About Greenfair Silicon Valley
The Greenfair Mission | About the Organizer | You’re Doing Something Green Right Now!
Through an informal survey of Mercury News readers, we know that Mainstream Silicon Valley business and private consumers now know what green is but do not know how to green most effectively. The number one reason our readers want to learn how to green is to safeguard the Bay Area for their children and grandchildren.
Greenfair Silicon Valley’s mission is to inform and teach our citizens how to green their homes, businesses and lives to reduce their personal carbon footprint. Our goal is to make lasting changes in our citizens’ green-motivated behaviors that can be measured through Mayor Chuck Reed’s Green Vision for our community.
Why We Chose to Produce Greenfair
The Mercury News, its five websites and 29 sister newspapers are certainly for-profit companies, charged with making a profit in order to grow and provide the means for its 1,200 employees to make a living. We are also, however responsible corporate citizens and coupled with our editorial responsibility to the public trust, one can readily see why we are proud to produce Greenfair. We can grow our business and help change the behaviors of Silicon Valley’s mainstream citizens to ensure a green, clean future for ourselves and generations to come.
How You Can Help
People in the public eye, like celebrities and politicians, command respect and an authenticity from the public that a company often cannot. As a keynote speaker or presenter of one of our how-to seminars, you can help us go beyond educating our consumer citizens. Your participation can affect a change in behaviors that will compel our public to go beyond simple recycling and resource conservation to advanced levels of greening their homes, businesses and lives.
Did You Know?
The thirty San Francisco Bay Area newspapers in our company follow a rigorous very green newsprint program that goes full circle. We consume newsprint from five different paper mills around the Pacific Northwest. Each mill uses both recycled papers and residual wood products (wood chips left over from making lumber) from sawmill floors. In addition, the mills that supply our newsprint belong to the Sustainable Forest Initiative (SFI). The SFI certifies that all wood used for newsprint comes from sustainable forest practices.
Additionally, our newspapers are in complete compliance with California law regarding recycling, waste disposal, energy/water conservation and general production practices.
We are growing greener all the time and are a partner you can trust.
For Silicon Valley and the rest of the Bay Area serious greening starts June 7-8, 2008 in San Jose California. Help us affect change. Join us!
In 1851 San Jose was little more than a sleepy farm town. Its first newspaper was the San Jose Weekly Visitor, published in a shack on Santa Clara Street. That hand-printed broadsheet grew and evolved with the community it served, finally becoming the Pulitzer Prize-winning San Jose Mercury News.
For more than a century and a half, the San Jose Mercury News not only covered history but also played a major role in it. We became one of the first newspapers on the Internet and continue to innovate with digital products and services. We support a wide array of charitable and cultural causes in addition to our own public service initiatives, including the Holiday Wish Book and Gift of Reading. And as a responsible corporate citizen we’ve been leaders in energy efficiency, water conservation, waste reduction and other environmental practices — long before “green” became a buzzword.
A lot has changed since the days of hand-set type and horse-drawn delivery. Today the Mercury News is the flagship of Bay Area News Group, a family of major newspapers and community publications that combine their journalistic and marketing resources to cover the entire Bay Area. But even as the San Jose Mercury News continues to transform itself, it remains your essential news source, marketplace and public forum: the Newspaper of Silicon Valley.
You’re Doing Something Green Right Now!
You might be surprised to learn how environmentally friendly the San Jose Mercury News newspaper is:
Recycled Paper
More than half of all newsprint used contains at least 40% post-consumer paper fiber – in other words, recycled newspaper.
No New Trees
The rest of our newsprint comes from residue wood products – the leftover chips and waste from the production of lumber. That means no new trees are cut just for paper.
Sustainable Forest Initiative
And, the leftover chips and lumber waste that we do use come from mills that have been certified by the Sustainable Forest Initiative for responsibly cultivating and harvesting their trees.
More Ways the Mercury News Is Green
The Mercury News is constantly working to increase water and energy savings while reducing pollution and waste. We even recycle our ink here at the plant.
In short you’re doing something green just by reading the Mercury News. And if you want to help, simply remember to recycle today’s paper when you’re done with it.
