Every once in awhile, a company comes along and you think to yourself, “Wow! They really thought of everything!”  Sustainability? Check. Durability? Check. Utter cuteness? Check. Ladies and gentlemen, meet the Fableists.

Who are the Fableists? (fay-buh-list) noun: A group of people making the coolest clothing for little punks! Garments that are not only beautifully designed but made well and completely sustainable. Origin: Fable (a short story with a moral) Activist (someone with a rebellious spirit who makes positive change happen)

Recently launched by UK-based husband and wife team Matt and Sarah Cooper, The Fableists sought to “break the cycle of kids making clothes for kids“. That was the original idea–to make children’s clothing without relying on child labor. Once they started researching the manufacturing business, they realized that they could not stop there.

The massive environmental impact of modern clothing manufacturing and the chemicals traditionally involved in the process were mind-blowing. Combined, they have four children–they didn’t want these chemicals touching their children’s skin, so why would anyone else? Their mantra became clear: “We are kind to the makers, to the planet and the skin of the kids who wear us.”

And when we say they’ve thought of everything, we mean it. Here’s the Fableists’ Sustainability Checklist:

• All cotton 100% certified organic
• GOTS (who certified most of the cotton) also rates
social responsibility in their certification
• Non-cotton items certified by Fair Wear or Fair Trade
• Factories and dyeing houses are inspected
• No underage workers in the factories
• All employees paid a fair wage and given statutory
rights in accordance with International
Labour Organization
• Everything from thread to buttons to rivets are
considered (rivets and buttons are lead and
nickel free)
• Printing of t-shirts and dying done in closed loop
system so that chemicals are not dumped in to the
communities and ecosystems
• Shipping done over land and sea where possible to
reduce carbon footprint
• T-Shirts have almost zero carbon footprint due
to factories being run on wind and other renewable
energy sources
• Cotton grown by a collective of organic farmers to
ensure that they are paid a fair price and are
governed and protected by a committee
• T-Shirt artists paid for the limited print run with a
potential for share in any profits
• Percentage of profits to go in to an as yet unnamed
charity that will help to promote education in the
areas where our clothes are made
• Cotton grown in monsoon rain fed areas of India as
most cotton requires a huge amount of water
to grow
• No GM crops used in the making of our clothes
• Cotton is 100% pure and not reliant on use
of insecticides for growing or other chemicals in
processing

In addition to their thoughtful, eco-friendly tenets, The Fableists line is sustainable by design. Their aesthetic is based on time-honored vintage workwear, which makes sense; play is hard work! Because the look is timeless and the construction is incredibly durable, pieces may be worn for years, being passed from child to child and family to family. (Adorable marketing piece: Each item comes with its own passport so you can document its journey!)

The Fableists website is not just for selling clothing and promoting their brand, but for educating consumers on sustainability practices to aid the health of our planet. They even provide tips for laundering your clothing to not only make it last longer, but to create less waste and eliminate harsh chemicals. Seriously. They thought of EVERYTHING.

The Fableists. Play hard, live forever.

Related on EcoSalon

7 Darling & Inspiring Upcycled Children’s Clothing Designs

How To Raise A Zero Carbon Footprint Baby: Author Keya Chatterjee

Organic, Vintage-Inspired Kids Clothing That Fits For 3 Years

 All images and quotes courtesy of The Fableists

The post Meet the Fableists: Cool Clothes for (Always Cool) Kids appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnIt’s not just about healthy foods, it’s about simplifying your approach to what you eat.

Last week I got asked what I ate for lunch.

This is a very common question – we often ask people what they ate for lunch. But it was for an interview for an article about my book “The Culinary Cyclist”. So of course I had the “thank god I whipped together something interesting today.”

But then I thought about it a little more. It wasn’t that I had made something super interesting or spent a lot of time cooking (I had deadlines after all), it was just that I happened to have good ingredients on hand. A reminder that if you make an effort to have good stuff on hand, the rest sort of falls into place. It also helped that the winter has been extremely mild and because of it I miraculously have a cilantro plant that is going crazy on the balcony. A boring dish is a boring dish, but a dish with cilantro is something else entirely.

If you start with good ingredients and healthy foods, you don’t need to do much else, and while for some, eating well seems intimidating and complicated, I find it quite the opposite. It’s in simplifying that I have come to eat better. It’s not about having all the healthy foods in the world on hand, it’s about having some and just using what you have, even when it’s not that inspiring.

Which is the problem about eating.

Often we are so concerned with what we can and can’t eat, or what we should and shouldn’t eat, that we complicate things. We lose track of the joy of food. Eating is one of the simplest acts of our day, somewhere after sleeping and daydreaming.

We don’t have to think about chewing, we don’t have to do any of the work to digest what we eat, all we have to do is give our body nutrients and it does the rest for us.

But we love to complicate things, and in fact, the food marketing world would like us to believe that cooking is inherently complicated. Why else do you think that they sell you prepackaged meals and microwavable burritos? Because the assumption is that whatever you are giving them money for is too complicated for you to do yourself.

This is all one big lie.

Certainly, cooking takes time. There is no denying that food does not end up on the table on its own. But doing things like making your own vinaigrette instead of buying salad dressing aren’t really above and beyond your cooking capacities, even if you have a very base level.

Chopping up some vegetables and stir-frying them won’t take you hours. Neither will cooking some brown rice.

If you start to have the staples on hand then the rest comes together.

To eat better, we have to think in simple terms. Whole foods instead of processed ones. Vegetables instead of packaged meals. No one is expecting you to whip up a three-course meal for dinner, but maybe learning how to make a simple vegetable soup would be a good starting point.

Cooking with the basics isn’t only healthy, it’s cost effective. Sure a hamburger costs only a few dollars. But a potato, olive oil and some lentils? Not really that much difference, and when you put roasted potatoes on a bed of warm lentils on the table, you all of a sudden have a meal you can feel good about.

Kick the recipes with 18 different foreign ingredients, stop the obsession with complicated sounding dessert names, forget the notion that you need to be taking a bunch of vitamins and supplements, just get back to basics and cook.

Stick to things that only require a few ingredients. Simplify your kitchen in the name of healthy foods. Keep olive oil, brown rice, and an assortment of nuts and seeds on hand. Stop with the processed condiments, salad dressings and pre-made dinners. Drink water. From the tap. Throw an apple slice in it if you find it boring. Eat chocolate, just make sure it’s dark. Try to not buy food when it’s not in season. Cook at home. Get a takeout pizza with a bottle of red wine once in awhile. You don’t want to become neurotic after all.

Stop stressing so much about what you eat and enjoy it instead. That’s a tasty simple way to living.

Related on EcoSalon

11 Reasons to Completely Change Your Diet (And How to Eat Healthy): Foodie Underground

The Joy of Eating Seasonally and Locally: Foodie Underground

The 11 Ingredients That Make Healthy Meals More Fun: Foodie Underground

This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’ weekly column at EcoSalon: Foodie Underground, an exploration of what’s new and different in the underground movement, and how we make the topic of good food more accessible to everyone. More musings on the topic can be found at www.foodieunderground.com.

Image: ais3n

The post Healthy Foods and Eating Well, It’s About Simplicity: Foodie Underground appeared first on EcoSalon.