New Year’s Resolution 2008 Status Report
This New Year, I resolved to GET OFF THE BOTTLE! Watching the Fiji bottles pile up in the recycling week after week, shelling out $2.00 a bottle, and considering the carbon footprint with the distance from Fiji those bottles must travel, the guilt finally took it’s toll. My “conversion kit” consists of PUR faucet mount and dispenser filters and four fabulous, pricey-but-worth-it, Sigg reusable aluminum bottles.
Worth noting, Fiji, no doubt in response to growing public scrutiny, launched Fiji Green this year. Judging by their website, they’ve put considerable effort into this program, pledging to become Carbon Neutral, promote recycling, reduce packaging, and to preserve the Viti Levu rainforest with their Fiji Water Foundation. Now when I do need to buy a bottle of Fiji water on the road, I just might feel a little less guilty!
Nothing Sacred
The Environmental Working Group’s Skin Deep cosmetic safety database is a great place to start before buying any new beauty products. With 7,145 ingredients and 27,528 products (and counting) documented, you can find what is often shocking information about the toxicity of almost any beauty product on the market. My favorite feature of their site is that you can manually enter product data that has not yet been added and instantly get the EWG calculation of its potential hazard on a scale of 1 to 10. I entered the ingredient list from my fancy, imported, $40 shampoo, Louise Galvin Sacred Locks Hair Cleanser. Boasting “free from SLS, synthetic perfume, propylene glycol, phthalates, silicones & parabens”, I figured my “Sacred Locks” should spit out a squeaky clean “low hazard” report card but was suspicious enough of the less pronounceable ingredients to run it through. My shampoo scored a disappointing 4(moderate hazard). By comparison, Pantene Pro-V shampoo comes up 7 (high), while Burt’s Bees Grapefruit & Sugar Beet Shampoo scored a harmless 1! Check out the site and be sure to sign their petition asking Congress to get cosmetics companies to disclose all ingredients and to prohibit the use of the most toxic ingredients in products intended specifically for children.
A swank swap meet
When it comes to fashion, there’s nothing more green than swapping “gently worn” clothing rather than buying new but the idea of trading clothes with a stranger is decidedly unfabulous. Inhale. A dank, musky Salvation Army this is not! Teen Vogue’s Style Swap will have a DJ, stylists on hand, mini makeovers, mani-pedis, gifts, contests, refreshments and more! Details for Teen Vogue’s April event in NYC haven’t been released yet but I suggest organizing a style swap party amongst your friends in your own home. Have each guest bring at least 5 clothing items. Set up a table, a garment rack or empty out a well lit closet to hang the items in. Try to have a couple of full length mirrors available. Serve refreshments and offer to donate unswapped items to charity. Remember to take pictures and send them to me!
American Apparel expands "Sustainable Edition" organic line
American Apparel’s organic fine jersey short sleeve tees now come in 8 yummy colors. I’m not sure about the eco-friendliness of their dyes but at $15 a tee,these make a great sweatshop-free gym & weekend shirt. My wardrobe staple, their long 2×1 Rib U-Neck Tanks and most of their other items are still not available in organic cotton but I hope that changes by the time I go to re-stock later this year!
GREEN GLAM AWARDS 2007: Footwear
Eco-chic Footwear? We’ve got a long way to go.
Again in 2007 I found only two green footwear lines to be not entirely offensively repulsive! First, everything Stella McCartney put her name on in 2007 was brilliant from her CARE organic skin care launch to her adidas and couture clothing lines. Her vegan evening and dress shoes were especially beautiful this year. Sadly, although they claim to be eco-friendly, some of her shoes were apparently made with PVC (the single most environmentally damaging of all plastics). Is Stella an eco-frenemy or eco-friendly?!
Another English line, Beyond Skin’s vegan and eco-friendly footwear deserves an honorable mention especially for their hot Kate slouch boot. The Beyond Skin line has been a favorite of green celeb Natalie Portman for years. I wonder what they think of Miss Portman’s new line of shoes she designed for Té Casan?? Her bio on the Té Casan website states “(Portman) noticed the absence of fashionable animal-friendly footwear and collaborated with Té Casan for her debut collection.” See you in 2008 Nat!
GREEN GLAM AWARDS 2007: Jewelry
29 year old Lower East Side based jewelry designer Sarah Perlis incorporates 22k recycled gold and responsibly mined alluvial diamonds from Pride Diamonds, a socially and environmentally responsible diamond mining company which reinvests profits in source communities. Beautiful bangles, necklaces and earrings from the “Grounded Jewel” and “In the Rough” collections run $100 to $1,800. sarahperlis.com
GREEN GLAM AWARDS 2007: Home Edition
Pottery Barn, Crate & Barrel and Ikea added organic cotton linens and FSC Certified furniture products to their catalog this year but no other furniture or home retailer has even come close to commiting to the green and social causes like ABC Carpet & Home. With their ever expanding selection of lustworthy organic and sustainable furniture, linens & decor, their own line of green organic cleaning products, solar power panel installations, and their Home & Planet Foundation, ABC won this one hands down!
GREEN GLAM AWARDS 2007: Home Edition
At $55 a pop, beautifully designed, long lasting, and powerfully scented Diptyque candles have long been my very un-green guilty pleasure. They were irreplaceable by any organic soy wax candles on the market which are usually homemade looking votive or pillar candles that are always only available in the same five scents; lavender, jasmine, vanilla…yawn. How terribly unfabulous!
Now there’s Dirt Candle Co. Their $24 candles are made with organically grown American soybeans, scented with essential oils available in 24 intricate aromas & come in beautiful recycled glass jars.
Current favorite, Nitty Gritty, contains organic soil, ripe tomatoes, fresh Mediterranean sage, Malabar grass and celery seed.
GREEN GLAM AWARDS 2007: Jeans
JEAN OF THE YEAR: Serfontaine
I am serious about jeans. I own more pairs than I care to mention, wear them about 360 days a year, and spend countless hours and dollars in search of the most figure flattering and fashion forward pairs. Thanks in part to Barney’s Green initiative, organic denim labels are flying into the mainstream while mainstream denim labels like Levi’s and Earnest Sewn have incorporated several organic cotton pieces into their regular lineup. While Loomstate,Edun or Del Forte are possibly the greenest jeans on the market, I was glad to see American made Serafontaine jeans, known for their sexy butt boosting fit, finally did the right thing in 2007 and went green with their production using organic cotton and organic fruit enzymes to treat the denim.
GREENWASHED: Lipstick
PlantLove™ Botanical Lipstick by CARGO
Mainstream beauty companies often have little incentive to “green” their packaging and products and use manufacturing limitations and cost as an excuse. Let this $20 lipstick, a bestseller at Sephora stores nationwide be a sign of things to come.
The lipstick tube is made entirely out of corn and the carton is made of flower paper embedded with real flower seeds that grow real flowers when planted!
It’s a great sheer lipstick; hydrating with mango seed oil, meadowfoam seed oil, jojoba and shea butter and no mineral oils or petroleum. Sadly they chose to taint all those luscious botanical oils with a nasty, toxic paraben preservative.
It’s a shame too since CARGO is donating $2.00 from the sale of every tube to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.