And You Thought You Knew How to Shop...

Image via Green

So, thanks to Liz, you now know where to look for eco-friendly products online, but what about your everyday shopping at the mall or at a shop downtown. I want to give you some tips so even at your average boutique you can choose the right clothing to be eco-friendly and sustainable.

-One of the most important things when shopping is to look at the fabrics used and the quality and durability of the clothing itself. Cotton is one of the most environmentally harming resource when pesticides and fertilizers are used in its production. On tags look for "Organic Cotton" labels. Also look for fabrics like bamboo that are naturally sustainable materials. Many companies have started using recycled plastic bottles to produce shirts and jackets and that is clearly marked on the tags. One thing to avoid in the making of products is textile finishing. Finishes on garments like stain-resistance, moth-proofing, and anti-mildewing almost always use harmful chemicals.

-Shop for labels saying "Made in the USA." Buying local reduces shipping costs and your carbon footprint. Less shipping means fewer travel emissions and supports the local economy.

-Look for clothing that does not need dry-cleaning. The majority of dry-cleaning agents are carcinogenic, or can cause cancer. Need I say more?

While the first thing I look at when shopping is the clothing item itself...the tag should follow shortly after that. Check out this website for helpful hints: Care2

Fashion like the British

Image via Fashion Week

Britain's Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) is making great strides in transforming the fashion industry from a consumerist society into a sustainable contribution. At the start of the 2009 London fashion week Defra Minister Lord Hunt announced the Sustainable Clothing Roadmap to make fashion more sustainable and less environmentally damaging.

Lord Hunt stated that “Retailers have a big role to play in ensuring fashion is sustainable. We should all be able to walk into a shop and feel that the clothes we buy have been produced without damaging the environment or using poor labour practices, and that we will be able to reuse and recycle them when we no longer want them."

The sustainable roadmap focuses on these four areas:

1. Improving environmental performance across the supply chain, including: sustainable design; fibers and fabrics; maximizing the reuse of products, recycling and managing the end of life for the products; and clothes cleaning.
2. Awareness, media, education and networks for the sustainability of clothes.
3. Promoting markets for sustainable clothing.
4. Improving traceability along the supply chain (environmental, ethical, and trade).

All of this being said, the United States should follow suit on something incredible happening in London. If New York fashion week could have a roadmap, think of the impact we could have on the environment.

Surfin the Green Wave

Image via greenyourdecor.com

Throughout this whole blogging process (which is very new to me, by the way), I have had to do extensive research about eco-friendly living. As I am obviously no authority on the matter, I have had to rely on the expertise of others in order to find new and interesting things to tell you about.

This experience has been an eye-opening one for me. Initially Lydia and I thought that this idea for our blog was a fairly creative one. Yet after getting started, we began to realize that we were small fish in a large pond. There are dozens of both small and large blogs about eco-friendly living, dressing, and decorating, and it has been so much fun to see what else is out there.

On that note, I thought that I should share some of the great sites that I have found in the hopes that you will enjoy looking at all of them just as much as I have:

2 Modern (includes an Eco-Friendly section)

Chic Tip (includes a Green Design category)

Design Public (includes a section called Sustainable Design)

Eco-Chick

Eco Etsy Blog

Etsy

Gaiam

GREENCulture

Green Your Décor

Design Within Reach

Turning Life

Uncommon Goods (under collections, they have Recycled Home and Recycled Jewelry sections)

Velocity Art and Design (includes an Eco-Friendly category)

Vivaterra

Vivavi

Enjoy!

Ecouterre

Image via Mosquito Net Dress

As Liz has mentioned earlier in her posts, for lovers of clothing and the environment ecouterre.com is the site to visit. In the editor-in-chief's words, “Ecouterre is a website devoted to the future of sustainable fashion design.” While they do not produce their own clothing or materials, the team of writers showcases and supports eco-friendly designers who focus on a garment’s environmental impact as much as the style and form of clothing.

Originally designed as the website Inhabitat.com, the founder of ecouterre launched the site to shift the image of “green” clothing from itchy t-shirts to high fashion. While hard-core environmentalists tend to turn their noses up at the importance of fashion design, the apparel industry is so large that to ignore their environmental impact would be devastating.

The websites' mission page is filled with shocking statistics about the damage of growing mass amounts of cotton and the harmful pesticides used. If you are like me, as soon as you visit the site, you wont be able to stop searching the tens of designers and hundreds of styles to view….so explore a little and this site will give you a good and green excuse to online shop :).

World Cup of Jerseys

Image via World Cup jerseys

Did you ever think about the amount of clothing professional athletes go through? Or better yet, how thousands of fans watch as men and women run around in brightly colored jerseys and uniforms? Well Nike is making a statement by outfitting World Cup soccer teams in recycled PET bottle uniforms. This will be the first time that all of the Nike teams will be wearing environmentally friendly jerseys.

Millions of plastic bottles are thrown away everyday across the globe, and Nike takes the discarded plastic bottles from landfills in Taiwan and Japan, melts them down into yarn, and then spins them into fabric. With the recycled jerseys, Nike has diverted nearly 13 million plastic bottles from the landfill. Each shirt comprises up to eight recycled plastic bottles, a move that reduces energy consumption by up to 30 percent compared with manufacturing virgin polyester.

While the everyday person may not be privileged enough to have Nike design your uniform, the company provides numerous green clothing items and we must recognize the importance in supporting mega companies that truly make a difference in the world and to the environment.

BKLYN Design Show

Image via BKLYN Designs

In general, a lot of our blog posts have been given fairly practical advice and shown some good, everyday tips that everyone can use. But sometimes, it’s really just fun to see what’s out there that’s new, different, innovative, and just a bit crazy in the eco-design field.

Already mentioned multiple times (‘cause it’s just that awesome!), Inhabitat is the place to go for these fresh, unusual, and often avant-garde design ideas. One of their recent posts was absolutely incredible because it included a video showing new designers’ work being displayed and tried out by attendees of the BKLYN Design Show.

Watch the 5-minute video here at Inhabitat.com.

In the video, you will see designers explain and display their work. The first designer’s chair is made out of an old buoy, some aluminum, and a piece of cork. Then we are shown a chair—made by a designer calls his crafts “Fun-iture”—made completely out of reclaimed tennis balls from Columbia University’s tennis courts.

My favorite quote of the piece:

When I first started making furniture, I would lead with the form and then search for material. But when I became a sustainable designer, I looked for the material first, and the material dictates both the form and the function.

I thought that this quote was very insightful. But don't take my word for it... go to the website and see for yourself!

Sit on Something Sustainable

Image via Inhabitat

When furnishing your home, it’s important to look at what materials those couches, tables, and chairs are made out of. Here is some food for thought for those for those eco-friendly interior decorators.

The website Vivavi offers modern green furniture and furnishings. I spent a long time looking at this website, and one of my favorite parts is that next to every product they tell you “What Makes it Green.” For example, they mention features such as FSC Certified wood, non-toxic finish, no-VOC paint, and/or wind & solar powered production facility.

One company that produces eco-friendly furniture is Brave Space Design. Again, they go into incredibly technical detail when describing why each piece is eco-friendly and what went into the design.

Another idea is to look for products made of reclaimed wood like this one from Uncommon Goods. The wood is essentially taken from a building, deck, or something else and is given a second life by making it into furniture.

If you’re more daring, try out these amazing furnishings made out of—incredibly—recycled cardboard. These innovative designs made by Lazerian Studio, pictured above, are “intricate sculptural forms that are structurally stable enough to be used as furnishings.” Also, the repeated forms used throughout the designs cut down on waste during the construction.

Whatever your design aesthetic, your should definitely look into eco-friendly furniture when furnishing your place. You’ll be saving the environment, and each piece will have a unique story!