Stylish AND Sustainable....? I'm IN! Mimosa Street!

I'm often invited to post pages that advertise a green-ish, eco-ish or sustainable products, but often those peeps don't get the remit here: -
It is: how do we live a sustainable and stylish life with as little impact on the planet as possible - and without living in a field in Cornwall peeing into a compost toilet... well, I think MIMOSA STREET may be onto something. Have a click on the links and you decide....

 cute handbags....

 lovely jewellery and much more...

The very stylish website offers a unique mix of jewellery (much of it handmade), accessories and lovely objects for the home. The product mix is unique because they source items directly from small independent suppliers, artists and designers. (nice!)

Mimosa Street loves to celebrate individuality and support emerging talent on the design-front, because while beauty and quality are at the heart of everything they do, they believe that where something comes from matters too. And that’s also the reason you’ll find plenty of lovely and unusual ethically-sourced items from around the world at Mimosa Street. (click here now!)

There’s a widespread misconception that if something is fair trade or eco-friendly then it’ll be dowdy, hackneyed or lacking in style, but they aim to dispel this by offering a range of beautiful objects for the home which are as lovely to look at as they are ethically sound. (yup!)

There's a collection of products made from recycled glass. In a landfill site, a glass bottle will take more than a million years to biodegrade (if it biodegrades at all), so our vases, tealights and carafes, which are both fair trade and made from recycled glass are the height of eco chic. (gotta love that!)

They are a new company and have lots of new and interesting stock on the way, so please support them and watch them as they continue to grow...

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!!!

To Cut or Not to Cut a Christmas tree

Had to post this.
It came in from a friend in Portland, Oregon who sells wonderful organic cotton and fairtrade children's clothing on her site Go Natural Baby. I think it it a great solution to the Christmas tree dilemma...EW

About one week ago I asked my five year old if he wanted to go to a farm to cut down our Christmas tree.
He said," cut a Christmas tree?"
"Yes," I said with some trepidation.
"I don't want to cut a tree. That would hurt it," he replied.
Our conversation progressed into me explaining to him that this is how we get Christmas trees. He then decided he wanted a fake tree. I have to admit I was not too keen on the idea of having a fake tree in the house. Although at this point in the conversation I was also feeling that I did not want to cut down a tree. My stomach tightened a bit when I thought of "giving" up our real Christmas tree. This was a mom moment when I thought I need to think before I speak.
"How about we don't get a tree at all. We can plant one in our front yard and decorate it there," I suggested.
"No, I want a tree..... in the house," he said.
Hmmmm, I was stumped. I told him we should think about it. The next day I received the newsletter from my son's school and believe it or not the head of the school was suggesting that families rent their Christmas tree. Yes, that's right I said "rent". I have never heard of it before (Portlanders be gentle, I am new to the area after all).
My son came home from school and I told him about renting a living tree. He loved the idea. I told him that they would deliver the tree and we would need to take care of it, including not putting lights on it. He did not care about the lights. I then proceeded to tell him that after the holidays they would come pick up the tree and it would be planted.
"Will it live forever?" he inquired. Well, that is another story.

You can learn more about renting a Christmas tree at: Living Christmas Trees

Happy Holidays to each and every one of you!
warm regards,
Justyn

CHRISTMAS WILL BE GREEN THIS YEAR? YOU DECIDE...

Here's the latest installment of the eco house in Notting Hill. It's all coming along...

In the next post, I'll be reporting on some gorgeous green Christmas gift ideas

But in the meantime check out the GOOD GIFTS website.
Last year I decided to bypass all the gorgeously expensively twinkly packaged things in the shops that are SO only there to entice us into buying STUFF for our friends and family - this bypassing being very hard for a stylish Designer Girl who loves her gorgeous things...because you know as well as I that these things are so rarely anything we have a real need for...right?

Eco Warrioress gave instead gifts of a more ethical, green and less consumery nature.
My mum loves her garden, so I bought her a meadow of flowers; my environmentalist friend got an acre of rainforest and a few matcho blokes got a ten quid shot of bull semen for a cow in Africa -

You get the picture!

This year Good Gifts have a list of stocking fillas so that for a small 'stocking filler' price you can put in a little card in that says you have bought a homeless person some socks or given to a medical fund for street children. No expensive wrapping paper that gets thrown away, just a card on recycled paper that describes the gift. LOVE that!!

I found that the words inside the card always brought a smile to the recipient's face and evoked a conversation about the real meaning of Christmas and what giving to those who are truly in need really means to us all. Ahhhh....

ALRIGHT! That's enough of that.... I'm off to look at more Christmassy ideas...
and here's a few gorgeous green things for you to consider too....

GORGEOUS GREEN CHRISTMAS THINGS

See, I'm still not so much into the 'hempy' 'granola' look of eco so will always bring you the sexy and the stylish if I can....Last week I met the young and gorgeous Joshua who owns KANZI HOME. (KANZI means 'treasure' in Swahili ) and his website is FABulous. He is based in Newcastle and is not yet in a lot of stores but I'm so happy to have found this fabulous interiors, accessories and gifts website! Gorgeous!

As well as carrying cushions and cubes made from recycled car seat belts, gorgeous lampshades made from recycled paper and many ethical/fairtrade items, also has some lovely festive bits for your table top and tree.


Kanzi Home also carries SA8000 certified products. This is a rigorously audited human rights and social welfare programme (similar to Fairtrade) that give jobs to communities in need. Most of Kanzi's products are made in Thailand.

There is 10% off any online orders made before Christmas.

FINALLY,

FOR MY LOS ANGELES GREEN GIRLIES...

I will be visiting my friend Sam Robinson over Christmas to learn more about her eco fashion company, but in the meantime she is having a SALE.

DESIGNER SALE

Organic Clothing - wholesale & 50% off retail

earth & sky

Read all about her amazing fashion philosophies in this article in APPAREL NEWS...oh and Cate Blanchett, Kate Winslet, Angelina Jolie & Cameron Diaz love her stuff too!

Heather, Jenni, Rochelle, Emma, Alison, Andrea, April, Bootsey, Carolyn, Casey, Celeste, Celia, Claire, Collette, Eleanor, Hilary, Julien, Linda, Miriam, LInnea and Sarah; if you go, do please comment on the blog and tell us all about it!