Green Living
What is eco-silk?
Peace Silk vs. Eco-Silk
I have been trying and trying to find an eco-friendly wedding dress for my September wedding, and it was much much harder than I anticipated. There are a variety of organic companies that sell dresses, and a few designers have environmentally conscious choices, but let me tell you, the options are slim. Heaven forbid you want something that fits your body style, or that you’ll actually look good in! I finally found a few choices I was comfortable with on Etsy. I typed in “organic white dress” and found a myriad of pretty little options. Still not much compared to a bridal store, but it was something. It at least got me to the point where I realized I could get it custom made. Since I have such specific requirements I had to get it custom made. I chose a design I liked from the J. Crew Wedding catalog then set out to find an eco-friendly silk to have the dress made from. Little did I know how hard it would be to find an honest vendor that really knew what their stuff (and wasn’t trying to rip me off). I found the easiest choice was to find a vendor, and let them give me a price and to provide them with fabric I’d researched.
I originally asked for organic silk, and was startled to see the price and people throwing the word “peace silk” around left and right. I knew it was time for me to ‘get educated’ about the fabric I wanted for my dress. Peace Silk is a type of unbleached, natural silk, where the silkworms are allowed to live out the entirety of their lives. Ordinarily with silk, only a few of the worms are allowed to fulfill their natural lives and emerge from their cocoon. With Peace Silk, all of the worms are allowed to fulfill their natural lives, and the silk from the cocoons is harvested. It is also referred to as vegetarian silk or Ahimsa (non-violence) silk. Tussah silk is also very similar to peace silk, in that the moths live out their natural life and their cocoons are harvested after they’ve been vacated, however Tussah silk refers only to wild silk worms. The color of Tussah also tends to be a bit darker due to a different diet than cultivated silk worms.
Kanon Organic Vodka
A hot new introduction from a 400 year old distillery, Kanon Organic Vodka originates from the Gripsholm Distillery in Sweden. Dating back to 1580, this old world distillery with royal history was the largest distillery in Sweden supplying its foundry workers with high quality spirits from locally grown organic wheat. High quality organic vodka offerings from Europe are ever increasing with very little competition from state-side distilleries.
It is not just history which sets Kanon Organic Vodka apart from other organic liquor, it is also the unique organic process avoiding an ‘over-distilled’ vodka, providing a clean distinctive natural flavor without the typical vodka burn. I found it quite appealing on the rocks as well as paired with a mixer.
Going beyond just organic, the Gripsholm Distillery is run on wind and hydro power with all by-products being renewed. Even the Kanon bottle is made from 60% recycled glass giving it another bump on the eco-friendly scale. Locally produced organic wheat cuts down on transportation costs, and supports the local farmers.
Eco Friendly Clothes Shopping – Verdessence
A topic covered often here on The Chic Ecologist are brands and stores which carry eco friendly clothing. Based in Chicago, Verdessence is an on-line retailer opened by Lauren McGinty and Michael McCarthy out of a desire to promote positive change in the world. They were kind enough to send me an item from one of the many eco-friendly brands they carry, a sustainable hoodie by Edun (and no, that is not me in the picture).
Edun is probably best know by its celebrity co-founder, Bono from the band U2. Edun is a socially conscious clothing company launched in spring 2005 by Ali Hewson and Bono with a mission is to create beautiful clothing while fostering sustainable employment in developing areas of the world, particularly Africa.
The hoodie I received was made in Africa (Madagascar to be exact) by sustainable and recycled elements like wool, polyamide, cashmere, and PBT. It has a very modern fitted look and is top notch quality, as I would expect with all the brands Verdessence carries.
I actually initially ordered the Sameunderneath hooded coat (which was brilliant by the way), but I indicated the wrong size. The return/exchange process was very quick and easy making it painless to get a really great item. › Continue reading
What Foods to Buy Organic
I’m preparing to get married in September, and I’ve been working super hard to keep my diet healthy, while still saving money for the wedding. Even if you’re not getting married soon, you’re still probably on a budget with the way the economy is right now, and buying organic food can start to add up when your budget is tight. While it is always a better idea to eat organic food, I realize that sometimes it’s not always an option. After consulting the Environmental Working Group’s lists, and other environmental groups, I’ve compiled a list of fruits and veggies to go organic with, or to bypass if the budget won’t allow. A good rule of thumb is to consider the thickness of the skin. Melons of any type have thick skins and so pesticides have a harder time getting in. Peaches, berries, and other soft skinned fruit however eat the pesticides up like water, and tend to be highest on the pesticide scale.
Don’t forget meats, dairy, and eggs too. While they are sometimes hard to find in organic depending on where you live, they are very important to buy organic, sometimes more important than fruits and vegetables. There are so many pesticides and toxins in what animals are eating, let alone the products themselves.
Foods aren’t the only things that you should be seeking the natural approach for either. If you suffer from allergies or other health issues, environmental toxins may be to blame. It’s a good idea to buy almost anything in your bedroom, organically. You spend (hopefully) 8 hours out of every 24, sleeping in your bedroom. That’s a third of your day, and that doesn’t include other activities that you might do in your bedroom, such as work, or reading! Switching to an organic mattress or pillows might make all the difference in the world.
Solar Car Kits for Kids
A sample solar car concept
Conversely, people who begin learning additional languages as children tend to make a lot less mistakes common to later-learners and in addition, pick up the same languages much faster. Knowledge becomes more deeply rooted if it’s learned early, and bearing these facts in mind, one can also see why many professionals are able to trace their own passions as adults back to what they were brought up with.
With this in mind, it makes sense that the best way to instill green values in society would be to focus on the youth. That said, young kids won’t be too excited to read a dense non-fiction title on all the mistakes made by ourselves and our predecessors. They also wouldn’t be too keen on keeping up with environmental trends and gadgets. But few kids would shy away from being bought a new toy.
Magazine Recycled Paper Content
If you love magazines and catalogs, and haven’t transitioned over to a Kindle or e-reader, then you may be interested to hear about how paper manufacturers and magazines are staying eco-friendly. Or not. While some contain 10-15% recycled content and FSC certified paper, most still use 100% virgin paper.
One company stands out in this arena, and is the only paper company in the country capable of doing 85-100% recycled content Mechanical Coated Paper (aka the glossy paper in magazines and catalogs) domestically. Everything else is from overseas, its carbon footprint adding unneeded impact. Not only that, Futuremark has stepped up in other arenas including:
- Providing post recycling remnants to an agricultural supply company that sells 30,000 tons of it a year to farmers rather then dumping them into a landfill.
- Partnering with the City of Chicago and its schools to collect paper and textbooks, paying schools, faith and civic groups, etc, for what they collect.
Many of us have spoken up by signing up for junk mail reducing lists, but for those who still enjoy the occasional catalog or subscribe to print magazines, publishers need to know that this is a concern of their readers.
Reusable Grocery Bags and Bacteria
Society has seen a quick adoption of reusable grocery bags, especially with legislative measures in their favor in several cities/states/countries (like Washington DC and the Republic of Ireland). This progressive adoption is understandable on at least three counts outside of these two places as well. Firstly, as these bags are convenient for grocery stores, which in turn will save money on paper and plastic bags. Secondly, as they’re also convenient for shoppers who no longer have to hope the bag boy didn’t over-stuff the flimsy plastic/paper bags they would normally use. And finally, convenient for the environment as it results in less dependency on plastic bags which would to take millennia to biodegrade. 
The quick spread of these bags comes at a cost though as the people adopting them aren’t properly informed as to the measures they’d need to take in order to safely use them. They’re bags, is there really anything non-intuitive about their use? It seems that there is. They’re meant to be washed on a regular basis, but the people who purchase them don’t seem to be aware of this fact by far as a recent study indicates that as much as 97% of randomly selected interviewees were completely unaware of this health precaution.
› Continue reading
GASLAND
After receiving a letter in the mail proposing $100,000 to lease his 19.5 acre property, filmmaker Josh Fox embarked on a multi-state mission to explore the source, reason, and consequences of hydraulic fracturing; a relatively new process of extracting natural gas. Fox’s documentary, ‘GASLAND,’ paints an in-depth picture of the new part of our county, GASLAND, in what their website calls part travelogue, part expose, part mystery, part bluegrass banjo meltdown, and part showdown.
I mention that hydraulic fracturing is a relatively new process; within the last 50-60 years. In a Q & A session at the Sundance Film Festival Fox states that fracturing was used only as a last resort process in the past. Fox mentions the interesting point that “as we are running out of [natural gas] the desperation technique becomes the primary way”. The process of hydraulic fracturing (also known as ‘fracking’) is aimed at forming a fracture within shale or formation rock to make it easier and more efficient to extract natural gas that is trapped within the rock. A hydraulic fracture is formed by injecting 207 million gallons of water per well into a well which creates a pressure that cracks the rock, and allows the fracturing fluid to expand the crack further into the rock. In order to keep the fracture open, the fracture water includes materials such as grains of sand or ceramics. The fluid itself can also be gel, foam, nitrogen or carbon dioxide. In addition to this, there are also 596 (according to Fox) different chemicals used in this process, injected underground, and most of the fluid is left there. It is estimated that 90% of the natural gas wells in the United States actually rely on hydraulic fracturing in order to release and collect natural gas at the demanded rates. › Continue reading
YoGen: A Green Alternative to Emergency Energy
Image courtesy of Easy Energy, Inc.
I generally type at about 65 WPM, and I like to think that this is a quite a bit faster than a typical computer user especially considering that I’ve never actually taken any typing classes. I amassed this WPM on nothing but experience, hooked to a glaring computer screen since the age of five or six (we didn’t have cable and I was easily amused). In spite of my proficiency at typing, I have nothing on the speed at which my friends text. Not yet anyways.
Like my computer experience, kids are now growing up with cell-phones, rapidly pounding out messages that I would’ve actually had to say out loud. Regardless of what can be said about how this might depersonalize our communication with each other, it is an incontrovertible fact that the world is marching along in this direction – steadily becoming more and more dependent on these small all-encompassing tools. I’ve answered surveys where I was asked about one technology without which I couldn’t survive, and without even second guessing myself, I had to say my cell phone. I can always find easily accessible computers, but when it comes to my cell phone, it stores all of my contacts along with my music, pictures, videos and even some reminders of important appointments. I can’t leave home without it charged. And I can only imagine how much more important they would than be to people who lead far busier lives than my own.
It follows than, that in such a world, emergency energy has the potential for substantial business. I myself can’t say how many times I’ve purchased Cellboost to recharge my phone after I had realized that I hadn’t recharged it the previous night. I’ve also found similar technology that relies on you plugging in AAA batteries and the like as a source of energy, a rechargeable substitute for the disposable Cellboost (which is itself not much more than smaller batteries packaged in plastic).
Fair Trade Tea Tasting: Zhena’s Gypsy Tea
I wake up in the morning pretty groggy, and the shower’s enough to keep me awake for a few minutes after I step out but like much of America, I need something more than water to keep me going through the day. I’d like to think it’s not true, but I probably am a caffeine-addict with my own alternative to a five dollar cup of coffee every morning – I kick start my day with tea.
I like to think though that I’m not a simple addict, but instead, a tea-connoisseur (ah, the semantics of denial) and have always gone out of my way to drink teas that appeal to me instead of simply getting a regular morning caffeine fix. Generally, this comes in the form of a single-estate tea I’ve either randomly picked up doing groceries – or when I’m particularly feeling curious, over the Internet.
Courtesy of Zhena's Gypsy Tea
I’ve also, less occasionally, dabbled my hand in flavored teas, where the interest isn’t so much in preserving the unique taste of tea from a particular estate but instead in the actual additional flavoring. Although it would be a break from routine, a sampler tin of 16 tea-bags (of four different flavors) caught my eye when I had to pick up a few groceries last week. What particularly perked my attention wasn’t the variety of flavors, or the colorful nature of the stacked tins, but the catchwords with which this tea were labeled: “fair trade” and “organic”. As I turned it over to the other-side, I also found that the tea was kosher. I couldn’t really place my finger on the relevance of the ‘kosher’ tag though as I always thought that such a label would only be applicable to products in some way derived from animals and they haven’t started putting bacon in tea just yet. “Meh”, I thought, “I’ll give em a try.”
Eco Diamonds
You love the look of diamonds, but want a more environmentally and socially responsible alternative to a unknown origin mined diamond- enter eco diamonds. This phrase can be thrown around loosely, so the first and foremost thing to do when looking for an eco diamond is do your research!
Lets first dive into some of the terminology, pros and cons and what is available as eco jewelry.
-
1. Pre-owned diamonds
If you have some diamonds in your family (grandmothers ring, jewelry, etc), use them! Stones can be easily re-set into new rings, or jewelry. Beware of stores selling pre-owned diamonds as these can often be a way to get un-tracked blood diamonds out onto the market.
2. Cultured or Synthetic Diamonds
These are laboratory created diamonds. Don’t confuse these with diamond stimulants such as cubic zirconiums, these are real true diamonds with the exact molecular structure of mined diamonds. These are often totally flawless, so you can usually get a better diamond at a better price, without the environmental destruction.
3. Environmentally and Socially conscious mined diamonds
Now beginning to emerge are several types and variations of Eco mined diamonds. While many will argue the ‘Eco’ part since mining is so destructive, it can be much less harmful than traditional mining techniques. Canada has begun mining and selling eco diamonds, and some smaller operations in Africa have begun integrating environmental and social ethics.
