Starre Vartan · Eco-Chick

Browsing all posts by Starre Vartan

Starre Vartan is the founder and editor-in-chief of Eco-Chick and author of The Eco-Chick Guide to Life (St. Martin's Press). A problogger and oft-quoted green living expert who has been featured in the NYTimes, Elle, Glamour and Whole Living, she is a contributor to The Huffington Post, Inhabitat, and Hearst's The Daily Green, and is currently editor-at-large for Coco Eco Magazine. An active ecofashionista, she has style edited for Plenty magazine and coordinated runway shows. She splits her time between Connecticut and NYC and calls Sydney, Australia her second home, even though it was her first (as that's where she was born and most of her family resides). When not writing, blogging, or researching her next book, she is trailrunning, trying to cook, or snowboarding.

http://www.svartan.wordpress.com

This author has contributed 687 posts.

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ICI NYC Party!

2 Comments

01/29/06

I had a fabulous time at the first ICI NYC party last Wednesday, Jan. 25th at Libation. Everyone from the Manhattan green scene was there, from magazine editors and publishers to designers, stand-up comedians with a green schtick, models and PR flacks. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves immensely, and it was fantastic to see that eco-conscious green lifestyle products (and thinking) are hot and getting hotter. This was definitely not a sandals and patchouli crowd:

There was free Organic Vintners wine, organic Orange V vodka, and Green and Black’s chocolates.

There will be future events, so add yourself to the mailing list at ICI NYC so you don’t miss the next one! See more pics of the party here.

Thanks to Remy C. for linked images.

design, designer, designers, Eco-Chick, Events, magazine, Manhattan, media, model, models, NYC, Organic, party, style, summer, Wine

Think Spring!

1 Comment

01/24/06

The time to plant tulip, iris, and hyacinth bulbs is past in much of the country, but spring planting is right around the corner. Gladiolas, tuberoses, and dalias will be ready to add to your garden, and virtually thumbing through garden catalogs online is a great way to beat the winter blues.

This past fall I ordered from Old House Gardens, the well-known, well-loved and very favorably reviewed mail order bulb company. The reason they merit mention here is because they specialize in antique, heirloom and endangered bulbs. The variety of their flowering bulbs is amazing, and they give you a run down of where and when the bulb was originally planted. Some of their bulbs are from lines that started as early as the 1200′s, though the most antique selections tend have the most limited availability.

If you want a unique garden, as well as one that preserves old lines of flowers, heirloom bulbs are the way to go. And to learn more about human beings’ connection with flowers, read the “Tulip” chapter of Michael Pollan’s The Botany of Desire for enlightenment.

Amazon, catalogs, corn, Eco-Chick, fall, garden, gardens, Michael Pollan, spring, Target

Attention Caffeine Junkies!

5 Comments

12/28/05

If you drink coffee (about 50% of Americans drink it every day, and 80% quaff it sometimes) you should know where it comes from. (and hey, now it’s good for you, so go ahead!)

The exhaustively researched cover story for the Nov/Dec Issue of E/The Environmental Magazine, “Grounds For Change” covers the coffee industry, from small fair trade outfits to Starbucks.

There’s three labels to be concerned with if you care about people, birds and the health of the earth: organic, fair trade and song-bird friendly. To make your life easier, if your coffee is organic, chances are it’s fair-trade and good bird habitat, so you don’t need to go nuts looking for triple-certified brew. Besides the labelling, organic coffee just tastes better. For the last few weeks I’ve been sipping on Equal Exchange’s decaf and it is the best decaf I’ve ever had! (I know, I know, decaf, I ‘m a weenie).

This is why: “Coffee grows best in tropical highlands,” explains Chris Wille, the Costa Rica-based chief of the Rainforest Alliance’s Sustainable Agriculture Program. The bushy plants are maintained at a height of six to eight feet. After the seeds are dried and hulled, they become green coffee beans. A mature coffee plant generally yields about a pound of roasted beans per year. According to Connecticut-based roaster Coffee-Tea-Etc., “Every step in the process from climate and growing conditions, genetics of the tree, to the final brewing methods affect these natural chemicals. Each of these factors affects the distinct taste of the final brew.”

‘This is what shade-grown coffee looks like. Integrated with the forest, it makes a better tasting coffee.’

‘This is what coffee that\'s grown in the sun looks like. Monoculture alert!’

There are also some excellent sidebars to the article, including one on where to find this good-for-us-all brew.

agriculture, birds, Bush, car, coffee, Fair Trade, habitat, health, junk, magazine, Organic, Plants, rainforest, Starbucks, sustainable, Tea

Ask Chicky: Vermicomposting

3 Comments

11/22/05

worms

Dear Chicky,
I went to a dinner party last week and the host had a tiny composter in her apartment’s kitchen; she said there were bugs inside that eat the food she deposits. It sounds gross, but I feel bad tossing all my leftovers in the garbage—how do these things work? Why don’t they smell?
—Curious about compost

Dear Curious Composter,
All compost systems rely on the same principle: stuff rots and then turns into dirt. If you do it right. The good news is it’s not that hard to replicate what nature does on a grand scale in your very own kitchen. Properly composted food is never smelly and can cut down on your trips to the garbage bin (and the inevitable filling of our landfills). In fact, if you get into it, you can compost up to 1/3 of your household waste.

What your friend most likely had was a worm composter, also called a vermicomposter. This kind of composting is great for an apartment because it doesn’t take up much space, is totally hygienic and the final product is humus. Not the middle-eastern bean spread, but the ultimate fertilizer for your organic container gardening.

The busy earthworms, called red worms or manure worms, (yes, they wiggle, but no, you don’t have to touch them) will keep your composter functioning and odor-free. These special guys eat up to their weight in food every day, and their excrement is the aforementioned humus. Their casts (a nicer name for poop) contain all sorts of good stuff like nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium, meaning that the humus they produce will make your garden grow. And on top of all that, once your scraps are devoured by the worms, all the nasty pathenogenic bacteria (the kind that can make you sick) are totally neutralized.

But there are some caveats; you can’t just dump all your leftovers in a vermicomposter, but fruit and vegetable scraps, eggshells, old bread, coffee grounds, shredded computer paper (no colored ink) and newspaper, and houseplant trimmings are all OK. Go light on the vegetable oils, dairy and meat; all these things take more time for the worms to digest, so don’t throw a big hunk of steak in your composter, no matter how free-range and organic it might be. Some people say small amounts of meat or bone will break down just fine, but it might take some experimenting. It isn’t complicated, by you will need to read up on the subject. You will need to keep the whole operation moist, and you can make your own or buy a composter ready-to-go at a host of websites and garden centers. The worms are also available online or from your neighborhood plant store. Try wormdigest.org, cityfarmer.com and cityknowlege.com.

Wormily yours,
Chicky

Ask Chicky, coffee, Easter, farm, Food, fruit, garbage, garden, Gardening, Manure, meat, News, oil, oils, Organic, paper, party, produce, spa, Tea, vegetable oil, waste

Crazy Capitalist and Enviro in the Same Sentence?

No Comments

11/22/05

Today’s NYTimes has an interesting article in a section I usually ignore. The front of the Business section has “Saving the Environment, One Quarterly Earnings Report at a Time.”

walmart
Wal-Mart uses a wind turbine to help provide electricity at a store in Aurora, Colo., as an experiment.

From the story by Dave Weaver:

A few years ago, scientists at Cargill Inc. learned how to make rigid, transparent plastics from corn sugars. There was just one problem: they cost a lot more than the oil-based plastics they would replace.
Plastic pellets derived from corn at NatureWorks. Some producers have adopted corn-based packaging, as the cost of oil-based products rose.
But that was before the price of oil shot up and companies came under pressure from consumers and investors to find economically sound ways to adopt “green” packaging and other environmentally friendly products and processes. This year, Wal-Mart, Wild Oats Market and many other retailers, as well as food suppliers like Del Monte and Newman’s Own Organics, all embraced corn-based packaging for fresh produce.
Sales at NatureWorks, the Cargill subsidiary that makes the plastic, grew 200 percent in the first half of this year over the period last year. “The early adopters were more influenced by environmental concerns than costs,” said Kathleen M. Bader, chairwoman of NatureWorks. “But now we’re competitive with petrochemicals, too.”
Cargill is one of several companies profiting from the concerns – of shareholders, communities and consumers – about global warming, leaking landfills and other potential environmental hazards. Huge companies like General Electric and Chevron now have separate businesses to market what they are calling environment-friendly products.
And new companies and university projects appear each day. Cornell University’s College of Engineering, for one, expects to have a commercial process for using bacteria to recoup energy from wastewater treatment within three years.
“There are a lot of creative types looking for the next big thing,” said Bob Sheppard, deputy director for corporate programs at Clean Air-Cool Planet, a nonprofit environmental education organization. “Well, these days, environment is it.”

That’s what I like to hear.