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

Eco-Chic Decor from Bacchus-Inspired Aesthetics

Guest post by Shireen Quodosi

What comes more easily in this economy than an assortment of empty wine bottles after you’ve just thrown a smashing get-together? With the preference being on sourcing cheap entertaining ideas, most people now see staying at home with a good meal and great wine as a viable alternative to spending money on restaurants and clubs.

Wine Bottle Ideas:

There are a number of ways to reuse wine bottles. Among the more common ideas are reusing them as water pitchers, votive vases, torches, and flower bed liners. However, there are dozens of other smart options that are rarely explored.

Rewined Recycled Glassware – Get uniquely hued wine bottle glassware made from orphaned bottles left behind at local restaurants and bars.

Water Feeders – On a very hot day or when you’re away, fill the bottles of water and stick them into the pot or soil near your plant. The water will slowly percolate from the bottle and into the soil.

Wine Bottle Chandeliers – In addition to the popular row lighting and pendant lighting, Pottery Barn put together an interesting chandelier with wine bottles strung around it. Even though four dozen other people will likely have the same statement piece, at least you know it’s a unique sustainable element in your home. Plus it catches the light beautifully during the day and especially at sunset.

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Crude, the Film, Shows Real Price of America's Oil Addiction (Hint: It's Not Just the Environment)

Crude is the story of a community of 30,000 tribal members in the Amazonian jungle of Ecuador who hold a corporation to bear for its crimes against their land, their livelihood, and most importantly, their lives. The film follows the intricacies of what has been called the “Amazon Chernobyl.”

The indigenous population claims that Chevron, the parent company to the former Texaco, spent thirty years contaminating the air, land, and water of an area the size of Rhode Island which is now called the “death zone.” Cancer, leukemia, and birth defects are among some of the effects of Big Oil. The film was shot and edited over a period of three years, with Berlinger and the crew sacrificing their own safety by facing both environmental (toxic fumes, disease, searing equatorial heat) and man-made dangers (shooting near the Colombian border where drug runners and FARC rebels are very active) to capture a story they felt must be shared with the rest of the world.

Berlinger’s cinematic sensibility paints a picture that captures the lush vitality of the Amazon, the horrendous atrocities endured by the tribespeople, and the complicated path that social justice must traverse, all the while avoiding cliche and stereotypes. Amazon Watch and the Rainforest Foundation have both been instrumental in bringing the Ecuadorian devastation to the public eye.

Trudie Styler, Sting’s wife, and noted activist, appears in the film to lend celebrity to the cause. Repeatedly referring to the Amazon as “the lungs of the earth,” Styler and others point to the far more serious nature of the toxicity than mere dollars can assuage. If Ecuador is in trouble, we are ALL in trouble. If tribe members cannot fish or swim, that affects us directly. Transnationals can no longer act in a vacuum of backyard antics.

Vanity Fair featured an article in the 2007 Green Issue on the case in Ecuador, and attorney Pablo Fajardo, who passionately represents the plaintiffs. In one scene in the film, Fajardo notes that he is not intimidated by the high powered legal team because he has truth on his side, which makes his work that much easier. He doesn’t have to work diligently to create lies about what is happening.

Without sensationalizing the health effects of the toxic swamp left in the Ecuadorian jungle, Berlinger simply allows the water to tell the tale. The water, the rivers, the streams, and pools appear fresh from a distance as children play, women wash, and people drink. Once approached, the rainbow sheen of petrol catches the light and the scent of gasoline sends heads reeling. The ground is soft sludge as the pollutants work their way through the soil and into the Earth. One of the Texaco/Chevron representatives claims: “this is not contamination, this is industrial exploitation that your government permitted.” Amazing. This film must be seen.

In order for this film to have a chance of being seen by the rest of the country, it must nearly sell-out in NY, LA and SF, so tell your friends, blog about it, spread the word…go see this film. Because the film doesn’t have huge marketing dollars, it’s up to people like you and me to spread the word online.

Here are some important screening dates: for locations click here
-NYC: September 9-22
-L.A.: September 18-24
-S.F.: September 25-October 1
-D.C.: October 23-29

LUSH Solid Shampoos Now SLS-Free!

I’m a big fan of LUSH products, especially the solid shampoos. I have been using ‘Seanik’ for a couple of years now (it’s my summertime fave!) and it gives my normally limp hair lots of body and shine. One of the best things about LUSH solid shampoos is that the only packaging involved is the piece of paper it comes wrapped in. That’s it! You can purchase a cute little tin to keep it in, and it makes traveling a cinch, especially with all the air travel restrictions on liquids.

Even more good news – LUSH has recently eliminated sodium lauryl sulfates (SLS) from many of their solid shampoo formulations. The new and improved formula uses a gentle, natural alternative derived from pure coconut oil.

From the LUSH website:

Sodium coco-sulfate is less irritating than SLS because it removes less moisture from the top layers of skin. For people with sensitive skin (prone to dermatitis, acne, eczema, psoriasis, and chemical sensitivity), the drying property of SLS may cause flare-ups of skin conditions or may worsen existing conditions. Sodium coco-sulfate also leaves hair and skin wonderfully soft and conditioned.

The solid shampoos that are now SLS free are Karma Komba, New!, Seanik, Soak & Float, Squeaky Green and Ultimate Shine. (Now if only they would nix the synthetic perfumes!)

Another thing I love about these solid shampoos is that a little goes a long way and one little bar will last you months on end. Mine usually lasts for up to 3 months of almost daily use. It’s easy to use, too – you can either apply it directly to your wet hair, or wet it and rub it between your hands and then apply the lather to your hair.

Real Red Hair How To's with Henna

Lush henna

I used to have the kind of hair that women have nightmares about. Thin, frizzy, oily at the roots and damaged at the ends. I fought it for years, trying to tame it with one product after another while simultaneously making it worse with chemical hair dye. That’s right, I’ll admit that I’m not a natural redhead. My natural shade is a dank dishwater blond – the sort of nondescript mousy ‘color’ that doesn’t complement any skin tone.

Three years ago, I decided to take a chance on henna, even though I’d heard from various friends and hairdressers that it was a big no-no. They claimed that it was all too easy to fry your hair or get a frightening frog-green with it, but I’d heard on the LUSH forum that it just depended on the kind of henna you used (you need body art quality henna, not the stuff you see at health food stores). So, I went for the LUSH Caca Rouge Mama, the reddest shade they have.

My hair after henna: huge improvement!

Holy goddesses of shining beautiful hair, this stuff has been a miracle for me. Not only did it impart upon my woebegone tresses a sparkling, natural looking shade of auburn, it also totally transformed it after about six months of use. Maybe it’s just that I don’t torture my hair anymore with chemicals, but it’s now growing longer and stronger than ever and I can just let it air-dry with soft, voluminous, sleek results. That’s not to say that my hair is perfect – just a huge improvement over what I used to deal with.

The best part? It’s totally eco-chic. Henna is about as natural as you can get for hair color, short of sorta tinting it with some berries (good luck getting that to stick around longer than a few days!). Once I started using henna I breathed a sigh of relief that dozens of unpronounceable chemicals weren’t leaching into my scalp every month. Plus, you’re not supporting the animal testing that goes on at some big corporations’ hair dye labs.

LUSH isn’t the only source of top quality henna; you can also find it (plus TONS of great info about using henna) at Henna for Hair. Henna isn’t just for redheads either; you can get a wide range of shades using various formulations – check out the Personal Mixes page on Henna for Hair to learn more.

Living Modestly Is Not Uncomfortable

I hate that living modestly is starting to be equated with disregarding the comforts that we’ve been given… instead of a noble and earth saving way of life.

I have a group of friends who all live together. In a maximum 6 person house (4 “real” bedrooms) there are 13 people. They have no television, only a couple of them have a computer, when I go over there are rarely lights on and they in no way went out of their way to buy new furniture or anything for the house. On top of these smaller things they also bike around – no one owns a car – cook together with vegan, organic, dumpster dived food and they run the house on grey water.

Just a quick summary for those who don’t know – dumpster diving is when you take food out of a dumpster to eat it. A lot of people get a little grossed out by this thought however having worked in a grocery store I assure you there is more than plenty of completely fresh and fine food being thrown out. Before knowing people who dumpstered I often thought “why would those dumpsters be locked???” but now I know that for whatever reason some grocery stores don’t want people stealing their garbage.

Grey water is essentially just reusing water. Most houses that are being built in Guelph are already implementing grey water systems directly into the house by connecting washing machine water to toilets. Said friends put the plug in during a shower and use shower water to flush toilets. And to be honest – the toilets don’t get flushed that often anyway.

For me, this would be an almost impossible way of living. I hate being cold, they never have the heater one. I live on my computer, they don’t have internet. I drink a liter of milk a day, they never drink milk. I will never will with a roommate ever again in my entire life unless I’m getting married, they live with 12 other people. It takes a lot of dedication and passion for the environmental movement to live this kind of lifestyle.

When I told my brother and a friend of mine about this they had the same reaction “that’s disgusting”. … I said that you would just have to get used it, but then they corrected me. Neither meant that it was physically disgusting, but that it was disgusting to see people choosing to live like “the poor”. They felt as though this was a mockery to people who couldn’t afford food, who couldn’t afford to live with just one family in a house and who couldn’t afford to keep their hydro on. Instead you have a household of by no means rich, but by no mean poor… group of kids who are choosing to not work and live like that. They choose to eat “garbage”, to be cold and to stay in the dark.

I brushed it off at the time, but it is now one thing that has been running through my head day in and day out. The only reason grocery stores throw out “almost” expired food is because if they lower the price people won’t buy the higher priced food – so they just keep it until it doesn’t make sense to sell it at the same price point and then toss out the perfectly good food.

Granted, dumpstering started out as a way to beat economic struggling but soon became a haven for “freeganism” (those who want to escape the consumerist life and culture) so it is backpacking off something poor people WERE doing. But with grey water… 50 – 80% of all residential water waste is from grey water.

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