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For more on this from Dotster:

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“The First Green Photo Lab for Consumers

An industry first… green consumer snapshots, album prints, and professional proofs.
EcoVisualLab.com will also offer new consumer prints in two sizes, 4×6 and 8×12 . These more
automated prints are available in two surfaces starting at just $1.00 each, a cost that’s far less than
custom prints and affordable for any photographer.
EcoVisualLab.com offers custom photo printing that is:
• Completely sustainable
• Uses 100% cotton papers made from the post-industrial waste cotton from the
manufacture of cotton-seed oil and sourced locally, reducing the carbon emissions
associated with transport
• Totally chlorine free (TCF) and process chlorine free (PCF)
• Archival
• Museum quality
• Fully recyclable and made from recycled materials
• Non-toxic and safer for all indoor environments
VOC-free aqueous inks:
• Eliminate worker and customer health hazards
•Eliminate toxic out-gassing (off-gassing or fumes)
•Eliminate unhealthy or objectionable odors”

This lab is in Wayland, Massachusetts.  Best of luck to them and may something similar come to Toronto before too long.

Meredith Keith Gallery will be exhibiting Molly Crealock’s photography series Camphill Grangemockler: Portrait of a Farm from May 6 to 31, 2011. The opening reception will take place on Friday, May 6^thfrom 6-9pm.

 
The series is an investigation into daily life at a community-based organic farm, Camphill Grangemockler, in County Tipperary, Ireland. Camphill is part of a larger organization of communities of the same name, based on the philosophy of Rudolph Steiner. Steiner viewed the farm as a ‘whole organism’: a self-sustaining eco-system in which all components must be working in harmony in order to sustain plant, animal and human life. Inhabitants of this community, inspired by the mission of mutual cooperation, live in a communal house, and work together in the garden, on the farm, in the weavery and in the kitchen. In 1999 Molly Crealock volunteered at Camphill; she returned 10 years later during the community’s twentieth anniversary to make this photographic study of a place and a people that she had often wished to revisit. It was her intention to reveal the innate appeal of the environment, working within the context of landscape and portrait photography with images of fields, livestock and farmers working the land.  Due to the pastoral subject in these images, it may take time for the viewer to realize that this is a unique community whose permanent residents are adults with special needs, people who live with a variety of intellectual challenges. In this series, each resident is photographed in the context of their living environment; they can simply be seen not as “disabled”, but as farmers, gardeners, artisans and active members of a culture. In this way, Crealock directs the viewer to take from this exhibition a portrait of the farm’s fabric – the permanent residents, the animals and the land that comprise Camphill Grangemockler.

“Faces of the New Economy” at Junction Fromagerie

Anyhow, a few years ago I worked real hard on a project called “Faces of the New Economy”.  I partnered with Green Enterprise Toronto (now Green Enterprise Ontario) on the project, which features portraits and stories of 20 deliciously green entrepreneurs in the Toronto area.  You can see much of the work on my website at http://mollycrealock.com/gallery/faces-new-economy.  A brief description of the project:

Faces of the New Economy is a joint project of Molly Crealock and Green Enterprise Ontario (GEO). Faces of the New Economy presents people determined to lead the way to a locally responsible, ecologically sustainable and socially just marketplace. These are entrepreneurs in the Greater Toronto Area who represent a diversity of businesses, backgrounds and personalities, each with a unique and inspiring story to tell. They exemplify the local living economy because their work is an expression of their local, green, fair values. Each of their enterprises are one-of-a-kind, independent companies that enrich the communities they are part of.

From 2007 to 2009 Molly Crealock worked closely with GEO researching progressive entrepreneurs and companies in Toronto. Portraits of the twenty final subjects formed a traveling exhibit which made its way to six venues across Toronto in 2009 and is now on semi-permanent display at the Centre for Social Innovation.

For the months of February and March, 2011, the Centre for Social Innovation (CSI) on Spadina lent out a number of the “Faces…” pictures for a display at the Junction Fromagerie, a lovely little cheese shop on Dundas Street West.

Shown here is Petra Cooper of Fifth Town Artisan Cheese (obviously a good choice for the Junction Fromagerie).  Fifth Town is a LEED certified, incredibly ecologically aware operation and Petra is a lovely person.

Wise Daughters Craft Market – Women’s Day Exhibit

For the month of March I participated in a group exhibit at Wise Daughters Craft Market, also in the Junction area of Toronto (where I now live).  Nine women artists exhibited photography, painting, encaustic and mosaic based work on a variety of themes.  I presented five images of strong women and their bikes.  The exhibit was well-received and I have to say it was really nice to be in some way involved in Women’s Day.  It’s been a long time since I marched and sold feminist bumper stickers at Ryerson University.  Sigh… But I digress.  Below is one of the images from the show, a portrait of Canadian arts personality Sook-Yin Lee.

Eco-Darkroom

A slightly less pleasing but similar option would be to follow Epson’s instructions and just send the cartridges back to Epson directly.  The following is from the Epson website:

“Epson Ink Cartridge Recycling Program

Epson is pleased to offer our customers an environmentally responsible way to recycle their used Epson branded inkjet cartridges. Simply follow the steps below:

1. Package your used inkjet cartridges in an appropriate shipping envelope or box. Ensure there is no leakage from the cartridges.
2. Mail your package to:
   Epson America, Inc.
   Attn: Recycling Center
   18300 Central Avenue
   Carson, CA 90746″

Epson also encourages people to send back their old hardware for recycling.

What about HP and Canon printers?

According to the HP website, you can drop your used HP cartridges off at 300 Staples locations in Canada.  Specifics can be found using their handy recycling reference guide.

Canon Canada boasts of its Canon Toner Cartridge Return Program, but I can’t find a list of cartridges that are accepted.  Generally speaking, they ask you to repackage your toners and send them back to Canon.  They’ll take it from there.  Canon eco info can be found here, and this might not get you far practically, but check out Canon’s Environmental Charter:

“CANON AMERICAS ENVIRONMENTAL CHARTER

CORPORATE PHILOSOPHY: KYOSEI
Achieve corporate growth and development while contributing to the prosperity of the world and the happiness of humankind through the corporate philosophy of kyosei:  All people, regardless of race, religion or culture, harmoniously living and working together into the future.

ENVIRONMENTAL ASSURANCE PHILOSOPHY
Pursue maximization of resource efficiency and contribute to the creation
of a society that practices sustainable development.

FUNDAMENTAL POLICIES FOR CANON AMERICAS ENVIRONMENTAL ASSURANCE
Canon Americas seeks to harmonize environmental, economic and social interests in all business activities, products and services; offer products with lower environmental burden through innovative improvements in resource efficiency; and eliminate anti-social activities that threaten the health and safety of humankind and the environment.”

On another note, thINKfood is a program in Toronto whereby people can donate used ink cartridges, which will be recycled into new ink cartridges, the profits of which will be donated to food banks.  The thINKfood website should be at www.think-food.com, but I’m not getting access to that url presently.  Not sure what this means (the program has been around for a while).

The linked websites, which started with Toronto specific resources and have since branched out to include national items, have been around for many years and have to thank for their existence Peter’s endless dedication to the projects and their goals of activating and encouraging environmental action and sustainable work.

The GoodWork site and corresponding mailing list have provided countless organizations with good employees and countless eco job hunters with employment.  In my days as manager of environmental retail store Grassroots I always sent job postings to GoodWork and was pleased with the results.  The site is also ripe with volunteer opportunities.  As a photographer I continue to subscribe to the mailing list, which keeps me up to date on new businesses and organizations that I might meet in one way or another and could perchance do business with.

There is an awful lot of text on the site, but if you poke around a bit you can find links to information on a lot of interesting topics, probably some that will be relevant to you.  For example, under “Art and Music for Social Change” I came across a link to the “Culture Politics” site’s “Social Movements and Culture” page, which features lots of interesting creative politics sites – Adbusters, Culture Jammer’s Encyclopedia and Guerilla Girls to name a few.

There is a website for an American company called “CD Recycling Center of America” where they talk about taking and recycling old discs.  On reading about the process, it doesn’t inspire me.  Basically the discs are ground down and melted, then sent to China for recycling.  Disc plastics are not of high enough quality for medical or food related uses, but can be used to make automotive parts and building materials.  More info on this can be found here.

For similar services (in California) there is also FreeRecycling.com.  They prefer to receive discs in bulk, but will accept small shipments.

It would be nice to know of some innovative project that takes bulk discs and turns them directly into some other usable products (I’m think Earth Ships – recycling construction projects – or something like that).  Local melt-down-and-recycle initiatives would be better than nothing.  Well, I’m sure the day will come.  There is no shortage of used discs out there.

Women Environmental Artist Directory (WEAD):  weadartists.org

“MISSION STATEMENT

Focusing on women’s unique perspectives we collaborate internationally to further the field and understanding of ecological and social justice art.

PURPOSE

* To provide information regarding the ecoart and social justice art fields to artists, curators, writers, art and public art administrators, educators in art and ecology, cross-disciplinary professionals and others.

* To facilitate international networking among artists working with ecological and social justice issues.

* To further the fields of, and the understanding of environmental and social justice art.

OPEN TO ALL WOMEN ARTS PROFESSIONALS, REGARDLESS OF MEDIA, WHOSE WORK EXPLORES, EDUCATES &/OR COMMENTS ON ECOLOGICAL & SOCIAL JUSTICE ISSUES.

WEAD is not juried. Our goal is to be inclusive of the broadest spectrum of women’s contemporary eco and social justice art. The Wead website provides a place for women arts professionals to define themselves and their work. Each writes her own entry, describing interests, intents, materials, philosophy, and aesthetics.”

HOW TO LIST ON THE WEAD WEBSITE

“WEAD accepts new listings and corrections on an on-going basis. Eligible women are encouraged to submit an entry.” weadartists.org/about-us/how-to-list

Sounds good to me.  I also came across:

GreenMuseum.org:  greenmuseum.org

“This online museum emerged from our own experiences making environmental art and from seeing firsthand some of the challenges facing artists, community groups, nonprofit organizations and arts institutions when it came to presenting and discussing environmental art.

More than a museum, we see greenmuseum.org as a giant collaborative art-making tool. We hope you find it useful, friendly and easy to navigate. “

HOW TO LIST ON THE GREEN MUSEUM WEBSITE

“At the moment we are adding new content intermittently and slowly  as we work to resolve the internal logjam of content we have to process… We try to include work that fits our understanding of the term “environmental art”… We also hope to show a breadth of approaches and give some sense of the geographic range of this work.”

GreenMuseum is based out of Corte Madera, California

ecoartspace: creating opportunities for addressing environmental issues through the visual arts – ecoartspace.org

“ecoartspace is one of the leading international organizations in a growing community of artists, scientists, curators, writers, nonprofits and businesses who are developing creative and innovative strategies to address our global environmental issues. We promote a diverse range of artworks that are participatory, collaborative, interdisciplinary and uniquely educational. Our philosophy embodies a broader concept of art in its relationship to the world and seeks to connect human beings aesthetically with the awareness of larger ecological systems.

Founded in 1997 by Tricia Watts as an art and nature center in development, ecoartspace was one of the first websites online  dedicated to art and environmental issues. New York City curator  Amy Lipton joined Watts in 1999, and together they have curated numerous exhibitions, participated on panels, given lectures at universities, developed programs and curricula, ad written essays  for publications from both the East and West Coasts. They advocate for international artists whose projects range from scientifically based ecological restoration to product based functional artworks, from temporal works created outdoors with nature to eco-social interventions in the urban public sphere, as well as more traditional art objects.

ecoartspace has been a project of the Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs in Los Angeles since 1999.”

HOW TO LIST ON THE ECOARTSPACE WEBSPACE

n/a

Wormfarm Institute: www.wormfarminstitute.org

“Dedicated to integrating culture and agriculture, the Wormfarm Institute is an evolving laboratory of the arts and ecology and fertile ground for creative work. Planting a seed, cultivating, reaping what you sow . . . both farmer and artist have these activities in common.”

“We look for artists, writers, musicians and composers with an interest in sustainable systems and our place in the natural world. The Wormfarm can host up to four visiting artists at a time, with residencies running from two weeks to six months or more (May to October).

Each artist is provided with accommodations, use of our growing facility and time and space to create. In exchange, we ask each to participate in farm operations for 15 hours per week and to share the results of their creative efforts with the local community.”

eatART: eatART is an artlab – www.eatart.org

“We make audacious and improbable large-scale kinetic, robotic, and mechanized sculptures that investigate our human relationship to energy use.”

What is eatART?

eatART fosters new media art research with a focus on large-scale, kinetic and robotic sculpture. Our projects use art to educate people about the role energy plays in our lives and to raise questions about the social and environmental impact of energy use.

eatART welcomes you to join us in our mission. Whether you want to learn specialised skills from our talented array of experts, lend your experience to educate others, or be a part of our many fun events; there’s something for everyone in this unique and successful charity.

For a longer list of arts and environment initiatives, see Community Arts Network, http://www.communityarts.net/links/archivefiles/environment_all/index.php

About the Community Arts Network

The Community Arts Network (CAN) is a portal to the field of community arts, providing news, documentation, theoretical writing, communications, research and educational information. Headquartered at its Web site on the Internet, CAN is a program of Art in the Public Interest (API), a nonprofit organization based in North Carolina.