how green are you?

Katherine wrote: On this topic, I am reading a GREAT book called Eco Chic: The Savvy Shopper's Guide to Ethical Fashion, by Matilda Lee. It's all about the fashion industry and how our clothes are made, right from the ground up -- how synthetic fabrics are, at heart, crude oil that won't degrade in a landfill for 200+ years; how jeans are treated with chemicals to keep them from fading yet the worker in China applying the chemical develops lesions on their lungs from breathing it in; how pesticides that keep cotton crops safe also kill all the livestock within a five-mile radius; how slave labour still exists... It's blowing my mind. What blows my mind even more is that cotton is apparently known as "the dirtiest crop in the world" as far as its environmental impact. The way it's grown, harvested, processed, milled, dyed, etc. is amazingly bad for the environment. So unless you're wearing organic cotton dyed with vegetable dyes and buying it from ethical clothing suppliers, your personal total carbon emissions that come from your clothing alone add up to about 10% of your total carbon emissions -- about 1 tonne per year just from your clothes. And that's per person!!! So when you think about being green, don't forget your clothing!

you just took all the joy out of shopping   Well, actually I dont buy much because I am never happy with how things fit so at the moment I am looking farfrom yummmy mummy.

We do our bit

cloth nappies and wipes
ecostore washing powder and other products
minimal makeup (again from laziness)
worm farm
Dh is a biodynamic winegrower so he is putting back into the earth so surely i can go buy some clothes
minimal use of car (again laziness)
vege garden

but, I do do hot washes for the nappies
I love my baths
I cant do without expensive shampoo/conditioner
I forget to turn lights off.

I've just posted a review of Eco Chic -- you can read it here. One of my goals for the month is to put together an article on "greening your wardrobe" (and your child's wardrobe) so if you have suggestions, please feel free to give them to me! :)

I'm pretty green, but it's not just about being "green" is it, it's also about ethical decisions, human rights and so on. I live in an urban eco-village in a gorgeous rammed earth apartment, we have some vegetable gardens and a small developing orchard and we do quite a bit of resource sharing. I buy organic food wherever possible but we still go out to dinner or lunches or breakfast at non organic places, we still buy things made in china and all that. It's practically impossible to live a totally green, guilt free lifestyle in this age. My husband and I eventually want to move to a piece of land so that we can grow the majority of our own food and have some animals and be as self-sufficient as possible, but we will still have to buy things in, we are total geeks (and our income relies on our geekness) and thus we will still need computers and the internet etc.

Since I've been weaving and now spinning and so on, I've come to really realise how out of proportion our views on the cost of living really are. For most of us it's too expensive to be 100% eco-friendly, and so we resort to buying something that is "cheap". We think having to pay $40 for a sustainably produced singlet top is a rip-off, because we can go and buy 4 for that price somewhere unsustanable. It takes me several days to weave a piece of fabric, there is no way I could wash, card, spin, weave and sew an item of clothing that someone could afford to pay for in terms of my time value, and that's so sad (however, this does work out economically if we use a barter system, but that's another discussion).

I often wish that we lived or more old fashioned style of life, where new things were cherished possessions and something made by hand was the ultimate gift. And yet I don't want to give up my brunch, my passive tv entertainment and so on. It's enough to make you scream.

I agree. I often wish we had a few treasured possesions rather than all the crap we tend to accumulate. This was especially on my mind over Xmas when I felt we were giving and receiving gifts just for the sake of it. It would be nice to get some baking or something from someone instead.

Did you build you house yourselves? I love organic buildings.