Four years ago I got really sick and my now mother-in-law (then boyfriend’s mother who I had met once before) kindly came over to my apartment to take care of me. She brought with her, knitting needles and yarn to teach me how to knit and although she had to do a refresher course with me when I was no longer doped up on meds, it was something I immediately loved.

Something else that I love is the environment. Over the years, my love for knitting and the environment have been at odds because of the difficulty in finding organic yarn. My hope is, that for my fellow knitters (or crocheters) and environmentalists, this post will serve as a helpful resource that makes purchasing organic yarn easier.

1. Cottage Industry is a yarn shop located in Northfield, MN. They give a very interesting recount of the growing of naturally colored cotton by the indigenous people of Peru for the past 5 thousand years. The Peruvian government has done its best to discourage the growing of colored cotton, but, thankfully, despite its efforts, farmers continued to grow it. In addition to the farmers efforts, The Native Cotton Project of Peru has done much to aid the famers and because of their combined efforts cotton fields are replacing those fields which were once used to grow coca (some of which was used for the production of cocaine). The organic cotton yarn from this area is called Pakucho and its “fibers are never touched by pesticides, bleaches, dyes, or other chemicals. They are inspected and certified by the Swiss agency SKAL with the EKO label to be fully organic.” Although you are no longer able to buy yarn through the Cottage Industry site, they do provide a list of local yarn shops around the country that sell Pakucho organic yarn.

2. Aurora Silk has been a great find because they sell natural dyes and natural and organic fibers (this includes organic fabric, this is great because organic fabric is even more difficult to find than yarn). Tussah Silk Yarn is among the many things they sell. They use a much gentler process that does not kill the silkworm and because of this they say that this yarn is suitable for vegetarians. “‘Peace Silk’ lets the silkworm live out its full life cycle. ‘Peace silk’, also known as ‘vegetarian silk’ is raised and processed differently. The moths are allowed to emerge from their cocoons to live out their full life cycle. The silk is degummed and spun like other fiber, instead of being reeled. The resulting yarn is soft, fluffy, and light like a cloud.” You can place orders through this site using their shopping cart function.

3. Tierra Wools spins various kinds of yarn using local organically raised wool. They are located in Los Ojos, New Mexico and you can order over phone by calling 1-888-709-0979. You can browse through their online selection or you can order a sample card for $3 by calling the same number above.

4. Earth Friendly Yarns “aim[s] to provide you with the best organic, recycled and plant-based yarns available anywhere on the Internet.” In addition to its online store it has a store located Seattle, WA called The Fiber Gallery. For a full list of the yarns they offers Click Here

Happy Knitting!

People want to know why buying local is important and, in response, I want to share a couple of my own reasons for supporting local businesses.

1. Instead of giving more of my money to big corporations that I know nothing about, when I buy local, I am supporting people that are part of my community.
2. I personally want know the people who are growing my food, making my clothes, and brewing my coffee, as much as is possible. This may not seem like a good reason to some people, but to me this is very important because I want to have as much personal, human, face to face intereaction as possible in this growing world where we know of people instead of knowing people.
3. I get to know more about the company and the people I am supporting.
4. Because I know the people I am buying my products from and because they depend on the community for the survival of their business, I/we have the ability to be more involved and influential with regard to their practices. For example, is your local coffee shop using organic, shade grown, fair trade coffee? If it isn’t you are going to have a better chance convincing the owners to start using only organic, shade grown, fair trade coffee than convincing, let’s say, Starbucks.
5. Finally, because local companies function on a much smaller scale they usually do not have the negative social and environmental ramifications that large companies usually have.

What are some reason why you do or do not support local businesses?

I wanted to give a little information about what old growth forests are and why they are important. Old growth forests may also be refered to as acient forests or original forests and are defined as forests which have a mature ecological system which has not been disturbed for thousands of years. These are forests which have not been altered, manipulated, or destroyed by humans. According to the Rainforest Action Network the United States has less than 5% of its old growth forests remaining and that 80% of old growth forests have already been destroyed around the world. Cutting old growth trees down is a permanent action. There is no getting old growth back even if you replant a tree for every tree cut down because those newly planted trees are regrowth. In order to save these forests it is important that we as consumers become educated about the paper products we are buying. For more information about this read the following posts: Who is telling the truth? and Further Reading

This post is a follow-up to Who is telling the truth? .

I did a little more research regarding the Greenpeace/Kimberly-Clark situation and found some very interesting and helpful information. It turns out that Greenpeace is the one being honest about the information it is sharing with the public. Phew. I was worried there for a second. It also turns out that I was not the only one that was fooled by Kimberly-Clark’s environmental claims and that the company has gotten so good at deceiving the public that Greenpeace and Kleercut (developed by Greenpeace to specifically deal with the Kimberly-Clark situation) have taken each one of Kimberly-Clark’s claims and used facts to expose the truth behind the claims. I will share a few of them with you.

Let’s begin by taking a look at one of Kimberly-Clark’s third party forest certifiers, the Sustainable Forest Initiative.

The Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) is a deceptive marketing scheme developed by the American Forest & Paper Association (AF&PA)—the most powerful timber trade association in the world—for its member companies, including the largest loggers in the United States and Canada and the largest wholesale distributors of global wood products. Members of the governing board of the SFI, the Sustainable Forestry Board, have been appointed by the AF&PA. And 82% of SFI’s funding comes from AF&PA members.

Don’t Buy SFI

Click Here for more information on SFI.

As far as Kimberly-Clark’s claim that it supports the protection of old growth forests? Well, unfortunately, while they may make that claim, there is a lot of evidence which proves that they are doing a lot of harm to the environment, including harm to old growth forests. Kimberly-Clark buys from Neenah Paper and West Fraser Timber both of which get their pulp by clearcutting old growth forests. More specifically, Kimberly-Clark is playing a big part in the destruction of the Boreal Forest. The reason the Boreal Forest is so important and needs to be saved is because it accounts for 25% of the world’s remaining old growth forests and is “home to hundreds of wide-ranging wildlife species, including moose, caribou, lynx, bear and wolves. Eagles, hawks, owls, 30 per cent of North America’s songbirds and 40 per cent of its waterfowl nest in the forests and wetlands. The Boreal is a diverse and awe-inspiring landscape of granite outcrops, lakes, rivers, and marshes interspersed with pine, spruce, fir and poplar forests.”

The pulp and paper and lumber industries in Canada are very closely entwined and interdependent. They rely on each other so much that one could not survive financially without the other. In fact, the pulp and paper industry, which includes Kimberly-Clark, drives much of the clearcutting that takes place in the Boreal forest. Without this growing demand, clearcutting would not be expanding into the northern reaches of the Boreal forest. Kimberly-Clark is also incorrect in stating that much of their fiber is deriverd from saw mill residue or waste. In fact, according to the Kenogami Forest Management Plan - the official government-approved plan written by Neenah Paper Inc. that outlines logging operations in Ontario’s Kenogami Forest - 48% of the wood used in the Neenah Paper’s pulp mill comes directly from the Boreal forest. This wood is not sawed first at a local saw mill nor delivered in the form of sawdust or chips. Neenah Paper is a currently a major supplier of pulp to Kimberly-Clark and was owned by Kimberly-Clark up until November 2004. The Kenogami Forest is a Boreal forest.

Kleercut

Finally, there is a reason that most people refer to a facial tissue as a Kleenex. It is because Kimberly-Clark, whose disposable tissue products are Kleenex, Scott, Viva, and Cottonelle (other Kimberly-Clark products are Kotex, Depends, and Huggies) is the largest developer of tissue products worldwide. However,

In North America, less than 19% of the pulp that Kimberly-Clark uses for its disposable tissue products comes from recycled sources. The rest comes directly from forests like Canada’s Boreal. Most of the recycled fibre that Kimberly-Clark does use goes directly into tissue products sold to institutions like theatre chains, hotels and sports stadiums. Most of the consumer products sold in local grocery stores, including Kleenex brand products, contain no recycled fiber whatsoever. Despite the fact that it has the capacity to make a much higher percentage of its products from post-consumer recycled fiber, Kimberly-Clark chose, in 2004, to use 3 million metric tonnes (3.3 million tons) of virgin fiber to produce its tissue paper products globally.

Kleercut

For a detailed list of alternatives to Kimberly-Clark products click here or go to Greenpeace’s Shoppers Guide.

Spurred on by my husband’s cold (I am boiling eucalyptus leaves in water as I write this) and the many others who have head colds, the flu, and good old everyday runny noses, I thought that I would write about runny noses, Kleenex facial tissues, and ancient forests. As I was preparing to write this post on Kimberly-Clark using ancient forests in the production of Kleenex facial tissues when I came upon a problem, conflicting information.

Greenpeace has been very active (would we expect anything less?) against the Kimberly-Clark brand on the grounds that ancient or old growth trees are used to produce their disposable tissue products. I began by looking at the Greenpeace website. November 3, 2005 Greepeace had a “Day of Action Against Kimberly-Clark” and hundreds of demonstrations took place to educate the public on the ecological destruction taking place at the hands of the Kimberly-Clark corporation. I did a little more research on the Greenpeace site, found loads of good information, and then headed over to the Kimberly-Clark site to see if they had anything to say regarding this matter.

Now, usually one of two things happens when a company is severly criticized for being harmful to the environment or its employees, either, they avoid the issue completely or they try to redirect our attention to the other wonderful and charitable things they are doing. However, right there on the homepage and also in the About Us section of their website (this is where you want to go first when you are looking for information regarding a company’s philosophy and practices) I saw a link titled “K-C’S SUSTAINABLE FORESTRY PRACTICES”. Huh? This was not what I was expecting. Now, there are a lot of people who are a lot more knowledgeable about the environment, know the correct lingo, and savvy in the ways of interpreting corporate environmental information and seeing through a company’s spinning of information. For those of us who can not be characterized as that way, what do you do with “K-C is committed to preserving ecologically signficant old growth forests”? I read their “Supporting Sustainable Forestry Practices” with a very skeptical eye. Is the loophole found in the word “signficant”? If it is, where is the the loophole in being “selected as the sustainability leader in the Personal Products sector of the 2006 Dow Jones Sustainability World Indexes” which aparently is a reflection of their “commitment to creating sustainable growth and shareholder value”. They also happen to be members of “the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Forest Products Industry Working Group, the latter of which is working in partnership with the World Wildlife Fund on the recognition and use of forestry schemes”.

My last hope at resolving this conflicting information was to find a date. Maybe it was published recently and the activism of Greenpeace paid off and Kimberly-Clark has said good-bye to its horrible ways. Unfortunately, I am not so lucky. It was published in October 2005, the month prior to Greepeace’s “Day of Action Against Kimberly-Clark”.

Am I missing something? Whose information I am supposed to believe?

I thought about putting pictures up of my lavender bathroom (bathtub, toilet, sink, floor, and tiles ALL lavender) but thought better of it. You will just have to imagine what it looks like in all of its CLEANish lavender glory and filled with the following products. I have included a brief review of the products that is somewhat objective, but keep in mind that most of these are products that I regularly buy; so, I am more than likely going to have positive things to say about them. If you have used any of them and would like to write a different review let me know and I will be happy to add your review to the post.

I have included prices for some of the products but please remember that prices may vary depending on where you buy it and where you live.

Hair Care:
* Aveda Shampure Shampoo 8.5 fl oz/250 ml for $9.00

Lathers well and smells great. I personally really like that it leaves my hair feeling really clean and without build-up. It is definatly better for people with oilier hair rather than dry hair.

* Aveda Shampure Conditioner 8.5 fl oz/250 ml for $9.00

Because the Shampure Shampoo leaves my hair so clean, and I have a tendency to have frizzy/wavy hair already, this conditioner is not strong enough for what I need. It smells great (obviously smell is important to me!) and would be a great for people who need a light conditioner.

Body:
* Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soap 4oz for $3.33

This is good camping soap. I don’t think that I would want to use it everyday because it tends to dry my skin out a little. I also have not been so bold as to try the other 17 things it can be used for. Have you?

* Earth Therapeutics Tee Tree Oil Foot Repair Balm

I am not a huge fan of this foot balm. I have had it for 4 years and it is mostly full. I should probably throw it away or give it to someone who likes it. I am not even sure why I don’t like it; so, this is pretty much not going to be helpful.

* Tom’s of Maine Unscented Natural Deodorant 2.25 oz stick about $3.99

This deodorant is great! I hate wearing deodorant and this one goes on very light and I feel safe that I am not sending my neighbors into negative sensory overload. I am a runner and have a tendency to work up a good sweat and a good stink, so it is no empty compliment that I think it works well. This deodorant doesn’t keep me from sweating and actually is not supposed to. Because it is unscented, it is also great for those of you who enjoy ‘leave no trace’ camping.

The Bathroom

This is Part One of the Products That I Like series. As I was writing this post I quickly began to realize that it is going to get ‘out of control long’ before I was finished with it. To make it more managable, I have decided to break it up into a couple of different posts that I will publish over the span of the next week or so. Basically, I went into my bathroom and took stock of all of the products that I use that are at least one of the following: natural, environmentally friendly, or socially responsible. You will notice that I tend to stick to certain brands and the reason for it is mostly because once you use one product of a particular brand and like it, there is a natural tendency to try other products within that brand.

To increase our knowledge base I would love it if you would post comments on particular products you like that fall into one of the above categories. Tell us (as I have done for mine) what the product is, a little bit about the company that makes that product, a brief review of the product, and if you feel up to it a link.

Also, I know that many of the products I have listed below are somewhat pricey and it could be pretty easy to get overwhelmed or think that it is too expensive to buy natural, environmentally friendly, and socially responsible products. In response to those of you who feel this way I want to say a few things. First, this list is by no means an exhaustive list of the products available for those of you who want to be concious consumers. It is simply meant to serve as a starting place. Second, when I moved up to Chicago and got my first apartment with my lovely friend Mindy, my dad and I took a trip to the grocery store. He wanted to set me up with the basics: spices, flour, sugar, etc. It cost a lot of money and it was stressing me out a little (even though he was paying) and my dad told me that when you are starting from scratch, getting your base set up is expensive, but that after that it isn’t so bad because you just buy a little here and there to maintain it. Similar thinking should be applied to transitioning your lifestyle from whatever it was to a socially and environmentally concious lifestyle. When you need new toothpaste go out and buy an environmentally and socially concious toothpast instead of the brand that you used to buy. Make one change at a time and it is much more managable. Finally, being a concious and informed consumer is extremely important. This means not looking for the cheapest product, but looking for the product that does not harm human beings, animals, or the environment. Making this change to the way that you spend money is a choice that will benefit so many. Do what you can within the resources that you have.

List of products to follow.

Christians are usually labeled as Conservative, Evangelical Fundamentalists. Environmentalists are usually labeled as Liberal, Treehugging Activists. So, why would I think that Christians and Environmentalists are alike?

For one reason, they both are obnoxious. Christians drive non-Christians crazy and Environmentalists drive non-Environmentalists crazy. They both fervently believe what they believe and want others to convert to their belief system. Christians believe that Jesus is God and that salvation and life is gained through the belief that Jesus is their Lord. Environmentalists believe that our Earth is precious and gives us life and we need to take care of it. Sin kills the Spirit. Pollution kills the Earth. Both Christians and Environmentalists are considered by many as being extreme in their beliefs and the way that their beliefs effect their lifestyle.

I also think that both are greatly misunderstood. I am both a Christian and a non-professional Environmentalist and I hate the labels that get put on me both as a Christian and as an Environmentalist. I think that we all should take more time to get to know each other instead of making a lot of (usually incorrect) assumptions about people. I don’t think that you can judge a whole group of people because some people in that group have done terrible or wrong or crazy things.

People are important. Take the time to get to know them.