GreenHeart Global , an Oakland, California company, is a green industrial design company that creates products made from recycled or recyclable material. But they have one major hang-up.
“There’s nothing we hate more than seeing our products end up in the trash!”, says CEO and founder Gary Barker. “That doesn’t mean we think our products will live on forever. It does mean that once our product’s useful life is over it’s easily recyclable. All our products are made from highly recyclable and recoverable material. This keeps the product, and the material they’re made of, out of landfills and inside the environmental loop--where they belong.”
Their other hang-up is GreenHeart Global’s first line of “intelligently” engineered, environmental products, marketed under the name Ditto Hangers . Ditto Hangers are an award-winning1 line of 100% recyclable garment hangers that replace the old dry cleaner wire hanger and the much maligned plastic and wire hangers found in retail clothing stores.
Ditto Hangers have two lines that are made from two of the planet’s most recycled materials: 100% recycled paper and 100% recyclable PET plastic, the same plastic used to make water bottles.
“We designed our hangers starting at the end of their useful life rather than from the beginning.” says Barker. “That way we know they’ll have value on the secondary, recycling market--unlike the typical ‘invisible’ hanger found in most retail clothing stores”.
Created for retail clothing companies, non-toxic dry cleaners and green hospitality Ditto Hangers are 100% recyclable in the majority of recycling programs at the store level. They are designed to replace the estimated 8-10 billion polystyrene [PS] and polycarbonate [PC] plastic and wire hangers that are produced annually, only 15% of which are typically recycled. The rest go to landfills taking over 1000 years to break down leeching toxic benzene and bisphenyl-A into the ground water. 2
GreenHeart Global recently contracted with a large San Francisco based clothing company for their unique Ditto Paper and Metal Clip hanger for a denim roll-out. They have also been working with such progressive companies as Reebok/Canada on designing hockey equipment hangers and Adidas/Germany designing wide-shoulder paper hangers.
“We’ve found that companies are coming to us to design not only hangers but other products that use sustainable materials and that can be produced in our certified contracted factories” Barker noted. “We see a huge market creating beautiful products that are intelligently designed so that their end-of-life is engineered into the product. We don’t see consumption going down any time soon. That means it’s up to the industrial designer to design products responsibly. I don’t know of any other company out there doing what we do.”
About GreenHeart Global
Ditto Hangers is a division of GreenHeart Global, Inc. GreenHeart Global conceives, designs, manufactures, and markets products to meet the growing demand for goods that are less harmful to the environment. They focus on existing products and/or systems and redesign them so they are compatible with the increasing emphasis for “green” compliance. GreenHeart Global’s highly-designed products incorporate recycled, recyclable, rapidly renewable and/or bio-based materials, and replace toxic and non-sustainable materials with organic or natural alternatives, including inks, dyes, and adhesives. GreenHeart Global, Inc is a California based corporation with headquarters in Oakland, California and offices in Hong Kong.
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