"paperless" news and stories

This weekend, there's going to be a 10-foot pastrami sandwich at the Brooklyn Flea, but, despite the fast-food bigger-is-better craze, no one will dare you to eat it. This inedible behemoth is the latest structure from New York artist and School of Visual Arts professor Kevin O'Callaghan, and that meat is all rubber. That tooth-pick tassel? It's made from old menus. Your old take-out menus, in fact.

The unveiling of the large-scale piece, along with a 10-foot packet of take-out essentials (utensils, condiments, napkin), is the end of a week-long press run for SeamlessWeb.com, the international online food-delivery and takeout site. Their new campaign involves the slogan "(Less Paper) More Eat," and a big red truck circling the city to collect consumers' old menus. In exchange, you get a fortune cookie with a redemption code to use on the site's 5,000 featured restaurants in 27 cities across the U.S, as well as in London. And they've enlisted O'Callaghan to turn those paper menus into a piece of art. (FYI, he also designed the stage at the MTV Video Music Awards and is the subject of the newly released book, Monumental: The Reimagined World of Kevin O'Callaghan, which chronicles his long career.)

I was just wandering the web when I stumbled across an article on Yahoo Finance about Shortcuts, a new service of AOL. This is a totally paperless, online coupon program linked to store loyalty cards. Shortcuts makes it easy to click, shop, and save; on the products you buy every week.

The way it works is that customers go to the Shortcuts website and link coupons for products to their customer loyalty cards. then when your card is scanned the coupon automatically is applied to your purchase. It's a fantastic idea that makes it easy with no coupon cutting and remembering to bring them with you. There's also the "green" aspect of the program in cutting down on paper use and waste.

So far the service is only offered to Kroger's and affiliate stores customers, but that should change soon. For a growing list of all the partner stores click here.