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

H&M’s Spring 2011 Conscious Collection: Eco Fashion Breezes into April

H&M is making good on its promise to continue expanding their commitment to using sustainable fabrics. Their upcoming Spring, 2011 collection, Conscious Collection is the follow-up for Spring 2010′s Garden Collection. Utilizing organic cotton, Tencel, and recycled polyester, the all-white collection means that it will work with everything from denim to silks.

“It’s no longer just about organic cotton. The possibilities for creating a complete fashion statement with eco smarter materials are huge now. By designing recurring Conscious Collections we have the opportunity to show in a variety of ways what’s possible using more sustainable fabrics,” says Ann-Sofie Johansson, H&M head of design. “Shades of white are the season’s biggest fashion trend. White creates a romantic feeling with lace and broderie anglaise, but it is also the basic color in a sporty, relaxed style and in a preppy tailored look for men.”

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Fall Eco Fashion Beats the Chill In Style with Keds, Loomstate and Eileen Fisher Organics!

It’s official. Fall is off to a cool start! The best part about fall is the chance to start anew: new initiatives (turn off that a.c. and switch to eco-bulbs), new motivations (make lunch), and new clothes! You want to look street smart even when it is cold and this new apparel is both warm and eco-chic.

The limited-edition eco-conscious Loomstate poncho!

Since there’s been a chill in the air, there’s never been a better time to sport a cute overlayer. But with the season not quite winter the hustle and bustle of a thick wool coat overwhelms. Eco-Chick has a solution! In mid- October Loomstate, a men’s and women’s eco-conscious brand, presents their limited edition poncho in celebration of Barney’s CO-OP’s 25^th Anniversary.

Pair the chic poncho with organic denim and prepare to be enviable!

The poncho is made from organic cotton canvas and recycled blankets. It’s cute brown and blue colors make it an essential wardrobe piece to pair with the cutest of cotton organic skinny jeans, for they go the best with the sneaks, like these from Eileen Fisher. Not only are these jeans made from cotton grown without pesticides, they are dyed (jean dyes are notoriously polluting) under the Global Organic Textile Standard. And if you’re not into this style, Eileen Fisher offers a whole line of organic denim on their site and in stores.

Made from non-polluting organic cotton canvas, these sneaks are eco-chic.

Sneakers are a must – whether you’re running around, walking home from work, or taking a stroll in a local pumpkin patch. Whatever you’re up to, cute comfortable sneakers are essential! Keds are superclassic and come in various colors – but this month they’re eco-chic too! Introducing Keds Organic Champions, chic footwear made from one-hundred percent organic cotton, stitched eyelets, and tea-stained laces. The sneakers are 55$ and can be purchased at www.keds.com. 

Don’t back down for the fall chill. Beat it. Sport this super cute outfit and be an eco-chick.
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How Sustainable is Your Favorite Wine? Greenopia Rates 25 Wineries

Greenopia has just rated 25 wineries for their environmental impact. Here’s why:

Any oenophile worth her spitting glass has heard the dire stories about how global warming will affect wineries, altering the very microclimates that make it possible to grow champagne in Champagne, France and enable growers to eke out a Pinot Noir under a very precise set of conditions. Wine production is a multibillion dollar-a-year industry in the United States, and wine-growing regions are set to migrate northward (or shrink- by up to 80%- disappear altogether) as warm days with moderating sea breezes shift with the increased temperatures, and general local and worldwide climate disruption alters the conditions and locales where grapes have been growing for hundreds of years.

So it makes sense that the wine industry (and vino lovers) would take action against climate change and environmental degradation.

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Why Surf? Why NOT to Surf!

Ed. Note: My Dad, Gerry Vartan, is a lifelong surfer (see bio below); this is him with his board. I can never remember a time when my Dad wasn’t scanning the ocean near his Sydney home to check out the breaks; he’s been surfing much longer than I’ve been around. I asked him to write about what surfing means to him.

Guest Post by Gerry Vartan

International Surfing Day is on June 20th, which this year is a Saturday & also my wedding anniversary! I hope everyone has a good time and catches lot of waves & cleans up all the mess. It’s for a worthy cause (leave nothing on the beach except your footprints). I applaud all the sponsors for their doing something for the ocean & promoting themselves rather than just promoting themselves.

Will I be out in the water? Well after you’ve read my piece below you will see that it will depend.

1. What Surfing Is Not

Surfing ain’t no sport. If you think that surfing is a sport you’re wrong. And it has absolutely nothing to do with the Internet.

Making personal outdoor physical activity into a sport has taken away the subtle & personal interaction people have with the natural environment. The sport of surfing is the antithesis of surfing.

This idea is nothing new. Sport is a great way to pit one person against another, get the crowds to gather around to cheer & boo, place bets and see which gladiator can kill the other first! The winner used an Acme sword so there will be a run on those in the stalls. People will proudly display their own Acme sword and so convince everyone they are as brave, powerful and as strong a fighter as the winning gladiator! If they can’t afford the sword or have no need of one they’ll buy the t-shirt!
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Which Cars Win First Prize in Green? Greenopia's Got the Deets

Guest Post By Ayana Meade

According to the newly-released Greenopia Green Care Guide, the top three most eco-friendly cars on the market today are:
1. the Toyota Prius
2. the Honda Civic Hybrid
3. the Jetta Clean Diesel.

All three had incredibly high gas mileage and burned cleanly to boot. To see the top ten cars in the list, check this out, there’s some surprises in the full rundown!

Two pleasant surprises were the performances of Audi and Mazda. Both did relatively well in the Greenopia Automaker Guide (which rates the overall performance of auto manufacturers), as they both had a statistically large number of cars that met at least our minimum criteria for the Automobile Guide.

When buying your next car, keep in mind that just because a car is a hybrid doesn’t mean it’s automatically better for the environment. In fact, largely because of its battery, the hybrid carries a larger environmental production burden. Where the hybrid makes up ground is once it is driven, with its superior mileage and emissions. On balance Toyota estimates that it takes about 12,000 miles before a hybrid and a similar traditional engine car ‘break even’ environmentally (the hybrid is greener from that point on), as long as it gets great mileage and burns cleanly.

Since your choice of transportation is second only to your home’s energy use in terms of carbon dioxide emissions, driving less or not at all is of course the ideal way to reduce your carbon footprint, but if you’re like many and need a car to get around in today’s fast paced world, then this guide can help you choose wisely.

About the Greenopia Greener Cars Guide: The Guide uses Greenopia’s EPA-recognized 4-Leaf rating system, and only the top 100 automobiles readily available in the US made the cut—the good news is that they come in all kinds of price points and styles. Fuel-efficiency, manufacturing materials, EPA SmartWay vehicle emissions and proxy data representing manufacturing processes were among the criteria data that were analyzed by the Greenopia research team to come up with the ratings.