Ecosystem and Whomi planners not produced for 2012

I've had several people email me to ask if I have any information about Ecosystem and Whomi planners. 

I don't personally, but from what people have told me, they have received replies from Ecosystem (www.ecosystemlife.com) that their planners are not being produced for 2012 and they hope to bring them back for 2013.

Whomi planners (www.whomi.com) also hope to return for 2013, you can read more about their production plans here.

I was very surprised and disappointed that these two excellent planner brands are currently out of production. Tough times for the planner industry!

ecosystem weekly planners

In my previous post I told you all about the ecosystem brand of 100% recycled planners and notebooks (which you can read more about at www.ecosystemlife.com), and gave my review of the medium author lined journal. In this post, I will give you details about their weekly planners.

The ecosystem advisor planners come in a variety of formats, sizes, and cover colors. The available formats are monthly, and two different formats of weekly: the "calendar weekly" has a week + notes format with the week's schedule on the left page and the right page lined for notes. The "calendar weekly horizontal" format has the week spread across the two pages.

ecosystem very generously sent me one of each of the weekly format planners to review. Both formats of weekly planners have the same information and monthly planning pages.

Inside the front cover there is an Information page where you can write your name and contact information. On this page there is a printed note that says if the book is found, please refer to the ID number printed inside the back cover and go to www.ecosystemlife.com to reunite the book with the owner. For this reason it's a very good idea to register your book on the website. I think this is an excellent service provided by the company.

There is another information page where you can write more details if you wish including your address, phone number, blood type, medications, driver's license number etc.

After that there is a two-page spread with the current year's planning calendar:
After that there are planning pages with the months as columns with a line per day:
After the current year's monthly planning pages there is a two-page spread with next year's overview, followed by monthly planning pages for all of that year.

After the monthly planners, there is a 2-page spread with a Travel Record to record your destination, itinerary, notes and dates.

The next 2-page spread is a time zone map for the US. After that there are pages with US Toll-Free numbers for airlines, car rentals, hotels, computer online services and more. This would be very useful for anyone living in or traveling to the US.

The next 2-page spread is a map of International Time Zones:The pages after that include international dialing codes, US area codes, a page of measurement conversions, and a website log to record website names, urls and notes.

After that, the weekly planner section begins.

Here is the pocket size horizontal weekly planner with an onyx (black) hard cover:
The matte-black cover is truly hard-backed for durability. The cotton elastic strap and placemarker are color-matched.

The horizontal weekly format shows the days of the week across both pages (you can click on the photo for a larger view):
All holidays for the US, Great Britain, Ireland, France, Australia and New Zealand are printed in the day spaces. Also printed on the day spaces are religious holidays for several religions, and celebration days like Grandparents' Day. The phases of the moon are also printed.

The medium weekly (week + notes format) planner is the gorgeous watermelon pink color:This has the flexi cover, which is flexible yet durable. Again the placemarker and elastic strap are color matched.

The weekly format shows the week's schedule on the left page, with the right page lined for notes (click to enlarge): As in the horizontal weekly format, all holidays and phases of the moon are printed in the day spaces.

The medium size ecosystem notebooks and planners are the same size as the large Moleskine notebooks and planners. This medium ecosystem planner fits perfectly in my Rickshaw Bagworks Moleskine Folio (which you can read my review of here):


Both planners have a pocket in the back to hold papers, cards, or whatever you like. There is a selection of inserts for the back pocket available to purchase, to supplement your planner: a monthly calendar, notes pages, address booklet, to-do lists and more.

You can read my review of the paper, and details about the brand in general, in my previous post.

If you are interested in planners that are 100% recycled and 100% made in the US, you should definitely check out the ecosystem collection!

Ecosystem products can be found in participating Barnes and Noble, and Staples stores and also can be purchased online.

You can find ecosystem on:

Twitter at http://twitter.com/ecosystemlife.

Facebook (search for "ecosystemlife")

Read their blog at http://ecosystemlife.tumblr.com/

Many thanks again to ecosystem for giving me the opportunity to try their excellent products and learn more about their brand!

ecosystem lined journal

I have a lot to say about ecosystem products! I actually have three ecosystem products to review, which were very generously given to me as samples from the company: the lined journal (green), the week + notes planner (pink) and the week on 2 pages planner (black). Rather than do it all in one massively long post, I will talk about the ecosystem brand itself and the lined journal in this post, and the two planners in Friday's post.

Where do I start?? There's so much to tell you! I'm just going to have to jump right in.

ecosystem is a brand of 100% post-consumer recycled notebooks and planners which are 100% made in the USA. Every single component, from the paper to the elastic strap to the cover, is made in the US.

ecosystem products use New Leaf paper, which is 100% post-consumer recycled and prepared using a chlorine-free bleaching process. All print throughout the books is soy-based. The books are printed in Maine at a printing facility that uses a reverse-osmosis water filtration system, ensuring clean water runoff.

The covers are produced in Rhode Island with 100% post-consumer paper, and coated using water-based technology. The environmentally-friendly latex that coats the covers can be recycled into heating oil!

The elastic strap and ribbon bookmark are made with organic cotton and dyed with water-soluble, low-impact dyes. Even the packaging is made from recycled materials!

The planners and notebooks come in a variety of colors: onyx (black), watermelon (the gorgeous pink you see in the photo above), lagoon (a beautiful vibrant blue), clementine (bright, clear orange), and kiwi (the nifty green color of the journal I'm reviewing here). The new grape color covers will be available at the end of this month, which I am very excited about!

Inside the back cover of every ecosystem planner and notebook there is a book ID code that you can type into the website to find out all about your book, when it was manufactured, where each component was sourced, and even how many people are employed at each manufacturing facility. Also with the book ID code you can register your book on the website so that if you ever lose your book, the finder can type in the book ID into the website so that ecosystem can reunite you with your book!

Also available are inserts that slip into the back pocket of the notebooks and planners. These inserts come in: monthly planner to get an overview of each month; grid, lined or blank paper; address booklet insert; or to-do lists. These inserts greatly expand the possible uses for your book.

I will talk about the details of the planners in my next post, here I will focus on the notebooks.

The notebooks come in a variety of sizes and cover styles. The Architect notebooks have grid paper, the Artist notebooks have blank paper, and the Author notebooks have lined paper.

The notebook I received to review is a Medium Author (lined journal):The Medium size measures 5 1/4 by 8 1/4 inches and is exactly the same size as a Large Moleskine. In fact, I am happy to report that the Medium size ecosystem planners and notebooks fit into my Rickshaw Bagworks Moleskine folio, for those of you who are interested!

This Author lined journal has a flexi cover, which is flexible yet tough. It has a matching green elastic closure and placemarker:
The journal has 192 lined pages. Every page is micro-perforated, so you can tear out any pages you like:
The paper itself is very good, and I would never have guessed it's 100% post-consumer recycled. You can tell there is some recycled content because there are some tiny flecks in the paper, but it is very smooth and bright white, not something you normally see in 100% recycled paper.

I don't use fountain pens so unfortunately I can't tell you how the paper performs with them. I use a variety of pens, normally Sakura Microns, Pilot V5s and Sharpie pens. With these wet ink pens there was very little show-through and absolutely no bleed-through. Interestingly, on one side of the paper I noticed some slight feathering of the ink lines but not on the other side of the pages, so there is a very slight difference in texture on the front vs back sides of the paper. For me, it's not enough to make any difference. People who are very picky about their paper may notice it more.

There is a gusseted pocket in the back to hold notes, cards and whatever else you want.

As I mentioned before, the ecosystem notebooks come in a huge variety of sizes, formats and colors, so you are sure to find a notebook to fit your needs from this lineup. Additionally, according to one of @ecosystemlife's tweets on Twitter, they will have a sketchbook available late fall with 80g white paper that will be suitable for watercolors.

Ecosystem products can be found in participating Barnes and Noble, and Staples stores and also can be purchased online.

You can find ecosystem on:

Twitter at http://twitter.com/ecosystemlife.

Facebook (search for "ecosystemlife")

Read their blog at http://ecosystemlife.tumblr.com/

Reader Needs Help! Need suggestions for Week + Notes planners

Note Booker, who writes the awesome blog Note Booker, Esq. sent me an email with some specifics on what type of planner he's looking for:


I am looking for a planner that has the following features:

1. No address book section. (That info is all in my phone, no sense carrying around the extra paper.)
2. Monthly AND weekly views. (It's hard to plan ahead without a monthly view, but I want the detail of a weekly view to plan my week.)
3. A notes page opposite each weekly view. (So I can outline my priorities for the week. Something like the Quo Vadis Space 24)
4. Goes through the end of 2011.

I've been looking around, but #2 has been impossible to find, and it is probably the most important consideration. Any suggestions?

Here are the planners I suggested to him, but I want to know if any of you fine readers know of any other planner that would better fit his requirements:

The only bound week + notes planner that I know of that will go all the way through the end of 2011 is the Moleskine 18 month Weekly Notebook. It begins in July, and ends December 2011. (I reviewed mine here on Plannerisms) The Moleskine planner doesn't have monthly calendars per se, but does have monthly planning pages with the months as columns with a line per day. The hard cover books have removable address booklets, the soft cover ones have none.

Very similar to the Moleskine weekly notebook, but a brand I haven't tried yet is the Ecosystem weekly planner. This has the same week + notes format, but has an advantage: they sell a separate monthly calendar insert to slip into the back pocket.

So there he would have the week + notes, and monthly calendars together in one book. But as far as I know they only come in the calendar year, so he would have to get separate books for this year and next year.

My next suggestion is one that Booker sent me: the Quo Vadis Space 24. This has a removable address book. These planners have the huge advantage of having a for-real monthly section at the beginning of the planner, with the days as squares large enough to write in. Additionally, they also have the planning calendars with the months as columns, one line per day. As with all Quo Vadis planners, the paper is a dream to write on. But again, they are calendar-year only.

Of course another option is a Filofax, which has the week + notes diary insert for Personal and also A5 sizes. And he can also put in the monthly calendars.

All of these are good planners, but none of them are exactly and completely what he's looking for.

Does anyone know of a planner that completely fulfills all his requirements? If you do, please post in the comments! Thanks!

Ecosystem Planners and Notebooks

Here is a brand I've only recently discovered: Ecosystem, a brand of 100% post-consumer recycled paper planners and notebooks. Please understand that I do live under a rock, and I don't have access to many brands that are commonplace in the US or UK, so if everybody already knows about these except me then please forgive me. But they look really interesting!

The 4 categories are cleverly designated: Author (lined pages, for...writing), Artist (blank pages for...art), Architect (quad ruled pages for...architect-ing) and Advisor (planners!!!).

They look very Moleskine-esque with their elastic strap and ribbon page marker. But unlike Moleskine they have a nice selection of cover colors. I especially like the Watermelon (pink) and Lagoon (blue), but of course I had to jump onto their website to send in my request for purple. I can't help it, I like all things purple and hey, they asked for color suggestions!

Perhaps most intriguing is that they sell separate inserts in a variety of formats to tuck into the back pocket of the book: to-do lists, monthly calendar (!), addresses, lined, blank and more. In my opinion this increases the functionality of a book exponentially. For people who have tons of lists but few appointments, you could tuck a monthly calendar into the back pocket of a lined book and boom, there's your planner. When the notebook fills up before the end of the year, no problem: you just move the monthly insert to a new notebook and you're set. Or for people who need to schedule appointments and write lists or notes, tuck a notes insert into the back of your weekly planner, and when the insert fills up you can easily replace it. I think this is a great system.

Ecosystem seems to have done everything right: a great selection of sizes, cover colors, and formats. 100% post-consumer recycled paper. Made in the USA. But I'm wondering what the actual products are like. Is the paper nice to write on? Does liquid ink bleed through? Will the book hold up to a year of use and being thrown into a bag?

If you have used an Ecosystem notebook or planner, please leave a comment! I'm veeeery intrigued. Hmmm...