Local
Charity Water Birthdays – Donation Gifts
Charity Water has come up with a concept I love, donations for your birthday! A pretty simple concept, but Charity Water allows you to create your own custom birthday donation page with goals to share with friends called the Birthday Donation Project. Wonderful!
What is this Charity Water you may be asking? Their mission is to bring clean water to the world, particularly developing countries where they need it the most. This can mean anything from drilling wells to water treatment.
90% of the 30,000 deaths that occur every week from unsafe water and unhygienic living conditions are in children under five years old.
-World Health Organization
Farm To Table – Taking Food Local
You may be hearing a lot about an emerging trend in food sourcing at local restaurants called Farm to Table or Farm to Fork. This takes local and usually organic food to a whole new level with a menu prepared from the restaurants own local garden or a nearby partner farm.
Rooted in the local food movement, farm to table eliminates much of the transportation, storage and utilizes smaller local farms rather than large scale factory farms. › Continue reading
Green Your Thanksgiving – Tips For A Greener Holiday
With Thanksgiving coming up, there is much to do to prepare for a green holiday. Make the conscious choice to reduce waste without sacrificing (you may up even saving money this year!)
There is as much involved in the preparation as the choices you make during the meal. From choosing local and organic produce to preparing your guests and family in order to reduce waste. Check out these tips to keep your Thanksgiving feast fun and eco-friendly.
Shop and Eat Local
Buying and eating locally produced food, you support your local community, reduce transportation waste and eat fresher food! Farmers markets, local grocers and natural food stores are great places to start. Organic produce and a free-range turkey reduce your exposure to pesticides, are grown under eco-friendly and humane conditions.
Decorate from the Yard
Collected pine cones, fallen leaves, branch cuttings and fall foliage from the neighborhood can act as great decoration or as colorful centerpieces. By using locally found biodegradable items instead of synthetic purchased items, you reduce production and › Continue reading
Microfinance Loans and Microcredit – Kiva
I am still a big proponent of investing in and own several mutual funds and stocks in green technologies and companies, but I often wonder “will that actually affect the biggest change?”
Most investments now days have been marred by scandals. The stock market was hit with internet bubble stocks, declining bank stocks, failing financial institutions, bankruptcies, real estate, you name it, it has suffered somehow. Almost makes you want to go back to your local savings account. Rather than leaving your money to wallow under inflation in a piggy bank or mattress, try investing in people.
Microfinance has been around for some time, however, companies like Kiva are making it even easier to select people and causes close to your heart (or investing strategy) while providing more security from default than with individual investing. Each loan is carefully selected by field partners and volunteers, but it remains a very personal feel. You get to essentially meet (via a personal profile) the individual you are loaning your money to and understand their pursuit and the needs of the community. › Continue reading
All About: Seattle, Washington
Washington State has a reputation (along with the rest of the Pacific Northwest) as being a green, eco-friendly region. Given the natural beauty, active outdoorsy residents and connection with nature, its really no wonder.
Here at The Chic Ecologist, we have done several articles and features of Seattle based sustainable businesses, green events and manufacturers, so we decided to compile a little list of our favorites so far:
Sustainable Seattle Restaurants
Local 360 – Almost all raw ingredients (even liquors, wine and beer!) are sourced within a 360 mile radius of this Seattle restaurant. They also attempt to use organic and sustainable items whenever possible including humane raised meats and local wild-caught seafoods.
Mashiko Sushi – Seattle’s first sustainable sushi restaurant, Mashiko has developed an exciting local, seasonal and delicious menu from sustainably sourced and sustainably caught ingredients. Not your traditional sushi (you won’t find the typical yellowtail hamachi and toro here), instead you will find amazing Hawaiian abalone, sockeye salmon and geoduck.
Seattle Eco-friendly Businesses
Appliance Away & Mattress Away – Mattress and appliance recycling. This local company will actually come to your home, pick up your old mattress and appliances and haul them away, stripping them down for recycling. Call for individual rates and quotes, but it is a great way to keep these big, bulky items out of landfills while re-purposing valuable resources.
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Local Seattle Vodka & Gin – Sound Spirits
It’s pretty amazing what you can find just leisurely walking around Seattle. Case in point, the other day I decided to take a walk down 15th near the Interbay area and ran into Sound Spirits, a Seattle craft distillery producing primarily Vodka and Gin (with an Aquavit coming soon!) under the label Ebb+Flow.
Billed as Seattle’s first distillery since prohibition, Sound Spirits uses local ingredients to distill each batch by hand at their Interbay facility.Their entire operation is contained within this single building, including the distillery itself, tasting room and store. › Continue reading
Composting with Local Cafe Coffee Grounds
If you have a composting pile or bin for your home garden, then you should head down to your local cafe and pick up these compost boosters. Coffee shops throw away tons of used coffee grounds each year, grounds which are better suited for your garden. Many cafes offer these grounds to their customers if you just ask. Some Starbucks cafes even have them bagged and waiting for you in their Grounds for your Garden bin.
Coffee grounds are excellent for home garden composting, providing your plants with a rich source of nitrogen. You can even add them to rose beds, azalea beds, or any acid loving plants, just spread a thin layer over the surface of the bed. Typical acid loving plants thrive in areas where summer rains are common. Unfortunately, due to salt levels, you should not add coffee ground into your container plants.
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Local 360 Restaurant in Seattle
Local 360 is a relatively new restaurant in Seattle’s Belltown area serving locally sourced breakfast, lunch and dinner. The premise behind their name and their philosophy is every raw ingredient is sources within 360 miles of Seattle, and they really do mean it. Browse even their drink menu, and you won’t find a spirit, liquor or wine produced any further away than Idaho (most are from Washington and Oregon).
Our products are always sourced from the most humane farms we can find. Ideally, 90% of our raw ingredients come from within 360 miles of Seattle. Lemons, limes, coffee and a few other items just don’t grow in Cascadia anytime of the year.
We source these items Certified Organic from the closest place possible. Nothing we are doing is innovative or new- on the contrary, we are returning to a simpler way of functioning as a business. We have stopped asking “what is new,” and have begun asking, “what is best.”
