February 12th, 2008
While major U.S. companies like Nike struggle to go green, young rivals are establishing eco habits from the get-go.
Portand, Ore.-based Nau, a maker of hip outdoor clothing, this month will introduce its spring line of jackets, pants and tops made of organic cotton, renewable polyesters and low-toxic dyes. This spring, it also plans to open a small retail outlet on Chestnut street in San Francisco, as one of eight new retail stores this year (for a total of 12 around the country).
Mark Galbraith, head of design for Nau and former Patagonia designer, spoke recently in San Francisco about the company’s history and approach. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in fashion | No Comments »
February 4th, 2008
Most sneakerheads don’t know it, but Nike’s newest $235 Michael Jordan shoe could flatter any environmentalist’s wardrobe. The shoe, named XX3 (after the sport star’s jersey number), which goes on sale nationally this month, is made with fewer toxins and produces less waste in the manufacturing process than most sneakers.
Nike’s not hyping that fact in advertising for the last–and most expensive–in its line of celebrated Jordan sneaks for fear that the message would be lost on its core buyers. But the shoe is made with a new technique that requires no chemical solvent to bond fabric to a carbon plate, a first for any basketball shoe, according to Jane Savage, chief sustainability officer at Nike.
“That shoe sends up the flare that you can have a profitable and sustainable shoe,” Savage said while speaking at CompostModern 2008, a recent design conference in San Francisco.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in design, fashion | 2 Comments »
January 23rd, 2008
SAN FRANCISCO–Ten years ago, a designer of a top-selling toothbrush might beam with pride over his or her creation. But seeing that indestructible saber of plastic washed up on a beach shore–battered but relatively unchanged–might cause the same designer some pause in today’s eco-conscious climate.
Valerie Casey would know. As head of global practice for design firm IDEO, whose clients include Johnson & Johnson and Sprint, Casey said at a recent design conference that she had a crisis of conscience about a year ago when she realized she wasn’t talking to her clients about sustainable design, for fear that they wouldn’t be amenable to ideas about eco alternatives.
So in the last year, she’s organized the Designer’s Accord, a nonprofit coalition of designers who pledge to share ideas and information about sustainable design practices with clients. The project launched in recent weeks.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in events, design, environment | No Comments »
January 21st, 2008
The Sundance Film Festival, the annual crème de la crème of independent film festivals in Park City, Utah, was a little greener and smelled of French Fries this year, thanks in part to the debut of Fields of Fuel, a documentary about the alternative fuel biodiesel. The film’s creator Josh Tickell and crew descended on Park City this weekend with their Veggie Van, a hippie-style VW run on vegetable oil or animal fat (pictured left), and helped educate people about how biodiesel works and its environmental benefits–all before the Sundance premiere of the film.
(The film features environmentalist-actor Woody Harrelson and Solayzme, a California company that makes biodiesel fuel from algae.)
According to Tickell’s blog, Sunday “afternoon saw a greasy, french-fry-smelling version of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade…Overheard from Park City fans: ‘Look, it’s the Veggie Van! Do you smell that? It’s making me hungry.’”
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in events, environment, transportation | No Comments »
January 17th, 2008
A recent article in the New York Times featured newly created buzzwords that crept into the American lexicon last year. Several terms were related to the environmental movement, if only in a laughable way.
“Vegansexual” is one noun. It refers to “a person who eats no meat, uses no animal derived goods and prefers not to have sex with non vegans,” according to the article. Personally, I prefer the term eco-sexual for the environmentally minded set who wouldn’t dream of kissing the less evolved. (Yes, I’m biased. Story here.)
Then, there’s “global weirding,” a term coined by Hunter Lovins, co-founder of the Rocky Mountain Institute, a think tank that works on energy issues.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in environment | 9 Comments »
January 15th, 2008
By Kim Girard
All the hand-wringing lately about lead, date rape drugs, and other undesirable poisons that plague toys imported from China have left parents scrambling for alternatives. One greener toy for kids who love to build is Kapla blocks. On the eco side, these blocks, made in a factory outside of Bordeaux, are made from natural pine grown in certified renewable forests within France. The company says it complies with both the safety regulations of the United States and those of the more stringent European community.
As a family-operated company, Kapla has an interesting history. Kapla means “Pixie Planks” in Dutch, which makes sense because it was Dutch-born Tom Van Der Bruggen who created the blocks while studying and restoring a 19th-century chateau in the South of France. The Kapla blocks are meant to replicate wooden beams used in the buildings of the time.
The blocks might look a bit boring at first glance–they’re flat, uniformly sized and of natural color–but kids can do lots with them. Because the pieces are flat, kids can keep building upward and any structure will remain quite stable.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in toys, baby and kids | No Comments »
January 14th, 2008
Organic baby clothing companies are growing up. Speesees a San Francisco-based maker of fair-trade and organic cotton clothes for infants to (terrible) two-year-olds, has expanded this spring to include spunky-designed dresses and jumpers for kids up to 4 years. Speesees (after the way a child might say “species”) is an artful collection of animal-printed clothes that prove “green” doesn’t have to be crunchy. And the cotton is good for babies with sensitive skin.
Surely the move caters to more demand from eco-aware parents. When Speesees founder Rachel Pearson started designing her first onesie in 2003, there was very little in the way of cute, organic-cotton clothing to buy her friends raising families. But in recent years her business has exploded, with sales into more than 250 stores around the world, including Whole Foods, and through a newly redesigned Web site. (Roughly 15 percent of the company’s sales are directly from the Web.)
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in baby, fashion | No Comments »
January 8th, 2008
Evite and greeting-card sites have seemingly done wonders for the environment with respect to saving paper. But sometimes the electronic note can’t replace a holiday card or paper invitation—especially when it comes to occasions like weddings, baby showers or graduation. Don’t sacrifice the green. Send a handmade recycled-paper card that when planted grows into a wildflower. Botanical Paperworks and Plantable Paper both sell customizable seeded cards, invitations and giftwrap. Once potted, planted and watered, the pulp mulches down into the soil and the seeds can turn into California bluebells or another flower within a month. Now that’s a gift.
Posted in holiday and gifts, home, recycling | No Comments »
January 8th, 2008
People are often more concerned by what they eat than by what they put on their body. But the skin is our largest organ and absorbs all those lotions, deodorants and perfumes directly into the blood stream, without the natural toxin catchers of the digestive system. That’s why it’s good to be choosy about what you slather on the skin.
Last year, fashion designer Stella McCartney unveiled a line of certified organic skincare–which after three years of development was considered the first luxury brand in an industry with a largely crunchy image. Few skincare lines carry a certified organic seal because the bar is set so high to obtain the moniker from standard bearers like the USDA, yet Stella’s 100 percent-organic-ingredients line, called “Care,” was approved by eco-regulators like Ecocert in Europe, where it’s made. (Yes, you’ll have to buy carbon offsets to buy these creams guilt-free in the United States.)
I’ve been testing Care’s 5 Benefits Moisturizing Cream and its companion Radiance and Youth Elixir for the last two months and my skin has never been softer or more generally healthy.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in beauty, personal care | 1 Comment »
January 6th, 2008
Can Clorox–a brand synonymous with synthetic bleach–green-ify its business? That’s an increasingly important question as major corporations known for polluting the environment try to capitalize on consumer demand for healthier, more eco-friendly goods. For example, L’Oreal, which was recently named one of the 10 worst luxury brands (story here) by environmental measures, owns natural body care lines the Body Shop and Kiehls.
But Clorox is an emblem of the eco shift, having just launched a line of plant-derived biodegradable cleaning products called Green Works to challenge companies like Method and Mrs. Meyers–early success stories in the earth-friendly cleaning business. (Clorox said that Green Works will be in stores this month.) And in November, Clorox bought Burt’s Bees for a hefty $913 million.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in personal care, home | 1 Comment »