Dress smarter, and greener, by investing in timeless, well-made pieces of clothing, and eat well on a smaller budget by planning your food purchases better. Girl scouts find out that their cookies are contributing to deforestation and look for other ways to make money. Protesters in Wisconsin get free pies from a local pizzeria. Green designers at NYFW, and an important account of the dangers of fracking.
SUSTAINABLE STYLE: Why investment dressing costs far less than fast fashion.
The term “Slow Fashion” combines many aspects of sustainability. From an industry perspective, it can refer to slowing down the production cycle, giving more attention to detail and craftsmanship in each garment, manufacturing locally, or supporting fair wages. From a consumer’s angle, it means slowing down our consumption habits, buying fewer garments that are classic, of quality, and will last us for years.
We Can All Afford to Slow Down, by Kelly Drennan, EcoSalon
HEALTH & WELLNESS: Concerned Girl Scouts Look Beyond Cookies
It’s Girl Scout cookie season, but Michigan scouts Rhiannon Tomtishen and Madison Vorva are finding other ways to support the organization’s mission of “building girls of courage, confidence, and character who make the world a better place” than selling those famous Thin Mints and Tagalongs. Many varieties of Girl Scout cookies include palm oil, the No. 1 culprit behind deforestation in Southeast Asia, particularly Indonesia and Malaysia.
Are Girl Scout cookies killing orangutans?, by Glenn Hurowitz, Grist
SUSTAINABLE STYLE: Green Designers at New York Fashion Week
New York Fashion Week may have come to a close, but the hottest looks from the eco-fashion runways are still fresh in our minds. (It doesn’t hurt that we have so many exclusive pics to refresh our memories, either). From cozy knits to flowy dresses, check out six of our favorite green designers who gave sustainable style a good name this season.
6 Green Designers at New York Fashion Week Fall/Winter 2011, by Yuka Yoneda, Ecouterre
DO GOOD: Pizzas for Protesters
Someday the ruckus here might be remembered as the Pizza-Powered People’s Uprising. Every day for the past week, the two Ian’s Pizza shops in town have fed the hungry masses, delivering hundreds of free pies to the Capitol. The owners of Ian’s boasted that supporters from all 50 states — as well as Bosnia, China, Egypt, France and 20 other countries — had donated thousands of dollars each day so they could give protesters the calories they needed to keep going.
Delivering Moral Support in a Steady Stream of Pizzas, by Steven Greenhouse, The New York Times
ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES: The Risks of Natural-gas Drilling & Hydrofracking
The American landscape is dotted with hundreds of thousands of new wells and drilling rigs, as the country scrambles to tap into this century’s gold rush — for natural gas. The gas has always been there, of course, trapped deep underground in countless tiny bubbles, like frozen spills of seltzer water between thin layers of shale rock. But drilling companies have only in recent years developed techniques to unlock the enormous reserves, thought to be enough to supply the country with gas for heating buildings, generating electricity and powering vehicles for up to a hundred years.
Regulation Lax as Gas Wells’ Tainted Water Hits Rivers, by Ian Urbina, The New York Times
FOOD & WELLNESS: Eating Well on a Budget
This year my husband and I resolved to spend way less money than we’ve been spending. But to be fair we’ve done this before. We’ve tried to budget, but for the longest time we weren’t sure where all our money was going. We thought we lived quite frugally, staying away from too much consumerism and unnecessary junk.
8 Ways You’re Spending WAY More Than You Think on Food, by Sara Novak, Planet Green
