Our green mission
“We were given a great gift to live here,” my dad told me as we were hiking through a Montana forest. “It’s our job to make sure it stays this beautiful for future generations.”
When I released the She journal, Gadanke’s first writing prompt journal, I remembered his lesson and vowed:
As we help people preserve stories at Gadanke, we will do our share to preserve the earth, too.
We focus on three areas of conservation at Gadanke:
1. REDUCE
I began sharing my little family’s story on my blog, Making This Home. My husband, Martin, and I lived in a 450 square foot apartment in Berlin, Germany, and I wanted to tell my family back in the US about my life and meet other expats. Then we moved into a house made of tires. Now we’re happily calling a vintage airplane hangar home with our son, Niklas. We built a 720 square foot green home in the back and heat and cool the hangar with a geothermal system. I know it sounds crazy. But it’s also really fun.
2. REUSE
I always ask myself how I can bring new life to things that already exist.
On the blog, you’ll see projects like the pillow I repurposed from a beloved sweater and our kitchen cabinets that we created from refurbished 1950s maple flooring.
A lot of Gadanke products touch on this idea of reusing, too. For example, there’s our vintage fabric journals made from repurposed antique store finds. These vintage postage stamps were once on letters our grandparents and great grandparents wrote one another.
3. RECYCLE
Finding recycled materials for commercial products can be quite the challenge. I think we’re rocking it, though! Every Gadanke journal is made of 77% recycled content.
That means that your kid’s spelling test, the magazines you subscribe to, and the sticky note reminding you to grab more milk all get processed into new paper... and possibly into Gadanke journals like the beloved mother daughter journal and wedding card scrapbook.
Our in-house recycling program creates minimal trash, as we recycle and reuse like crazy. Even our headquarters is built with recycled goodies. We just outgrew our studio in the airplane hangar, so I can’t wait to give you a tour of our new space.
The Montana governors have been acknowledging our efforts: For four years straight, we’ve won the EcoStar Green Business Award! I know we couldn’t have done it without you. Thank you for supporting us.
To the Gadanke journals…