Eco-Chick · The modern girl's guide to living green & fabulous.

Create a Gorgeous, Sustainable Holiday Table

Environmentally aware party planner Danielle Venokur hosted the “Sustainable Celebrations” event at the new DWR Tools for Living store in Soho. Venokur’s company dvGreen, is a sustainable event design and production company that utilizes organic food, flowers, and table linens, tree-free paper invitations, and more to create incredible events that you can be proud of forever.

At the event, Venokur incorporated items from the DWR: Tools for Living Assortment into place settings for both the adults’ and kids’ holiday table. I thought that the displays were brilliant and full of many great ideas for the holidays.

Venokur shared the following tips that you can use in your home to create a memorable and sustainable holiday meal:

1) Revamp and reuse scarves that you have around your home or found in a thrift shop; use them as is or accentuate them with organic cotton trim to make them your own; the result, unique vintage chic napkins.

2) If you live upstate or near trees, incorporate fallen branches and foliage to create your own custom center piece

3) Use LED candles instead instead of regular candles, they last longer and retain their appearance for many, many years. <

Tips for creating a special sustainable children’s table:

1) Use bamboo flatware for the table setting such as the collection from bambu.

2) Instead of a linen table cloth, line the table with craft paper. The children can draw stencils and color leaves, snowflakes, and other holiday motifs on the table and make it their own.

3) Using organic cotton balls, you can create little snowmen place settings.

4) Reuse craft paper to make a paper flower center piece together with the children before the dinner begins. Place the flowers in a refurbished vintage container and then the children will have something to celebrate- of their own making! during their meal.

The Kids Are Not Going to Be Alright: They're Going to Be Pissed

Several of my friends have had babies in the last few years, and some are on their second round already. Though it seems to me that there are far too many people on the planet already, it’s difficult to begrudge anyone the basic human drive to reproduce, and my friends’ kids ARE ridiculously cute. I’m pretty sure they are all genius artists who will invent the next version of rock ‘n roll and create world peace, too. But every time I play with them, surrounded as they typically are by plastic toys, educational videos and the other detritus of modern children’s lives, I look into their eyes and I know: in 20 years, they are going to hate us.

Of course all teenagers and college students hate their parents a little bit (or a lot, depending on the hormones), as it’s part of forging one’s own identity. Isn’t it the American way to hold your parents in contempt until you’re at least 25, and then become them?

But these kids are going to have good reason for their anger, and I predict a revolution when these tiny tots grow to understand the legacy their parents have left them. They will inherit a planet-wide environmental mess, and it might not be impossible to fix, but it’s going to take the best minds of their age (plus their offspring), lots of money, and a singular desperation to fix what’s wrong before it’s too late. What these kids face in the coming years will make the mistakes my generation has been left with: Rockefeller drug laws, repeated pointless wars in the Middle East, and lack of marriage rights for homosexuals, seem like quaint oopsies in comparison. They’ll be figuring out how to handle the planet-altering effects of massive droughts (hey, it’s already happening) and global warming has barely gotten underway), disintegration of ecological webs as species disappear during the current mass extinction, and human migration due to the effects of global warming, not to mention changes we can’t even foresee yet.

Well, you say, each generation has to pick up after the one prior to it in one way or another; what gives those kids in diapers more permission than anyone else to let us have it? The answer is that we know what we’re doing to the environment and we still continue to do it.

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Score one for PCs

Health Hazards in Electronics:

· Some brominated flame retardants, used in circuit boards and plastic casings, do not break down easily and build up in the environment. Long-term exposure can lead to impaired learning and memory functions. They can also interfere with thyroid and oestrogen hormone systems and exposure in the womb has been linked to behavioural problems.

· As much as 1000 tonnes of a brominated flame retardant called TBBPA was used to manufacture 674 million mobile phones in 2004. This chemical has been linked to neurotoxicity.

· The cathode ray tubes (CTR) in monitors sold worldwide in 2002 contain approximately 10,000 tonnes of lead. Exposure to lead can cause intellectual impairment in children and can damage the nervous, blood and reproductive systems in adults.

· Cadmium, used in rechargeable computer batteries, contacts and switches and in older CRTs, can bioaccumulate in the environment and is highly toxic, primarily affecting the kidneys and bones.

· Mercury, used in lighting devices for flat screen displays can damage the brain and central nervous system, particularly during early development.

· Compounds of hexavalent chromium, used in the production of metal housings, are highly toxic and human carcinogens.

· Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) is a chlorinated plastic used in some electronics products and for insulation on wires and cables. Chlorinated dioxins and furans are released when PVC is produced or disposed of by incineration (or simply burning). These chemicals are highly persistent in the environment and many are toxic even in very low concentrations.

Greenpeace has an extremely informative section on their website about electronics. Recently they have released their third discussion and break down on where companies stack up in regards to being green. I always knew there was another better reason as to why I haven’t liked using macs…

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The Climate Cover-Up

This bit of news is getting up slightly later than I’d like to be getting it up – but I know a few people who will want to read this who may not have read it else where and it is no less important today than it was 3 days ago. News was released Tuesday March 20th by the Guardian that the Bush Administration had taken part in a systematic campaign to “water-down” aka – cover-up, scientifically supported existence of climate change, and also causes of climate change.

On the previous Monday documents were revealed showing that Philip Cooney, a former oil industry lobbyist, had made hundreds of changes to scientific reports on climate change which were mandated by the Bush Administration.

The Bush administration has moved to exercise direct control over environmental agencies by installing political appointees including Philip Cooney, a former oil industry lobbyist, as chief of staff of the Council on Environmental Quality, and a 23-year-old college drop-out who was made a public affairs officer at Nasa after working on Mr Bush’s re-election campaign. Mr Cooney told the committee yesterday: “My sole loyalty was to the president and advancing the policies of his administration.”

Documents released yesterday show that in 2003 Mr Cooney and other senior appointed officials imposed at least 181 changes to a strategic plan on climate change to play down the scientific consensus on global warming. They made another 113 alterations to minimise the human role in climate change, and inserted possible benefits of climate change. “These changes must be made,” said a note in Mr Cooney’s handwriting. “The language is mandatory.”

This is the Administration that is leading not only America, but most of the world – keep in mind. Since then I’ve found a recent study saying that the majority of American’s are actually considering climate change an issue just as important as terrorism, if not more critical.

Most dramatically, the survey of 1,000 adults nationwide shows that 63 percent of Americans agree that the United States “is in as much danger from environmental hazards, such as air pollution and global warming, as it is from terrorists.” It reveals growing concern about dependence on Middle Eastern oil, with 96 percent of the public saying this is a serious problem. As a result, the public overwhelmingly supports increasing the use of alternative energy, including solar and wind power, as well as investing more in energy efficiency.

The survey indicates that while 70 percent of Americans believe that President Bush doesn’t do enough for the environment and should do more, many citizens are ready to act on their own. Seventy-five percent recognize that their own behavior can help to reduce global warming, and 81 percent believe it is their responsibility to do so.

But posts like that of Matthew Nisbet’s it may not be the right minds being changed about this issue – Gore’s movie reached a big crowd – likely the crowd that voted for him in the first place. The Democrats are, as it appears, less worried about climate change. I know I’ve given Gore a little bit of flak before, but I think this is a perfect opportunity for me to mention that I do think his campaign to fight climate change is an extremely important one and his testimony was gorgeously delivered and hits a million points about why climate change is important and why cover-ups, like that of the Bush Administration are completely unacceptable…

(So watch it! rather than me typing all the reasons out – Gore is not only smarter than I am [especially on this topic] but much more eloquent as well.) The world is literally in the hands of a government that goes out of its way to skew important scientific information, rather than facing the problem and owning up to some responsibility.

Update: I’d also just like to direct the readers in the direction to an article by Tom Athanasiou who says that a domestic reduction in emissions isn’t going to solve the climate problem. The second thing he suggests, which I find quite hilarious, as a complete ban on the world “truth” and “inconvenient” being smashed together in headlines.

Give Stuff or Give an Experience

I was in REI today looking at ice axes when I noticed info on Sierra Club’s Building Bridges to the Outdoors which conducts programs that get inner city kids out into nature.

There are a few reasons that I believe in these kinds of programs and the people behind them. First, when I hear adults complain about feeling “trapped,” my sympathy is slim. What I remember most about being an adolescent is the rage I felt at being trapped in school, trapped in a suburb, trapped listening to boring, lazy, screwed-up adults telling me how things were gonna be. Kids have it rough because they’re stuck in the world that grownups construct. For this reason, I think that it’s important for them to have contact with nature. They need to see that there are more powerful and compelling forces in the world than their parents, their teachers, their school, their government, or their television. They need to see that there are alternatives to the bullshit that we push on them.

Second, most people who feel a connection to the natural world have had the privilege of exposure. That exposure, however, is more frequently awarded to kids growing up in Boulder than kids growing up in South Central. I don’t think that a given kid will necessarily feel a connection to mountains and oceans any more than they might feel a connection to, say, music or art. But I do think that kids equally deserve that exposure, regardless of their zip code.

Finally, I think it’s clear that people who have slept under the stars are more likely to be concerned about air pollution and those who know the way that tree bark feels beneath their fingertips are more likely to fight against deforestation. We’ll do future generations a favor by fostering environmental stewards among the kids who are growing up right now. We do them an even greater favor by making sure that the eco-conscious voices of the future represent a broad range of ideas, concerns, and perspectives (i.e. not just the ideas, concerns, and perspectives coming out of Boulder).

So…tis’ the season to give crap to people who already have lots of crap. Or you could give an experience to kids that you don’t even know.