Modern Philanthropy: The New American Dream
By Lizbeth M. Brown, Esq.
Filed Under Modern Philanthropy | 1 Comment
There is a new form of philanthropy brewing. The traditional forms of giving have been phenomenal, but today’s colossal issues require an evolution of this art. Today’s philanthropy requires a collective response. It’s about pooling our distinct abilities as individuals and addressing ecological crises, corporate encroachment, and warfare as a group. If we were each working alone, these tasks would be daunting, and even paralyzing. The recognition of the modern philanthropist is that together, “Si, Se Puede.” Yes, we can.
Common Ground Health Clinic is a community clinic, founded in Louisiana in the immediate wake of the Hurricane Katrina disaster. It’s one of eConscious Market’s non-profit partners. I love their slogan “Solidarity, not charity.” This notion exemplifies Modern Philanthropy because it is participative. It forms a collective of humans who care to improve their community and in doing so, their own lives, and the world. It brings people together in a common cause and movement towards the vision of a better imminent tomorrow.
Continue reading Modern Philanthropy: The New American Dream…
Posted on April 21, 2008 |
Think Globally, Drink Locally
By Katy Pollock
Filed Under Green Living | 4 Comments
We’ve all heard our grandparents start a story with, “Back in my day…” And some of you may have thought, oh here they go again, but when my grandpa starts a story, I hang on each and every word. He’s had a simple yet rich life, born in 1912, worked since he was just a boy, married for more than 70 years, and he’s still living independently and golfing regularly at age 96. I’m so drawn to stories of the “old days” and I often wonder why I wish to harness a piece of that era for my life today.
Ironically, many of today’s eco-trends are reminiscent of days gone by: whole-grain preservative-free baking, DIY crafting & fashion, farmer’s markets and even biking to work. One trend that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed, though ignorantly, is the craft of microbrew beers. On my journey to become more environmentally aware, little did I know that enjoying a tasty draft-poured local microbrew was, in fact, eco-friendly. Continue reading Think Globally, Drink Locally…
Posted on April 18, 2008 |
Can Organic Farming Feed the World?
By Anita M. Burke
Filed Under Green Living, The Big Picture | 1 Comment
Organic farming is now the fastest growing component of world agriculture, with farmers in 110 nations cultivating certified organic crops. In the US, more than a million acres of certified organic cropland and pasture were added over the last four years. The growth has been triggered by multiple factors. Many family farmers are discovering organic farming provides more economic stability than conventional farming. Consumers are buying more organic products as they are witnessing an increasing number of scientific studies revealing the dangers (to human health and the environment) of pesticides and genetically engineered crops. Consumers also support organic farming, because it’s more likely to support family farmers. According to the USDA, this upsurge brought the total acreage to over 2.3 million acres. Sad to say, as vast as that sounds, it’s actually less than 0.3% of the total farmland in the United States. We’ve got a long way to go.
With today’s global food security starting to heat up, this transformation can come none to soon. Scientists, agricultural experts and even longtime enemies of organic farming, big agribusines, are taking a hard look at some recent field studies by a University of Michigan research team. Their well-constructed model showed that a transformation to organic farming worldwide would yield 4,381 calories per person per day! That is 75% greater than the current availability…a quantity that could theoretically sustain a much larger human population than is currently supported. Continue reading Can Organic Farming Feed the World?…
Posted on April 17, 2008 |
Elevision: Lester Brown Talks Renewable Energy
By Jenn Breckenridge
Filed Under The Big Picture, eCo TV | 1 Comment
Waylon Lewis of Elevision interviews Lester Brown, founder of the Earth Policy Institute and author of Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization. Lester Brown is considered one of the foremost leaders in the environmental movement. In this extremely in-depth interview, Lester discusses the Greenland Ice Sheet, Peak Oil, the rise of solar and wind energy, and the decline of coal power in the US.
Posted on April 16, 2008 |
Fashion Conscious
By Pippa Sorley
Filed Under Sustainable Style | Leave a Comment
I admit it. I’m a sucker when it comes to fashion. I pride myself on biking to work, buying organic food, and voting with my dollar whenever possible…but I love clothes. So what’s an eco-conscious girl to do? Most conventional retailers like Gap or Banana Republic are agonizingly limited in their eco-friendly choices. Who knows how many pounds of pesticides were used to make this cotton T-shirt or how little that Vietnamese worker was paid to sew that incredible skirt.
Until recently, when the words “eco-friendly” and “fashion” were used in the same sentence, it would conjure up images of frumpy frocks made out of hemp, or Birkenstock-clad festival goers. Environmentally and socially responsible clothes – that were also fashionable - were hard to come by, and came in limited styles, sizes and fabrics.
Today, supply has caught up with demand, and hip, urban, funky clothes – that are also consciously made – are more accessible than ever before. Businesses such as Nike and Patagonia have learned that their customers really do care about the social conditions of their manufacturing facilities, or the environmental effects of their operation. According to the LOHAS (Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability) Report on sustainable economy, one-third of U.S. consumers are willing to pay 20% more for environmentally or socially responsible products. That translates to a $226.8 billion market worldwide.
This “Conscious Consumer” market segment is driving a new economic paradigm. Mainstream, global corporations are starting to realize that unless they adopt a triple bottom line philosophy of economic, social, and environmental sustainability, they may lose their ‘loyal’ customer base. Even Walmart – the global behemoth we love to hate – has jumped on the bandwagon by preserving an acre of wildlife habitat for every developed acre of their footprint.
But I digress. Back to the most important issue at hand - fashion. Here’s a quick list of hip, functional, trend-setting clothes that will make you look fabulous while you’re “walking your talk.”
Same Underneath is an uber cool fashion company that specializes in hip clothing made out of bamboo, wool, hemp, organic cotton and recycled polyester. All of their fabrications are composed of sustainable and/or organic blends. The company’s mission is to “change the way people look at each other,” and, in line with their name, their objective is to “unite those who don’t judge others by religion, race, hobbies, color, creed, and/or sex.”
When it comes to seeding the growth in the supply and variety of sustainable fabrics, Patagonia is the true pioneer. Back when organic cotton was unfathomably expensive, the company made a bold decision: to convert their entire sportswear line to 100% organically grown cotton. Within three years, Beneficial T’s became one of the biggest users of organic cotton in the United States. They now convert roughly 500,000 pounds of organic cotton into T-shirts, tote bags and hats each year. They were also the first outdoor clothing manufacturer to use fleece made from post consumer recycled plastic soda bottles, saving some 86 million soda bottles from the trash heap.
Everybody loves funk. Thanks to Funk Divine, we can now buy hemp tees and jumpsuits that are funky, retro and ‘sweatshop-free.’ The company’s mission is clear: to use only the finest hemp and organic cotton fabrics to be found. The limited edition line evokes a modern day Egyptian glamour, the scarab logo representing ‘life’.
Sadly, Made In The USA and sweatshop-free garments are few and far between; over 93% of clothing in America is made in foreign countries. Companies like Funk Divine are breaking this paradigm. With more than a hundred boutique clothing designers based in the U.S., the awakening of the American-made fashion movement is poised for success.
Co-designed by U2 frontman Bono’s wife, Ali Hewson, and fashion designer Rogan Gregory, Edun (“nude” spelled backwards) is founded on four respects: respect for what your clothes are made of, respect for who is making them, respect for where they are made, and respect for the people who are going to put them on. The result is a fabulous, funky new line of apparel made in developing countries with environmentally friendly materials.
Posted on April 15, 2008 |
Kudos For eConscious Market
By Jenn Breckenridge
Filed Under Sustainable Style | Leave a Comment
Deep in the mountains of Boulder, CO, the staff here at eConsciousMarket.com is proud to say we’re gracing the pages of the April 2008 print issue of Glamour magazine. It turns out that even bike-riding treehuggers in Boulder can still have quite a keen sense of modern style. Not only that, but out of thirty tips given by some of the biggest authorities on the green scene, we came in 3rd. Aces. Here’s recommendation #3 in Glamour’s “Every Woman’s Guide To Going Green…”
Shop online, too. By some estimates, every minute spent driving to a store uses 10 times the energy of doing the same shopping on the Web. For eco-driven sites so good you’ll never miss the mall, visit nau.com and thegreenloop.com for fashion and econsciousmarket.com for home finds.
The list of true “Eco Experts” who contributed to the green guide was very impressive: Simran Sethi (Sundance Channel Green TV Host), Robbie Cox (President of Sierra Club), Gina Solomon (Senior Scientist at NRDC), and Jennifer Boulden and Heather Stephenson (Cofounders of idealbite.com), Diane MacEachern (Founder of biggreenpurse.com), and Rajendra Pachauri, Ph. D. (Chairman of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.) A list like this is so validating! Thanks Glamour.
It’s very exciting to see traditional magazines like Vanity Fair and Glamour feature articles about going green. Maybe now Glamour would be open to using some post-consumer recycled content paper for their magazine production? We sure hope so! If you agree, let them know.
Posted on April 14, 2008 |
Criticizing Wind Energy Is For The Birds
By Jenn Breckenridge
Filed Under Green Living | 1 Comment
Massive wind turbines are being built all around the US to generate emissions-free energy to relieve our carbon saturated atmosphere. Wind power seems like a near-perfect solution to our energy woes until you hear about the slew of aviary casualties that result from wind towers each year. Owls, hawks, and raptors alike experience brutal death by turbine and some avian advocates are up-in-arms. Just how many birds are murdered each year by windmills? Here’s some perspective…
- Tall Buildings: 100 million-1 billion birds per year
- Electrical Lines: 130-174 million birds per year
- Cars and Trucks: 60-80 million birds per year
- Agricultural Pesticide: 67 million birds per year
- Domestic Cats: 100+ million birds per year
Where do wind farms in the US factor into this macabre statistical round-up? 40,000 birds per year ”Yes, if a bird flies into the spinning blade of a wind turbine, than it will probably be killed, but when sited properly, the number of birds killed is greatly reduced,” stated Mike Adams, Wind Power Advocate for NY Wind. Continue reading Criticizing Wind Energy Is For The Birds…
Posted on April 11, 2008 |
Good Enough to Eat
By Jenn Breckenridge
Filed Under Green Living | Leave a Comment
Women love products. We do. There’s a cleanser, cream, spray, soak, serum, lotion, potion, tonic, foam or gel for every last inch of our bodies, and then some. At some point over the years, I realized my quest for cleanliness, beauty, and a powder-fresh scent was contributing a stockpile of plastic bottles to our already overtaxed landfills. I also realized that propylene glycol and sodium laureth sulfate might not be the best ingredients for my health conscious lifestyle. Giving up the products appeared from the outside like a beauty suicide and quite honestly, what could one clean and coif themselves with that didn’t come in a plastic bottle full of chemicals?
I had heard about soap and even remembered a time during childhood in which I’d actually used it myself. Bar soap seemed a thing of the past, an antiquated remnant of an age far gone, something a frontierswoman might have used after a long day driving the wagon train in the same no-nonsense way that she used cow chips for fuel. Wasn’t it drying? Wasn’t “one-quarter moisturizing cream” something that had fallen short of my expectations time and again? If memory served, I felt less like a Dove post-soapdown and more like Melba toast, which is why I’d switched over to the fancy plastic bottles full of unpronounceables to begin with. Continue reading Good Enough to Eat…
Posted on April 10, 2008 |
Conscious Living TV: Eco Travel Au Canada
By Jenn Breckenridge
Filed Under eCo TV | Leave a Comment
Bianca and Michael, the lovely couple at Conscious Living TV, take you with them on their vacation to Quebec. Watching these two luxuriate at the eco-friendly Fairmont Queen Elizabeth, eat locally sourced French-Canadian cuisine, and visit Montreal’s Biodome, might be just enough to decide your next vacation.
eCo Tip: If you live in the Northeast US, one of the greenest ways to get to Montreal is by train. If you need to fly, offset the greenhouse gas emissions from your flight with Native Energy.
Posted on April 9, 2008 |
Threadheads: DIY Utili-Pocket & The SF Bizarre Bazaar
By Jenn Breckenridge
Filed Under eCo TV | Leave a Comment
Rob and Corinne rock! They’re the excellent hosts of Threadheads, the weekly show by Threadbanger.com, that’s all about the hottest (and most affordable) fashion designer of your dreams…you!
Threadbanger’s motto says it all: “LIVE AND DIE DIY!”
If you love this show and want to discuss you own projects, join the forums at Threadbanger.com.
Posted on April 2, 2008 |
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