Eco - Schmeeco!!!

I know I know where the Eco Heck have I been??

Well between you and me I have been a little disillusioned with the eco world I profess to love so well. It started at Christmas when the fabulous and oh-so-eco-stylish Lupe and I met on a dark and rainy Saturday afternoon in Spitalfields to forage for more fab eco stuff that I can share with you.

However

The Eco Design Fair in The Old Truman Brewery was indicative of the increasing amount of gatherings with vendors plying their products as ECO or GREEN. My overwhelming impression was of a bunch of ethnicy-slash-crafty stalls all trying to be green because they are selling 'fairtrade' things. I'd like to make the distinction here and now... Of course buying something from a country where the people making the jewelry and knitted hats are getting a living wage. Brilliant. Won't find fault with that but please don't lure me in with the green thing and then be fair trade for the most part. And the source materials? What are they made of? Do they use huge amounts of energy to produce and then they have to be shipped here. That can add up to a lot of carbon footprint...anyway...

What with that and all the TV ads from supermarkets claiming they keep their prices down because they have low energy light bulbs and recycle their packaging......uummmm...little tenuous in my book...SO.... I have been sidestepping writing my blog for want of something to say that doesn't infer that I'm over the whole thing!!

I'm just asking for a little less GREEN WASHING please!!!??

SO I TOOK A STEP BACK!!
OK. Soap Box rant over...

At the Christmas (eco) fair I did find some fab lampshades made from recycled plastic milk bottles by a very talented lady after my own heart - LIZZIE LEE who says.....

"I first became interested in recycling plastics on a trip to India in 1998, where I saw the effect of plastic water bottles collecting in piles on the streets and plastic bags littering the desert in Rajastan. In India they had beautiful buckets , jugs, plates etc made from recycled stripy plastic and they looked so much more attractive than the plain green or beige ones you could buy in this country. When I returned to university I was determined to find a simple way of recycling plastic waste – primarily plastic bottle tops which were not recycled and went to landfill, and hence my little cottage industry ‘plastikrap’ was born, using an oven and an old bookbinding press."

Please check out her work in Highgate at North and South Ideas Gallery.
The opening is this Thursday March 12th


Lizzie is an inspiration as is Jamie Ward the student designer who makes his pieces from discarded furniture he finds in Manchester where he is still at college!! Wow!!

Check it out!!!