7 posts tagged “green”
I recently discovered sephora.com (I know, I'm a little late) and it's really neat. My biggest problem with it is that my fav brand is Dr. Hauschka and they carry only a handful of their products. I tried looking for other organic/natural/biodynamic personal care products on there, but it's like searching for a needle in a haystack. Every company claims to have "natural" ingredients and reading the ingredient list on each and every one is a pain.
Enter Saffron Rouge. The sephora of organic skincare, they carry just about every product made by only the following high-quality brands: Dr. Hauschka, Weleda, Primavera, Santaverde, Florascent, Jurlique, Jo Wood Organics, John Masters Organics, Pangea Organics, and Sympathetical Formulas. Free shipping over $100. (Sephora's is over $75.) Choose from over 150 free samples of these products with each order. Free gift packaging. Not tested on animals. Fantastic.
I recently got a TerraPass for the truck. I got a RoadTripper one, offsetting up to 20,000lbs of CO2. I drive a little bit less than that, but I'm not nearly as good about green driving techniques as I should be.
I also got a TerraPass for flying. Last year, I flew a lot, between Malaysia and Denmark and airplanes are the worst polluters.
I shop a lot online. The spouse-unit and I have Amazon Prime - a bargain $80 membership deal that gives us free two-day shipping and $3.99 one-day shipping. (The few times I've asked for one-day shipping on an item, it fails miserably, but that's a rant for another day.) This has entirely changed the way I shop.
When I need something for the house, office or a friend, I first look it up on Amazon. Free shipping means that if I order a week in advance, I have no need to look up which stores have it, deal with parking in and around Los Angeles just to get to the store, not have to hassle with nasty retail store people when they tell me they're out of stock and don't know when the next shipment gets in, and traffic on the way home since it's been a 4 hour journey overall. I have a 403 items on my default Amazon wishlist. I have another 30 on my 'knitting/crocheting' list and 40 on my 'cooking & kitchen' list. None of this includes my gift lists, of which I have one for just about every friend and family member, even the ones in other countries. Needless to say, Amazon makes a killing on me.
This also means that I chronically window-shop online, saving just about everything I like to wishlists, onsite or in-brain. I see books or magazines on a news rack somewhere and I jot the name down in my Blackberry for looking it up later on Amazon. (Lists > Books) I see an unusual fruit at the farmers' market and I jot that down too (Lists > Groceries), and sift through reviews and ratings of various fruit and vegetable books. Add to Wishlist. Yes, please. Knitting books. Tea kettles. 4-piece sake set in cobalt blue. Salad spinner. Gift wrap organizer. Sewing machine. When I met the spouse-unit, he famously did the same. I remember staring in open-mouthed disbelief as he pulled replacement electric toothbrush heads from an Amazon box. Now, I'm almost just as bad. There are some sites that I never buy directly from, but regularly visit once a week, just to browse idly and drool over: Colinette yarns and Blue Sky Alpacas are the classic example.
In an effort to be greener in my consumerism, I try to get things from elsewhere. I buy used books and CDs from half.com, which is decent re-use. The spouse-unit and I make rare once-a-month trips to Whole Foods, while getting most of our goods from our local farmers' market, on the corner of Ivar and Selma (free 1 hour parking at the Arclight with validation). I picked up the most wonderful potpurri there, by-the-way. It was from this guy selling them at the far north end of Ivar and I swear, my office smells like a Golden Door spa.
Conventional sheep, kept in close confinement en masse, are often 'dipped' in highly toxic pesticide solutions to kill ticks, lice, blowfly and scab. (Google: sheep dipping) I can't seem to find much on how much pesticide residue is left over in processed conventional yarns, but the chemicals used in the process can cause central nervous system damage. And sheep are dipped not once in their lifetime, but at least several times, on average.*
FWIW, I can't say that I'll never buy conventional yarns again. There's too much variety missing from the organic market right now. But I will promise to buy organic where possible and affordable, and save my yarn money to buy more organic, rather than splurging on cheap conventionals. I'm also contacting all of my favorite yarn manufacturers (ie. Brown Sheep, Blue Sky, etc.) to find out where they get their wool/fibers from, and asking for specific farms and locations. At the very least, maybe it'll bring to their attention that people care about this stuff. 
- O-Wool, by the Vermont Organic Fiber Company. Free shipping @ theyarngrove.com
- Near Sea Naturals carries a large variety of organic fibers, such as nettle, cotton, alpaca, wool, recycled silk, and hemp.
- Marr Haven sells their own, fresh-from-the-farm 100% chemical-free wool yarn, with minimum processing to keep most of the natural lanolin intact. (Lanolin naturally softens wool fibers with washing, and is almost completely missing from conventionally processed yarns.)
- There's a new shop opening later this fall, Organic Imaginings, which plans to feature organic yarns, including certified organic and fair trade yarns. Drop them an email and show them some love!
- Browse Etsy for homemade yarns straight from the sheep. Some of my favorite sellers that spin yarn from their own sheep are ritaswoolybatts. (The sellers I steer clear of are anyone associated with the Makah tribe, which cruelly hunts grey whales for non-nutritive purposes.)
In an effort to compile a master list of organic yarns, I've started to scour the web and save promising links to del.icio.us. If you're interested in my findings, you can find them and similar bookmarks from others with the keywords "eco organic yarn".
* If you're interested in more information about the real cost of wool, I don't recommend PETA's savethesheep.com site. I say this because while their sheep campaign targets Australian farms, it demonizes all wool growers with blanket statements like "sheep raised for their wool all over the world are castrated and have their tails cut off...". What about the few small production farmers that DO practice humane and ethical treatment of sheep? Or those that keep sheep or alpacas as pets and create homespun yarns? Add to this that PETA actually recommends the use of synthetics like tencel (according to the Green Guide, "the EPA rated Courtauld [the manufacturer of rayon] the sixth-largest producer of inorganic pollution in the U.S.") and rayon (Co-op America states that "about a third of the pulp obtained from a tree will end up in finished rayon thread"; the rest is thrown away).
Here are two books that I've recently realized are completely indispensable in my kitchen.
The Field Guide to Produce is exactly what it claims to be. Roughly CD-jewel-case sized and about 2 in. thick, it's perfect for keeping in your car or reusable shopping bags for those random grocery trips. Without this book, I would never have had the courage to try fiddlehead ferns (fantastic sauteed with butter) or dinosaur kale - though I would often find unusual items such as these in the produce section. Now, I no longer get to stare curiously as I get another head of broccoli, but am forced to break out of mediocrity and try something new and exciting. Yay! The other side: This book is honest, at least - it doesn't step a hair over covering produce. (You need to get the 'Field Guide to Herbs & Spices" for that - no kidding.) The other morning, I was amazed to not find "chives" listed and realized that it doesn't cover any herbs at all. A pity, really, as it would be perfect all in one.
The New Whole Foods Encyclopedia is the holy grail to anyone embarking on a healthier, greener diet. Wood carries a relaxed, conversational tone through tales of sugar snap pea goodness or the brief history of quinoa, and I love her attention to detail in pointing out surreptitiously refined sugars in the most seemingly safest foods. At times, the lecture waxes a tad over-preachy, but the sheer breadth of foods covered, from South American grains to Asian legumes, makes this book a must-have for any cook.
I think I've discovered the perfect ice cream. It's La Loo's Goat's
Milk ice cream. Now, before you puke, roll over and say "whaaa..?", let me explain a few things.
I tried goat milk for the first time about 3 years ago. It wasn't as nicely bland as the cow's milk we're all so used to, but it wasn't terrible either. A bit more "animal", I would say. I ended up raising Harley on it actually - when she was a sick, weak three-week-old kitten, I would blend it with boiled rice, fish and veggies to make a slurry and feed her with a syringe.
I recently rediscovered it when randomly choosing ice cream from Whole Foods. (This is entirely a hit-or-miss kinda thing, since each Whole Foods is likely to carry different brands.) I looked for my old faithful, vanilla flavor, but they were *gasp* sold-out! I settled instead on Black Mission Fig. Hmm.
It's hard to describe, but I'll try anyway. Cool, creamy, no watery-ice chunks at all. A hint of saltiness, then warm sweetness and fruity fig goodness. I bought the Vanilla Snowflake the other day and it's good, too - but not as good as the Black Mission Fig. The vanilla is a little too... empty, and the goat-iness overwhelms it a little. Still, it's damn good and my need-for-sweet is well-tempered by the "enough goat-iness, already" feeling: 3g of fat for 1/8 of a pint ain't half baaaaaad. (Sorry. Couldn't resist.)
Like farmers' markets? Can't wait until the next one in your neighborhood? Here's a comprehensive list of Los Angeles county farmers' markets, with their days & opening hours. See you there! :o)
