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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Modern Maillots and More from Meadow

Meadow’s designs are all about the detail, from creatively lined pockets to patterned layers, all presented in modern neutrals and natural (but not boring) tones of green, blue and lavender. The line is designed with fabrics like hemp, Tencel, and bamboo, and while some of the pieces have a vintage feel, plenty of them are body-skimming moderns. Meadow has created both a ready-to-wear line and a swimwear line that’s all about adorable patterns.

You can vote for Meadow in Daily Candy’s Sweetest Things year-end competition. She up against all non-eco designers so cast a vote for the designer who’s Green! 

Meadow Compton-Gerrish, the designer of Meadow

I had a quick chat with Meadow via email about her designs and inspirations, and this is what she had to say:

What is the inspiration for your designs?

The inspiration for my designs comes from all things natural,  and the quality craftmanship of vintage clothing.

Why ecofriendly fabrics?
Eco-friendly fabrics seems like the best option for me to express my self through fashion without causing harm to our precious Earth. I grew up in the natural food industry and eat all organic so the clothes I design should not compromise the path I want to take towards living a sustainable lifestyle.

What’s your design background?
I have always been a designer and creative person. I was always creating things as a child….while hanging out in my father’s natural food restaurant…..so I wanted to combine those two worlds. I went to Miami International University of Art and Design and graduated with honors. This is my first collection out of design school.

Who are your favorite designers? 
Marc Jacobs and stella McCartney.

Cure-All for Modern Life: Green Tea!

Tea is harvested by real people like this woman, so choose organic, fair-trade leaves when you’re at the store. 

While I’m practically allergic to the caffeine in coffee (though I so love the taste), some days I couldn’t get by without a little green or white tea to perk me up. As we’ve all heard ad nauseum fo the past few years, antioxidants, which are found in high levels in green tea, chocolate, pomegranates, blueberries and other foods are cancer fighters ’cause they attack free radicals (which are plentiful in our polluted air and water, even if you live in the middle of nowhere).

But you don’t want to drink just any tea, especially not one made with tea leaves that are of dubious quality (which don’t taste great) or Some great green teas to get you started include:

Srina Green Tea is delicious, with clean, earthy taste and a tidy brew. I got sent some as a sample a few months back and it perks me right up. Their farming eco-credentials are impressive:

Srina™ (pronounced, shrih-nah) is 100% organically grown green tea, hand-plucked and packaged using natural fibers. We grow our green tea on a distinctly high mountainous region of Sri Lanka located on a 90-acre rainforest called Paradise Farm.

Yogi Teas makes most of my favorite teas. All of them are mostly organic, and they have a huge variety of green teas (including non-caffeinated and chai). The teas have their origins in the 1970′s, when followers of Yogi Bhajan, served it in vegetarian restaurants and expanded from there.

Choice Organics green teas are all-organic, harvested sustainably from China, India, Japan and Nepal. They also have a huge selection of green teas; try a couple and figure out which ones are your favorites!

Don't Be A Turkey: Get Your Thanksgiving Feast Green

Originally posted on The Huffington Post on November 14th, 2007

Photo from Channel14.com.

In 1621 the Plymouth colonists and the Wampanoag Indians stuffed their faces in an autumn harvest feast–the first Thanksgiving. Although Historians aren’t certain of the menu, it’s safe to say the pilgrims weren’t gobbling up pesticide-smothered potatoes and antibiotic-infused turkey.

Fast forward nearly four centuries, and this Thursday the majority of American’s will sit down to a copious table of factory-produced food. With few exceptions, 178 million plus turkeys will come from animal factories, while the vast majority of our fruits, vegetables; even vino will travel hundreds of miles from foreign farm factories. Such processing plants are reported to have few regulations and less regard for environmental best practice.

While raising turkeys in an industrial setting, or growing corn in a pesticide patch might make our food cheaper and available to a large number of consumers, factory farming comes with serious negative consequences for mother earth–clear cutting, dead zones, water wastage, methane-farting cattle, the list goes on. According to a 2006 study by the University of Chicago*, industrialized livestock produces more greenhouse gas emissions than global transportation.

Such studies come at a time when meat consumption, having quadrupled in the last 50 years, reaches an all-time high. The Worldwatch Institute claims global livestock population has increased 60 percent since 1961, and the number of for-food fowl has flown (try saying that ten times) from a stable 4.2 billion to blasphemous 15.7 billion.

Unlike the wild birds the Pilgrims ate, factory turkeys need antibiotics to stay alive, let alone healthy. Excuse me for being graphic, but the majority of factory-raised animals are reported to live so closely packed together that they have to defecate on each other. Such close-quarters create a cesspool of nasty, even deadly bacteria. I could go on and on.

Now, I’m not saying you should serve tofurkey this Thanksgiving. Although conventional meat production causes deforestation, polluted waterways and greenhouse gas blabidy-blah, I won’t insist you replace the traditional Turkey with a slab of coagulated soybean cake–that would be gross and grossly hypocritical.

Perhaps hypocritical is an understatement considering I can barely go three weeks, perhaps even three days, without vivid fantasies of red meat bbq. Many lonely nights I have resembled the McDonald’s Hamburgler, tip-toeing to the kitchen to gobble a few helpings of red-meat leftovers–ones I had so earnestly tried to refuse at dinner.

Confessions aside, there are a several environmental consequences to consider before we stuff-our-gobs this Thanksgiving day. And although I am not ready to hit up the tofurkey just yet, I sincerely hope to find a way/ask my mom to replace this years Franken-food feast with local and organic produce. In addition to spiking the apple cider, join me this Thanksgiving by following these three simple green food tips:

For the tips, keep reading……

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A Bottle of No Thanks, Please

Bottled water is so easy.  It’s water, in a bottle, genius!  I remember when it was chic and served in the finest restaurants.  Then one morning I woke up and my mother told me we were getting a water bottle for the house.  No longer was the tap good enough.  After another five years or so she didn’t want to wait for the Poland Spring man to deliver our weekly allotment of water, so there it was: bottles upon shimmering bottles in our refrigerator.  People come to our office for a meeting or you head off to a job interview and what to they offer?  A bottle of water.  It’s like an angel on your shoulder wishing you the safest and most comforting taste of pure H2O.

Never once did I ask myself, “What’s wrong with bottled water?”  Not until I realized how many bottles collected into my recycling bin.  Trash is a funny thing, one moment it’s in your kitchen and the next it vanishes.  Presumably we trust that our trash goes…Well, I don’t really know where I thought my trash went.

I recently read the book, The World Without Us, which contained an entire chapter dedicated to the evils of plastic.  It turns out that all the plastic we use and love, (hey I have to admit that it’s nice when you can drop a bottle without it shattering all over the floor), ends up in our oceans, and takes about a gajillion years to decompose (maybe I’m exaggerating, but I doubt it).  The impact it has on the fish, mollusks, birds and plant life of the sea is completely shocking and promises to change the ecosystem as we know it.  There really is no known half-life for plastic.  It breaks into little pellets sure, but how does it react with the natural world, and what does it become as it degenerates? 

One of the big offenders is the bottled water industry.  We’ve become as addicted to bottled water in recent years as stockbrokers in the 80s were to cocaine.  In fact every restaurant I enter now offers bottled water both flat and sparkling, and then almost disdainfully, they mention that tap is available too.  They make you feel like an idiot if you order the tap water.  They make you feel cheap, plebian.  I always answer, Los Angeles’ finest. 

Tap water was important when I was a kid, not just to stay hydrated, but because the water supply contained fluoride.  Many bottled waters don’t contain fluoride and this is leading to children with unhealthy teeth.  The reason being…You guessed it, bottled water.  Fluoridated water is free from our taps, and makes your kids’ teeth happy. Most bottled water does not contain fluoride. 

Lewis Black, the comedian, sums this entire bottled water thing up quite hysterically by saying we’ve sullied even our most ample and free resource.  About 70% of the planet is covered in ocean and 2% of the earth’s water is fresh water.  To put that in perspective, there are roughly 326 million trillion gallons of water on planet earth and 2% is fresh.  That’s a lot of fresh water.  And somehow we’ve agreed to pay our hard earned money for this gift of nature.

And, upon agreeing to buy this water we’ve also created a cost that nature must pay…We pitch in 38 billion bottles of water a year, roughly $1 billion worth of plastic.

But, enough with the depressing stuff.  On with the progress!

There are restaurants rebelling against these industries and while blindly voting with your dollar is not advised, supporting the fight is.  In San Francisco, there is a new trend: high end restaurants serving carafes of filtered tap water.  In some cases they even carbonate the water themselves.Glass carafes served into glasses of water equals much less waste. So we applaud these restaurants and suggest that you demand the same from your restaurant in your neighborhood.

So, find out what restaurants in your area do this.  If your favorite one doesn’t, then urge them to.  We can make a change, I think.  We just have to want to.  And if anyone tells you bottled water is better, tell them they’re wrong.  Free, clean, healthy water is a privilege.  In some countries it’s impossible to find.  Save the money you spend on water to buy something that can actually help you save those pure, crystalline springs they harvest all that clean crisp water from.