07.29.08
Posted in education, organic, weddings, fair trade at 8:08 am by greengirl
While I was doing research for the Flowers chapter of the book I’m writing on eco-weddings, I stumbled across a really cool project. It ran from September of 2007 until year’s end, so I’ve missed it. But, I thought it was cool enough to mention again. For the 100th anniversary of the New York City metered taxi, schoolchildren painted 750,000 square feet of adhesive panels as part of the Garden in Transit project. These flower panels were then affixed to New York City yellow cabs as a moving art exhibit.
The environmental angle came on November 1, when VeriFlora, a certification organization for organically grown flowers, gave 80,000 environmentally and socially responsible flowers to taxicab drivers. They handed these flowers out to passengers and pedestrians with a message attached to ‘move this flower along!’ New York as a walking garden. Too cool.
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05.28.08
Posted in home & garden, weddings, shopping at 7:19 am by greengirl
I recently finished the food chapter of the book I’m writing on Eco-weddings. It includes information on why it matters to eat lower on the food chain, eat organic and eat locally grown products. I thought I’d post the section on eating locally here:
Your food travels an average of 1,300 to 1,500 miles (depending on the literature) before it reaches your local supermarket. Just think of how much fuel is used to drive a truck that far. Buying locally ensures that more of your dollar goes to the farmer. Local farmers will keep about $0.90 of each dollar you spend. Food that is shipped across the country has money going to marketing, distribution and the parent corporation, leaving the original farmer with $0.21 of that dollar you spent. Local produce needs to be sprayed with far fewer chemicals to keep it looking fresh for the 24 hours it travels to your kitchen. When food is shipped long distances, growers have to focus on growing varieties that will maintain their color over distance, which usually involves losing taste and gaining preservatives. Local farmers can work with heirloom varieties and select for taste instead of shelf life.
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07.05.07
Posted in weddings at 7:40 pm by greengirl
With just over two months left till my own big-dress-day, I thought I’d offer up some more resources for environmentally friendly weddings. A small budget has certainly made simplicity the rule for our day, but by combining it with being green, we’re striving for an elegant, simple statement.
Anyway, I found two great websites that deal with all green wedding matters. One is Great Green Weddings, which advocates having an eco-wedding without sacrificing style. The second is a blog companion to the book Eco-Chic Weddings. The blog touches on many subjects involved in implemented eco-ideas into your everyday life, not just with having a green wedding. This blog is so cool, it will take me a week just to check out all the great links.
Don’t think it can be done? Not everything for our wedding is specifically green (do you know how much a hemp dress costs?!?), but this couple have certainly gone the extra mile with an entirely eco-friendly wedding.
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03.09.07
Posted in weddings at 9:11 am by greengirl
One of the first things to do when planning your wedding is to choose a location. There are many ways to help set the tone of your green wedding. The most obvious is to chose a nature center or botanical garden for your wedding, where paying the cost of rental would act as a donation to their programs. Of course, with many large botanical gardens, the price can be very steep as they are popular locations, but you may be able to find a smaller center focused on youth education programs.
Book your wedding and your reception at the same location to keep everyone from having to drive from one to the other. Or if you have a lot of out of town guests, have your reception at the hotel where most of the guests will be staying to save them from having to drive. That will also prevent drunk driving.
Choose a beautiful location so that you don’t have to waste a lot of paper and other resources to decorate. With a beautiful location, simple decorations are all you need.
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02.09.07
Posted in home & garden, organic, weddings, shopping at 10:02 pm by greengirl
In further reading of Simply Green Giving, I found two fabulous factoid gems.
One is Bloomin’, a source for lovely handmade paper that is embedded with seeds. You can plant it! They’ve got all kinds of paper goods - holiday cards, invitations, bookmarks and gift tags. Their paper is recycled from 100% post-consumer content with soy-based inks. They also do promotional items like business cards and inserts. Talk about planting your message!
The other is Miette, a really lovely bakery in San Francisco. But, Californians aren’t the only ones who can enjoy these lovely European-influenced treats. They also ship a small amount of their items via mail order. They ship a couple different candies, pound cakes and cookies. They also use local and organic ingredients wherever possible. I think I got a sugar buzz just looking at the gorgeous pictures in the cake gallery.
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01.29.07
Posted in home & garden, organic, weddings at 10:05 pm by greengirl
As part of my continuing wedding coverage (and continuing wedding planning), I’ve come up to the decision of picking flowers. There are three ways to be ecologically friendly in choosing flowers for your wedding (or any other event where you might use flowers, for that matter). Choices includes locally-grown flowers, organic flowers, or silk flowers. Traditional flowers from a florist, especially if they’re out of season, are typically brought in from overseas and sprayed heavily with pesticides.
If you can find a farmer’s market, you can often purchase locally grown flowers in a variety of lovely blooms. Doing this for your wedding, though, means you likely won’t know for sure what flowers you’ll have to choose from until a few days before your ceremony. You may also not have a long time to make intricate bouquets if you’re shopping the morning of your shindig. Some green thumb couples even grow their own flowers, timing it so that they’re ready for their big day. This may give you more leeway, especially if you have a greenhouse or indoor garden and can thus extend the season for your chosen bloom.
Organic flowers are becoming more widely available. As with any other organic item, make sure that it’s certified organic and not just tagged as ‘natural.’ Look for a florist certified by Veriflora, a green label certification for the florist industry. One of the few organic florists actually certified as USDA organic (and by Veriflora) is Organic Bouquet, and their CEO recently spoke to Grist about where they get their flowers.
If you don’t have a farmer’s market or organic florist in your community, or you want a bloom that is out of season, you could consider silk flowers. These now look so real that, at a recent wedding, I actually asked if I could smell the bride’s bouquet, not knowing it was silk. My face turned as red as her roses! Silk flowers are also a good choice for summer weddings where real flowers would droop after a few hours in the sun and destination weddings where you don’t have the ability to work with a local florist. You can buy silk flowers at craft stores like GardenRidge and Hobby Lobby, and many florists carry a selection as well. I would definitely recommend purchasing the flowers in a store rather than online, since quality varies considerably.
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01.05.07
Posted in recycling, weddings, shopping at 7:02 pm by greengirl
So, you’ve decided to pop the question, but don’t want to feel like one of the motivators behind that Blood Diamond movie. There are alternatives to taking part in the conflict diamond trade.
A beautiful option is to purchase estate or antique jewelry. You may have a piece of heirloom jewelry in your family, which can express a respect for tradition. If that is not an option, many jewelry stores and resale shops have estate jewelry collections. The Way We Were has acquired antique jewelry, mostly from jewelry companies that closed in the 1930s and 1940s, and stored their jewelry.
You can also look into recycled pieces, like those available at GreenKarat’s website.
During recycling, gold and other metals are refined to remove impurities. Gold and silver are elements, and are the same whether they were refined from scrap or refined from ore. There is absolutely no difference in the quality of the product you buy. And, I can vouch (or my new fiance can vouch - grin) for the fact that GreenKarat’s customer service is excellent.
Recent advances have been made in the manufacture of diamonds and other precious gems. Since the 1960s, diamonds have been manufactured for use in industrial applications. In recent years, diamonds for use in jewelry have been manufactured. These gems are so convincing that a gemologist must use sophisticated machinery to tell the different between synthetic and natural diamonds. These are much more sophisticated than the stereotypical cubic zirconium; these diamonds are physically, chemically and optically identical to natural diamonds.
Think of it as a gift to your intended symbolizing a healthy and sustainable future.
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01.04.07
Posted in weddings at 6:35 pm by greengirl
I apologize to all for not posting for a while. It’s been a crazy holiday season, and I’m still catching up. I’m rolling out a new category, highlighting eco-weddings. I’ll be working with Tynan’s Independent Media on a green wedding book, and this category will accompany it. And, of course, I’ll continue to post green news on all topics here as well.
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