Facebook page for more information. 

For more information about The Riverworks 4^th Annual Shop Local Event, please contact Sarah at sminnis7@comcast.net.

Harbor Lights Moves On Up

Goodbye, Hampton. Hello, Newington.

Harbor Lights, the venerable retail lighting store on Route 1 in Hampton Falls, is poised to co-locate with its parent company, the Lighting Center at Rockingham Electric on January 1 at their flagship location at the foot of the Sullivan Bridge.

“Bringing Harbor Lights into the Lighting Center at Rockingham Electric will be the best of both worlds,” exclaimed Jim Pender, Rockingham Electric’s affable President and CEO. “We can offer a larger selection, better service, and more competitive pricing, all under one roof.”

 And under that distinctive, circular roof in Newington, shoppers can expect to find a wide array of lighting fixtures, chandeliers, lamps, and outdoor lighting products, all supported by the kind of old-fashioned customer service that’s a distant memory at big-box stores.

“We’re known for our selection of energy-efficient lighting, and now we’re selling more and more LED lights that save energy, save money, and provide a much warmer, more appealing light than what was available just five years ago.”

Little Green Homes enjoys big growth

At a time when the construction industry in New Hampshire is losing jobs, Little Green Homes of Greenland is bucking the trend by doubling size of its workforce.

“We’ve grown from three to six employees in the last year,” according to Chris Redmond, an architectural designer from Newmarket who started the company 4.5 years ago with his business partner Jeff Stacy, a builder from Portsmouth.

“We started off with just my partner and me, plus a few subs, but we’ve always wanted to hire full time, steady guys, not just summer help,” Redmond explained. “Now we’ve grown from one to two crews, so we can handle multiple projects.”

The duo attributes Little Green Homes success in part to their ability to offer customers a complete package of design and build services for custom new homes, renovation and addition projects.

“Our customers always know the designer and builder are on the same page,” said Redmond. “We bring all members of our team, including engineers and subcontractors, together during the design phase to make sure everybody fully understands the project before construction begins.”

“People like the process that we offer… and when it comes to green building, it’s nice to know that both your designer and builder are passionate about that type of work,” he added.

Little Green Homes focus on green building has also helped to set them apart from the competition.

“We took kind of a risk with the name by putting ‘green’ right in it,” Redmond acknowledged. “We really believed it was the direction people were moving in. We also believed it was the only way to build.”

It was a gamble that paid off.

“In the beginning, people tended to think of ‘green’ as expensive,” he recalled. “Once we explained it to them, they understood that ‘green’ really means durable, quality and energy efficient building.”

“Now people call us because we are ‘Little Green Homes’,” Redmond reported. “People just get it. They definitely seek us out for the green element.”

Plaid Friday offers local alternative to Black Friday mayhem

For millions of Americans, Black Friday evokes the image of throngs of tired eyed consumers shivering in the dark outside locked box store doors, awaiting the chance to do battle over the last Tickle Elmo doll, or whatever the latest Made-in-China fad happens to be this year.

Enter Plaid Friday, a local alternative to Black Friday organized by Seacoast Local to put the fun and color back into the holidays by encouraging local consumers to wear plaid and shop at locally owned, independent businesses on the day after Thanksgiving. 

In only it’s second year, Plaid Friday is an idea that appears to be catching on. 

“Plaid is very New England,” according to Seacoast Local’s newly minted Director David Boynton, who pointed to his own shirt to prove his point.

“Who wants to spend Black Friday at some box store fighting a total stranger for a plasma television?” he quipped. “Plaid Friday is for people who want to enjoy their Friday shopping for a unique gift at a local store. People are really excited about how much more fun it is.”

“I made phone calls to participating stores and there was a lot of excitement about how many people dressed in plaid were coming in,” he said. “I’ve even got the pictures to prove it.” 

Sure enough, photos of smiling shoppers and retailers dressed in plaid now feature prominently on Seacoast Local’s Facebook page.  

Boynton chalked the initiatives success up to more than just New Englanders’ unique fashion sense.

“People are starting to realize the value of shopping local,” he explained. “Dollars spent locally generate 2-3 times as much economic activity in our community than dollars spent at national chains.”

Wearing plaid is nothing new for employees of the Green Alliance, a Seacoast Local partner that has worked for years to make it easy for Seacoast shoppers to “Buy Local. Buy Green. Save Money.”

“How many days a week do I wear plaid?” repeated Jim Cavan, Director of Media and Public Relations for the Green Alliance, with a bemused look on his face. “Probably two times a week.”

It’s safe to say that’s a conservative estimate.

NH’s only cloth diaper service determined to show green way forward

During the 1950s, few consumer products hit the shelves with a more welcome thud of convenience than the disposable diaper.

And with good reason: What had for centuries been a thanklessly necessary ritual had suddenly transformed into one as easy as flipping open the trash can.

The next five decades would find industry giants Pampers and Huggies engaged in all-out war, with both sides out to prove theirs were the cleanest, cheapest, and most convenient.

But as with so many other once nagging tasks suddenly rendered simple, it took a while before the true implications of all those plastic-based diapers – anywhere from 6,000 to 8,000 per child – began to reveal themselves.

“Most people don’t understand that most diapers take anywhere between 250 and 500 years to break down in a landfill,” notes Kim Leo, owner of Green Earth Baby Works (GEBW), New Hampshire’s sole cloth diaper service. “When you add it all up, you’re talking about a sanitation crisis potentially worse than anything since the fall of the Roman Empire. It sounds bad, but it’s only when people start to realize the implications of disposable diapers that they start to think of alternatives.”

Citing her own daughter’s struggles with various rashes and allergies as her prime motivation for exploring the cloth diaper path, Leo’s research quickly revealed that not only did disposable diapers pose significant waste issues – human feces leeching into the ground being the most obvious example – but tangible health risks as well.

“The major diaper brands tend to have a lot of chemicals – things like dioxins and Sodium Polyacrylate,” explains Leo. “These chemicals not only causes rashes and allergies; they’re also known carcinogens. And that’s something not a lot of people are aware of.”

Riverworks Printing eschews all-or-nothing approach to green

A common misconception about going green – particularly with respect to businesses or industries – is that doing so is an all-or-nothing proposition.

Either you’re green, or you’re not. Worse still, if you aren’t going all-out, you must be “greenwashing” – masquerading your businesses behind a façade of sustainability.

But what about the many businesses who find themselves on the path towards green – doing everything in their power, despite a tough economy and prohibitive cost constraints – and who don’t pretend to be at sustainability’s finish line?

Take Riverworks Printing, a Greenland-based company specializing in commercial advertising for clients both local and national. Founded as a spinoff to sister outfit ATA Transit Advertising – which focuses on exterior bus advertising aimed at helping raise money for nine public transit systems throughout New England, including COAST – Riverworks has forged a unique, green niche in providing their many clients with myriad sustainability-driven printing alternatives.

In so doing, they’re helping reshape the green conversation within their industry, proving that, sometimes, steady improvement over the long run is better than a bank-breaking sprint.

“We like to think of ourselves as eco-driven, rather than green,” says Jeff Cutter, a veteran of the restaurant industry who in 2009 decided to follow wife, Jane -- owner of ATA – into the printing division of the outdoor advertising industry. “Our sustainability practices are considered in every aspect of our business, not just with our eco-friendly products. With the current options for large-format signage materials being less than sustainable, how we handle the by-products makes all the difference. Our vendors and manufacturers are feeling the pressures of today’s educated consumers and we hope to see new materials often.”