Reported on Ecorazzi.com, Actress, Thandie Newton, on clothes – “It is grotesque how out of control manufacturing has become, and the excess, the pollution that’s caused by it. Vintage (clothing) is not only glorious and stylish, it’s also the way forward in terms of recycling. Whenever I go into great vintage stores, I wonder why we ever buy new things.”

Some celebs walk the walk – red carpet and otherwise – and Thandie gets going green.

The Change founder, Jerry Stifelman, knows the consumer end of fashion, and he loves all aspects of thrifting, especially the new clothing and accessory swap site, Swango.com. At Swango, you can find quality and style for a few dollars and the price of shipping, and you don’t have to leave home. Here’s more from Jerry on the experience of thriting:

For the core thrift customer, it’s a conscious, highly valued choice. For them, the glossy sterility of The Gap or Banana Republic pales in comparison to the possibilities of used clothing. The foundation of the thrift experience is that it is AN EXPERIENCE.

These assets include:
- DESTINY. Everything at a retail store is calculated to appeal to people. There is no thrill in buying a pair of jeans that a marketing department has predicted that a half a million people including yourself will purchase. At a thrift store, if you see a sweater, or a hat that appeals to you — it’s the only one there. It has taken its own path across space and time to reach you. It’s meant to be. It’s special. It’s meaningful.

- STORY. A new t shirt comes to you from a factory where it was made alongside thousands of others. A thrift store shirt has an utterly unique story — you don’t necessarily know what the story is — but you know it’s there.

- COMMUNITY. Like anything that involves a choice that deviates from the mainstream, there is a sense of community associated with the thrift experience. You know that others feel similarly and it creates an instant connection. The exchanges between thrift store employees and customers are more intimate, relaxed and less businesslike than between typical retail employees and customers — in fact, they are more apt to be genuine conversations — not just polite exchanges.

Fashion doesn’t get any better than this.

by Tao Oliveto

Some things are so simple.

For instance, clean-up at public urinals is a disproportionate problem in many places. Then someone in Europe decided to strategically place a small drawing of a fly inside the basin as a “target”. The problem decreased by a measurable 80%.

Hmm. This makes me think of the issue of plastic bag use. Years ago, Whole Foods stores started offering a nickel back for bringing your own bag and over a decade, has encouraged approximately 20% of their customers to reuse. Ho Hum. As an new and enthusiastic employee back then, I suggested that charging a nickel for bags instead would be a stronger motivational message and decrease bag use even further, saving waste and the company dollars. I also thought we should sell our reusable canvas bags at cost in compensation for any perceived “inconvenience” to customers. Nobody agreed.

Wouldn’t you know it…a decade later (as reported in Fast Company), Ikea stores in the UK decided to charge their customers 5 cents for every bag they took. Plastic bag use dropped by 90% in less than two years! When the same policy took effect in U.S. stores in Mid-March, 2007, bag use dropped by 50% in less than one year – more than anyone expected. Ikea also dropped the price of their re-usuable bags to 59 cents at checkout – and those sales increased 10 times.

Can green guidelines live happily with customer service and profits? It sure looks that way.

For better or worse, we humans are a predictable bunch – and more willing to Change than marketers realize.

Simple as that.

by Tao Oliveto, Carrboro, NC

Have you seen the recent Starbucks/Got Milk advertisement? Not only a old and tired play, but as misleading as the original version.

It shows an aproned and smiling employee, holding up a latte with the “Got Milk?” tag underneath, including the misleading health claims about the getting “half the dairy you need” from the milk in your Latte Grande. Not a regular, reasonable latte, but a super-sized high-$ version.

Because of hormones, pesticides and antibiotics, non-organic milk is not healthy in the first place. And although I enjoy lattes occasionally (the soy version), I’m not going to be convinced that it’s part of a healthy diet. We don’t need the daily “goodness” of super-sized caffeinated drinks, nor does the planet need the paper cups and plastic lids that comes with them. From Lime.com:

According to Metaefficient.com, we used and disposed approximately 14.4 billion paper cups in 2005 — or a mind-boggling 410,000 paper cups every 15 minutes. That number is expected to grow to 23 billion by 2010 unless we change our current coffee-drinking ways.

I had heard whisperings about Starbucks moving to organic milk last year, and maybe a few stores carried it briefly, but it’s been confirmed that the initiative has been dropped. Looks and feels a lot like their same half-hearted efforts to support Fair Trade. And just what about all those paper cups?

Like many mega-businesses, Starbucks had an opportunity to make a positive impact on consumer habits as well as the organic coffee and milk industries. They missed the mark and then some.

by Tao Oliveto, Carrboro, NC

Food leftovers are the single largest component of the waste stream by weight in the United States. Households throw away more 25% of our food – about 96 billion pounds of food a year. Meanwhile, the average restaurant generates 50,000 pounds of waste a year – 50% of it is food. Overall, about half of the food produced in the U.S. is wasted.

The rest of the developing world is catching up. Food waste in Hong Kong has doubled over the past 5 years – restaurants are now fining patrons for uneaten food, by the ounce or by the sushi. Although restaurants are ultimately responsible for controlling their end-of-day waste, it’s up to the consumer to change habits. Order only what you can eat and take home what you can’t (come prepared with your own to-go container or ask for your food to be wrapped in foil rather than put into a box). If leftovers are not your doggie bag, at least you can feed your home compost.

When did we start throwing food away – before or after we started installing disposals in kitchen sinks? Food and water make the world go ’round, yet we take both for granted. Shifting this perspective is especially important for children – some of the biggest wasters at home and in school lunchrooms. It’s up to parents to make an early impression. I remember my mom often saying, “Your eyes are bigger than your stomach.” It was really unusual to throw any food away. (Parents, give your kids what they need, not only what they want, establishing better eating habits – and less wastefulness in the future.)

Landfills are the largest human-related source of methane in the United States, a greenhouse gas that is 21 times more potent than CO2. Most of the methane produced is from anerobic kitchen waste, which, when oxygen depleted, ferments rather than composts. As it turns out, food in landfills causes more problems that non-biodegradables. Food for thought.

by Tao Oliveto, Carrboro, NC

Lance Armstrong, the seven-time Tour de France champion, has announced plans for opening a bike shop and commuting center in downtown Austin, TX, in May of this year. It will include bicycle/gear sales, bicycle storage and showers for commuters, a training facility and a cafe. Now you can ride in to work, grab a shower, breakfast and a chat with other riders before continuing to the office (by foot, bus, or pedicab).

Mellow Johnny’s, named for the yellow jersey, is making good-sense use of an existing 1950′s building and it is not just about the bike. Lance acknowledges the importance of encouraging and supporting a cycling culture in growing cities like Austin, “We have to promote (bike) commuting. This can be a hub for that.” Armstrong also promotes the addition of safe roadways for cyclists, positioning the new shop in close proximity to the the Lance Armstrong Bikeway, a path conceived of by a local cycling activist and subsequently funded by the city of Austin, that loops approximately 6 miles through the center of the downtown area.

With the revitalization of urban areas and the move towards mixed-use communities, an accessible mass transit system combined with a commuter bike center and safe bicycle lanes is what every city needs and what an eco-motivated population deserves. And I think many of us are motivated and inspired by new ideas and hope for a liveable and happy future.

And, I’m motivated by heroes like Lance, who, instead of resting on his laurels, is doing what he knows best and doing it for Change. Now I know that I’m riding with the best of them.

This product showed up at Whole Foods Market last week and I almost squealed with joy. You see, in my naive way, I thought we could save billions of gallons of water by simply learning to love our dirty little cars. Waking up is hard to do, but I’ve seen the error of my wishful ways. For the time-being, it seems we like our cars and we like ‘em clean.

Enter the environmentally safe, water-saving, super-effective and easy to use waterless car wash formula. Not a moment too soon. Just spray and wipe. If you don’t believe me, visit the websites, read the testimonials or just check in “down under” – it seems they’ve been using this similar formula there for years.

Now available in the U.S.. In fact, the clean car lover is covered coast to coast by two companies who are in it for all the right reasons. Eco Touch, based in the Northeast, was launched by James Dudra after spending a college semester abroad in drought-sick Australia while the Lucky Earth folks, Jeff and Lisa Peri, on the West Coast, set their sights on eliminating the chemicals used in conventional car washing.

Missions accomplished on both fronts. Now we just have to get it out there. Home washing wastes hundreds of gallons compared to pressurized commercial sprayers, so tell your neighbors, families and friends. Then get the word out to your full-service detailers, car dealerships and municipalities fast. And please, oh please, someone enlighten the well-meaning school-kids, raising money with hoses and buckets at parking lots all over America this Summer!

by Tao Oliveto, Carrboro, NC

Carol Moseley Braun learned a thing or two from her political career – much of it in regards to the problems with with farm policy. As a former Senator, Ambassador and presidential candidate, Braun calls the current farm subsidies, “hideous” and advocated more practical assistance for farmers wanting to transition to organic growing and other programs that would put healthier foods in communities and schools. An advocate of the teachings of Rudolf Steiner and Adelle Davis, Braun is still walking the talk.

In a recent interview in Grist, Braun’s post-political endeavors supports biodynamic farming – “the most sustainable farming model in the world.” Biodynamics is more than “organic”. It uses methods which optimize the health value of food and the land it comes from. “Bios” means life and “dynamis” means energy – meaning biodynamic farming refers to working with the energies which create and maintain life.

In 2002, Braun founded Good Food Organics, a parent company to Ambassador Organics, a line of coffees, teas and spices now being carried in Whole Foods Markets and other health food stores. As the first company to market the benefits of biodynamic farming, she hopes it build a constituency and serve as a “point of reference” for people in choosing best quality for best health. Braun hopes to expand her product to “real food” and to make it more accessible to lower income communities.

For more on the methods and benefits of biodynamic farming, enjoy this contribution from friend and nutrition counselor, Greg, below:

by Greg Gillette, Asheville, NC

Biodynamic farming is the most comprehensive, holistic approach to working with the land. It encompasses the Earth, stars, planets, animals and humans working together to bring forth a truly self-sustaining living farm. It is far more than organic farming. Biodynamic agriculture is an ongoing, living path of knowledge rather than an assemblage of methods and techniques.

Many wonderful methods are utilized on a biodynamic farm, such as: integration of crops and livestock, crop rotations, comprehensive composting, planting and harvesting to the cycles of the moon, sun, planets, and stars, using livestock manure as fertilizer, feeding the livestock from the crops, careful observations of nature, and the use of special Biodynamic preparations, which consist of naturally occurring plant and animal materials that are combined in specific recipes in certain seasons of the year, and then placed in compost piles. These preparations bear concentrated forces within them and are used to organize the chaotic elements within the compost piles. When the process is complete, the resulting preparations are medicines for the Earth, which draw new life forces from the cosmos.

Biodynamic agriculture is a part of Anthroposophy, which was founded by Rudolf Steiner. Anthroposophy is a spiritual scientific approach to life, which integrates precise observation of natural phenomena, clear thinking, knowledge of the spirit, and our connectedness with each other, the Earth, the Cosmos, and the spiritual world.

Contact Greg Gillette at dancegreg@yahoo.com

Bio-fuels are an encouraging concept for all countries, but reverting back to a mass-production mentality could land us back in utopia-minded pergatory. By producing bio-fuel from industrialized GMO corn soy or sugar cane, you have taken one step forward and another back. Mass-produced fuels from any source, come with their own set of problems, including the overuse of resources, fertilizers/pesticides, deforestation, soil degradation, soot, or displacement of native plants or wildlife.

When you’re talking bio-diesel fuels as a sustainable and low pollution solution to energy consumption, local – once again – leads the way. Although experimental cellulose ethanol, made from native switchgrass, slash and agricultural bi-products, can produce a bonus in clean energy – they can store excess CO2 in their roots and the surrounding soil, reducing global-warming gases by as much as 90.9% – mass production could cause logging slashes and destruction of wildlife habitats. In truth, it will take a combination of conservation and sustainable fuel production to derail what could be nature’s – or at least, our own, demise.

In my area, we have bio-diesel plants making fuel from local waste oils, the majority of it from plant-sources. Any fuel production takes equipment and resources, but locally-produced bio-fuels can provide us with the most sustainable source of fuel yet available. Its production recycles a material that would otherwise be discarded and a DIY version is affordable and accessible to those willing to do the work. Widespread use of local used cooking grease bio-fuel would require little land use and could reduce global-warming gases as much as 75.6%.

Do you hear the quiet but persistent voice underneath all the debate? “Think globally, act/produce/buy locally…” There’s environmental and economical promise in the right blend of local and sustainable production of fuel, food and all other consumables. For a thorough and concise comparison on the available sources of bio-diesel, go to Sierra Magazine.

Community + Diversity = Sustainability. Are you bio-ready?