Ecostar Award, Montana USA
In February of 2010, CatTamboo™ Pet Toys received the EcoStar Award for our environmental efforts. We felt honored to be among the other 27 small businesses that won the award.
That February, we gathered in the capitol city of Helena, MT at the capitol building, in the rotunda. Our Montana governor (Brian Schweitzer) gave a wonderful speech about our heritage in relationship to nature. Montanan’s have always been good stewards of the land and those who where not didn’t make it out here.
It was impressive to see how much other companies have done to help our environment. In the future, we had hoped to see many others join this event, but once you’ve won the honors those who participated will bring other businesses along or encourage them to make some changes. In 2012, CatTamboo™ Pet products got more green with the introduction of a new program. The program involved collecting wild game birds from Montana, Wyoming, Washington, and South Dakota. Comparing the statistics of how many game birds are shot each year, the numbers of wasted natural resources are staggering. Our networking goal for 2013 was to process multiple hundreds of each species including ducks, geese, wild turkey and pheasant. Now it is 2015 and we are still striving to make use of these otherwise wasted natural resources. Click here to learn more about our Game bird conservation program and the statistics on how many game bird hunting licenses are pulled each year in Montana alone and what that equates to in terms of feather and feather toy numbers. The fact is that most game bird feathers are wasted because collecting and processing them is a challenge and expense. It is much easier to just hook up a supplier from China. But we have the same values as all Ecostar award winners in our commitment to make the planet greener, and we love supporting the US and Montana economies.
Another development from 2012 game bird conservation efforts is happening this fall of 2015 with the possible addition of yet another feather resource and feather type. We are researching the possibility of adding white domestic turkey to the mix. White turkey feathers are strikingly beautiful and make awesome cat toys.
In addition, we have large scale plans that will continue to take plastic waste out of the environment and employ Americans for production and distribution of our made in the USA pet toys.