Who we are

First, who we're not. We're not radicals. We're not preachy. We don't always seek out organic products, and we (gasp!) still have a few non-CFL bulbs at home and drive our fossil-fuel burning (high mpg, but still...) cars to work each day. But, when it comes right down to it, we're two kids who like the Earth. We think it's a nice place. We'd like it to be a nice place for our (future) kids. And we believe that while big changes happen slowly, it's the small changes that pave the way.

We created cosa verde to help those small changes along. We wanted to make it easy to find great green goods for your neo-hippie niece, your grandpa who doesn't believe in global-warming, and everyone in-between. So that maybe, when we remember to value the products we buy for how they're manufactured, as well as for their style or uniqueness, some bigger changes will happen in the way that we think about consuming. And we said we weren't preachy.

Liz Grotyohann is a graphic designer and artist working in found objects and recycled materials. She spends her days in graphics, designing museum exhibitions, but she spends her nights building assemblages, refinishing furniture and finding new ways to recycle all the papers on her desk. She lovingly blogs about artists and green media, and she personally reviews each and every cosa verde shop application.

By day, Jeff Fein-Worton is a mild-mannered programmer working for a large university. By night, he magically transforms into... a programmer! He spends his time making mostly digital things, like this website and programs that do silly things. Jeff also enjoys reading, watching movies, taking long walks on the beach, and building robots that will some day destroy us all. He also cooks for Liz, so that she does not go crazy and eat him.

Milo Minderbinder (top) and Boo Radley (bottom) are valued members of the cosa verde team, who assist with day-to-day tasks such as design, programming, and eating of moving and non-moving objects.

Want to know more about us? Read interviews from:
Craft Nouveau
ByHand.me
Etsy

Walk the Walk

We talk a lot about being environmentally-friendly on this site, and we want you to know that it's not just talk. Here's what we're doing as a business to do our part for the environment:

• We buy all of our energy from clean, renewable sources like wind, solar and low-impact hydro, through the New Jersey CleanPower Choice Program.
• We use energy-saving compact fluorescent light bulbs in our office and turn off lights and electronics when they're not in use.
• We are A/C free—it gets a little toasty in summer, but we're saving energy!
• When it's time to retire a piece of computer equipment, we take it to Goodwill, where their Reconnect Partnership will either repair the equipment for reuse or make sure that it is recycled responsibly, all while providing valuable job training to those in need.
• We strive to be a paperless company. The paper we do use has recycled content and we recycle our used ink cartridges.
• For every new store opened with cosa verde, we plant ten trees through Trees for the Future.
• To make things even better, we donate a portion of all our fees to charity! Yay for charity!