Green creed elevated to new heights

The huge Outdoor Retailer Winter Market — or the OR Show as it's sometimes known — wrapped up its annual four-day stay at the Salt Palace Saturday, but if you're thinking of scavenging through the vacated booths and dumpsters to see if anyone might have left anything interesting behind, I've got some advice: don't.

These people don't throw anything away. I had a chance to walk through the show before it closed, and believe me, if anyone is serious about going green it's the OR. Most of the displays themselves were recyclable. Within two months I think they'll all be transformed into bunk beds in Burma.

One of the themes of this year's show, in fact, in addition to good old capitalism, was respecting and protecting the environment, and the organizers definitely practiced what they preached.

The press room, for starters, was paperless. Traditionally, press rooms have more paper in them than a New York subway. News releases, promotional fliers and other printed material line the walls and tables. Your basic rain forest's nightmare.

But the OR's press room looked as empty as Fred Thompson's campaign headquarters. Barely a scrap of paper to be seen. The entire massive press kit was on a computer disc the size of your little finger, to be read the new civilized way: on one's laptop.

True, this year's official OR badge was printed on paper, but it was recycled paper, and the ink was made out of soy.

In big bold letters underneath were these words: Don't Forget to Recycle Your Badge after the Show!

The green theme was everywhere, including on the Salt Palace carpet, where giant green footprints carried such reminders as "Leave your car home two days a week and reduce CO2 emissions by 1,590 pounds a year" and "Recycle a ton of paper and save 17 trees and 7,000 gallons of water."

Many of the exhibitors got seriously into the mood. At the Gramicci booth, the walls were made of actual trash. An L.A. artist named Mike Russet put together heaps of old newspapers, magazines, cardboard, fabric scraps and other debris and made them into walls resembling the sedimentary layers of the Earth. It was like a see-through dumpster. Arnold Rubenstein, Gramicci's CEO, proudly showed off the recycled walls and added that next August, for the summer OR at the Salt Palace, they'll be back in all their beauty — recycled yet again.

"Eighty-five percent of this booth is recyclable," Rubenstein said proudly, casting a scowl at the few beams of steel holding up the roof.