Can swapping be a cure for many of our environmental woes?

We like to share in Brighton & Hove. So much so, that one overexcited Freegler offered her used Mooncup (clean) on the gifting website. A “taken” message never appeared, so we will never know if the local commitment to reusing unwanted stuff goes as far as communal menstruation products.

Freegle is to the UK what Freecycle is to the U.S., and it started right here in Brighton. But long before the internet allowed people to give away a plethora of Billy bookcases or the gradual accumulation of tchotchke, there was the very first public swap shop: the street.

Unwanted items regularly get left outside people’s houses with “Please Take Me” signs, and with double beds, sofas and computers often found touting for new owners on the pavement, these free little markets do a roaring trade.

Roland Miles lives in the Port Hall area of Brighton. He says he and his neighbors regularly put stuff outside and it all usually goes within a matter of hours. One child’s bike elicited a knock on the door within two minutes of being left out to check it was really free. He says: “I once put out some boxes with about 300 books in. All but five were gone by the evening. As a bookseller, I am committed never to destroy a book – it is a sad fact that almost all books gifted to charity are shredded or sent to landfill. For that reason, giving books away like this feels like bucking a system in which too many companies’ growth depends on destroying what has gone before. It also feels good when you see the Please Take boxes outside people’s houses – it is like seeing a flag which announces that you are living among like-minded people.”

The city is also home to a Local Exchange Trading Scheme, two exchange websites, Bid & Borrow and Netcycler, and The People Who Share, a social enterprise set up with the sole purpose of promoting the sharing economy and encouraging people to be less about a “me” mentality and more about “us.”

Benita Matofksa is the founder and chief sharer of TPWS. She says the sharing economy is based on identifying surplus in the system, not just of stuff but of time, skills, knowledge or talent, and redistributing it to those who need it. It’s less about personal ownership and more about community.

She says: “We’ve been living in very individual, consumerist times and we’ve seen where all that’s taken us. We’re dealing with dreadful global crises. Brighton is the place to be for this kind of venture, the people really embrace it, but there is still resistance to the idea of sharing. People say what about me? What about my stuff? What about my interests? Why should I do that? What’s in it for me? These are some of the things we’re hearing all the time. There are some people who won’t find it easy, who say ‘I’ve worked for it why should I give it up?’ But it’s not about giving up things you need on a daily basis. There is loads of surplus in the system, there is stuff lying around that isn’t being used that could be used by someone else.”

Aside from the obvious advantages of sharing and swapping – financial and environmental – keen swappers also find themselves benefiting socially and emotionally. Liz Bolt (who Freegled a fresh squid) says the gifting community, through her acquisitions and the opportunities they have provided, has become very important to her. Her latest find was an enormous sack of knitting wool. Originally she intended to make pom-poms for a friend’s little girl but there was so much she ended up donating some to the children at the Brighton Women’s Centre pre-school and has asked about setting up a knitting circle.

She says: “A little act of generosity can go a very long way. Brighton is a very chilled out town and although it has its problems, most people are generous and kind. We are a very green city. We are also, apparently, the most godless city, of which I and many others are very proud. We do good deeds and help each other not because some sky-pixie says we should, but because it is the right thing to do.”

Perhaps ironically, the sharing economy has a value in the real economy, about $474 billion worldwide. It is an emerging market, but growing exponentially. Disruptive entrepreneur Matofska believes this is the path towards a genuinely sustainable global system and has dedicated her working life to moving it from the fringes and into the mainstream. She says: “Sharing is the solution to our crises, be they environmental, economic or social. People struggle because it feels like something new but it’s innate. We were all born to share.”

Image: My Swish

The post Sharing as a Solution to Our Environmental Crises appeared first on EcoSalon.

Hey mom and dad, what the freaken hell were you thinking?

I thought getting married was a corporate cashing-in-fest, but it turns out having a baby is a million times worse. Just have a look at the length of the Babies R Us “must have” new parent check list. All the essentials in one place: love, cuddles, milk, warmth and a switch plate cover (I didn’t know they existed either, but apparently they are a necessity).

As a pregnant woman expecting her first child at any moment, I’m personally baffled.

I’m not even sure when these things became more important than the way one looks post-pregnancy, but the message is very loud and clear: buy more stuff or you’ll be a terrible parent. I’ve accepted my status as terrible parent, and thus far have gathered everything we need via hand-me-downs and Freegle.

But there are people who want me to want more. In fact, here are the top seven pointless things companies have tried to sell me while I’ve been pregnant:

A Little Black Birthing Dress (or LBBD)

According to the advertisement, every woman deserves a little black dress to give birth in. Am I supposed to ask the midwife to wear taffeta? Should I be upset there are no hors d’oeuvres on the maternity ward? My mom told me I’d end up butt naked on all fours, pooing myself and screaming blue murder – did she lie? Is birthing actually like a swanky drinks party?

In summary: a very ordinary wrap dress with a price tag of $70 and a single-use life span before being sent off for medical grade incineration. Unless afterbirth stains are your thing.

Wiper Warmers

An electric device to keep your bum wipes warm. First world problems? We got ‘em!

Thudguard Baby Helmet

Toddler in falling over shocker! You know what? My baby’s head is pretty clever. In a few weeks it’s going to do that cool thing where it squishes up nice and tight so it can squeeze out of my tiny lady parts, and then it’s going to expand again and toughen up pretty quickly. My guess is that a skull that well made can cope with everyday bashes and knocks without being literally wrapped in cotton wool.

The human body has spent millions of years becoming what it is today. The fact of me being here and you being there suggests that at some point in the last 200,000 years there was a tiny fragile baby who grew into a wobbly toddler who grew up to have babies of her own, and that person somehow survived living in a cave and wild animal attacks and earthquakes and tornadoes and violent storms, all without the help of sturdy houses or rescue services or a specially designed protective helmet (although no doubt she had warm bum wipes because how anyone could survive without them is a total mystery).

Here is an important lesson even a not-quite-parent-yet knows: if you don’t let your child injure him or herself on occasion he or she will never learn how to remain un-injured and will grow up to be completely lacking in sense and coordination.

Peepee Teepee

I get the basic sentiment. If your little boy pees while you’re changing his nappy it has the potential to go everywhere: your face, his face, the ceiling, the floor, on the dog. But let’s be realistic. A couple of sheets of TP held over his boy parts will do the job, so will a muslin, or your hand, or the dog. This is not a problem that requires a) spending money b) a patented product c) the use of our precious and limited resources.

Tummy Tub Baby Bath

Again, I get the idea, but it costs $32 and I’ve already got a bucket in the Cupboard Where Junk Lives.

Video Baby Monitor

With night vision. Sit in your living room and watch your freaky green baby do its freaky green baby things. Or just go into the nursery and sit and stare at your child. Maybe pop that Thud Guard on him while he sleeps too, just in case.

And finally, a special mention goes to: Shrinx Hips

A device that utilizes ligament softening pregnancy hormones to permanently reduce the size of your hips. When did walking or yoga go out of style?

Image: Juhansonin

The post 7 Pointless Baby Products appeared first on EcoSalon.

The winds of change are always blowing.

With Occupy Wall Street serving as a gauge for U.S. contentment, it’s not hard to see we just aren’t a very happy nation. As with any cause, however, there are always bands of people who do more than walk the talk – they shout from the rooftops and actively work to move us away from the negative and into the positive.

In Seeing The Gulf From Above, Anna Brones writes, “A picture is worth a thousand words. The expression may sound cliche, but in the conservation movement, it couldn’t be more true.” In her story, Brones highlights Tom Hutchings, who takes Gulf of Mexico visitors up in his Cessna 182, knowing very well the visual power of seeing the Gulf oil spill’s environmental catastrophe from above. Giving people the ability to see outside of their immediate life circle to see we’re all very connected? Now that’s what we’re talking about.

Occupy Wall Street is giving people a voice to express their frustration with the status quo. But who are the leaders and participants and who are they to think they can rally and invigorate when they themselves lack social skills? In Sex by Numbers: What We Can Learn From #occupywallstreet, columnist Abigail Wick writes: “It is my conviction that the quality of our relationships – how we engage with and support one another – can have profound societal implications.”

Vacant spots as eyesores? Seed bomb ’em. That’s what groups of guerrilla gardeners are doing to forcefully create change in their neighborhoods. In Flowers of War: Seed Bombing Gets Political, London writer Sarah Lewis-Hammond quotes seed bomber Vera Zakharov, “Seed bombing is activism. It allows us to continue a relationship with the spaces around us, even if the law says we can’t.”

Writer Scott Adelson did a series for EcoSalon on Angel Investors “examining equity investment’s relationship with businesses that have traditionally been out of its mainstream, including women-owned, green and long-term-growth-oriented.” What Adelson uncovered in his series VC’s, Angels and Investing in Women: What Are They Not Thinking? was pretty startling and worth the read on how successful women are running businesses with little investment from Angels (and how that should change).

Remember the food pyramid when you were little? Well the triangle has changed quite a few times over the years and it’s because food and diets have actually gotten very complex. Writer Anna Brones interviews Dr. Marion Nestle who weighs in on how food guidelines have changed in Foodie Underground: Dr Marion Nestle On The Complexity of Food Issues.

The post The Friday 5: Winds of Change Edition appeared first on EcoSalon.

Guerilla gardners are radically seed bombing vacant spaces to create lush gardens.

Last year, a group of guerrilla gardeners broke into a disused plot of land in central Brighton and set up a community garden called The Mound. The land had been derelict for the last 14 years and the gardeners wrote to the land owners saying they would vacate as soon as development on the site began. The land owners were – perhaps understandably – unamused at the squatting and responded by sending in bulldozers to level the 20 square meters of vegetable patches, blooming flowers and educational resources, returning the site to its previous state of neglect. Rumor has it a colony of rare crested newts was also lost in the process.

Today, however, the land is a thriving green meadow of mustard and poppies, thigh high shining green weeds and bright yellow thistles, all thanks to an extensive campaign of seed bombing.

The seed bombing phenomenon seems to have bloomed from nowhere; radical gardeners making little muddy balls from damp compost and mixed seeds and throwing them into any unloved urban area where the plants might take.
Josie Jeffery is the author of Seedbombs: Going Wild with Flowers and widely considered the go-to authority on seed bombing in Brighton & Hove. She says seed bombs originated in ancient Japan and were revived halfway through the 20th century by philosopher and microbiologist Masanobu Fukuoka as a way of introducing revitalizing plants to tired soil that had been exhausted through over use. The little muddy grenades were then adopted by the New York Green Guerrillas who used them to begin transforming run down areas with bright flowers and greenery.

From there, their popularity has spread weed-like, across the world. Josie became interested in them in 2008 when her studies in horticulture and an overheard snippet of a radio interview led her to the work of Fukuoka. She says: “When I first started making them nobody knew what they were. I loved seeing the looks on people’s faces when I explained what they were because they are funny little things, a ball that looks like a truffle and grows into a plant.”

It was a fascination that coincided with a collective gardening mania in Brighton & Hove. The Lewes Road Community Garden, another patch of derelict land squatted for food growing, had just been established, and the now huge movement towards personal food growing was emerging. Josie says: “People wanted to reclaim the available space in the city because gardens are so small. It appealed to radicals and then it spread and people asked me to do workshops in schools and at different events.”

Before long, children as well as those radicals were chucking seed bombs over fences, into disused street planters or empty tree pits.

When The Mound was first occupied in early 2011, Josie helped gardeners line the soil with hundreds of seed bombs. It was a dry summer and with no immediate water source on the site, the bombs failed to germinate. Subsequently, The Mound met its end, but the big yellow digger wasn’t just destroying the visible plants, it was also spreading the invisible seeds.

Vera Zakharov was a regular visitor to The Mound and after its demise attended a memorial ceremony for the space, where participants walked through the city with signs and plants. At the site at the end of the procession, the group stood and hurled seed bomb after seed bomb over the eight foot high metal fences. She says: “It wasn’t revenge, it was about sovereignty. The developers had made a very active statement that they had no need to engage with community members, even though its presence affected us. We were saying that regardless of the law, you cannot stop human interaction with a space. In that way it was an act of defiance.”

There has since been a lot of rain to wake up the seeds and through the gaps in the newly reinforced fence passers-by can see a huge green meadow filled with wildflowers. Josie is very happy about it.

“After The Mound was levelled everyone forgot about the seeds but now that they’ve grown it’s so exciting. Even though it’s not a garden any more we’ve made sure it still is,” she says.
Vera says: “it’s such a meaningful thing. Seed bombing is activism. It allows us to continue a relationship with the spaces around us, even if the law says we can’t.”

Make your own seed bomb
1.      Use water to dampen compost, or a clay/compost mix
2.      Add a mix of seeds – salad leaves or wildflowers – and roll in your hands to make a ball
3.      Push it into the soil in an appropriate place, or throw it at an urban wasteland
4.      Wait and hope!

Remember: Only use native, non-invasive species. The law around seed bombing private land remains unclear. Do so at your own risk.

The post Flowers of War: Seed Bombing Gets Political appeared first on EcoSalon.

Here Today Here Tomorrow aims to connect shoppers with the clothes they wear.

When four friends became the first graduates from the inaugural MA in Fashion and the Environment at the London College of Fashion, their next step seemed eminently clear: open a shop, get people in, share ideas, and begin exploring more sustainable ways of working in the fashion industry.

With that, Ines Vicente, Emma Rigby, Julia Crew and Anna-Maria Hesse formed a collective called Here Today Here Tomorrow. They found a shop in Dalston, London, and kitted it out with wood and furniture found in skips and left on street corners. Ines eventually returned to her home country of Portugal, and the gap was filled with artist designer Katelyn Toth-Fejel.

That was just under a year ago. Today, Here Today Here Tomorrow is now a thriving hub of sustainable fashion, and we caught up with Emma Rigby to find out why.

As the first graduates from the MA, what did you take away from the course?

The course allowed us to develop a thorough understanding of the key environmental and social problems in the fashion industry and develop solutions via our own work as designers.

It also provided a ground to meet like-minded creative individuals with one common agenda; to envision a more sustainable fashion industry. We [the HTHT collective] all had different backgrounds and experience of working in various areas of fashion, which was a great starting point for opening a shop and experimental workspace.

What’s the philosophy behind HTHT?

Here Today Here Tomorrow is a collaborative and experimental shop/studio that is used to make, showcase and sell sustainable fashion and accessories. The aim is to connect the customer and local passer-by to the processes involved in making the products. The importance of transparency and showing people the materials, skills and time required to create unique products by hand is something that is not frequently communicated to the average high street consumer, and encourages customer engagement and understanding.

Our work focuses on different elements of sustainability including high quality handmade craftsmanship, durability, locality, recycling, natural dye, organic materials, individuality and transparency of production.

What kind of clothes are you making?

We make a selection of clothes and accessories in the studio, including knitwear, leather bags and accessories, jersey t-shirts and some more tailored pieces. We also sell other local designer clothing who manufacture within the UK and have a commitment to sustainability. At the moment we are selling: Remade In Leeds, Lilia Yip, Miko Spinelli’s super funky baseball caps made in Hackney London, and handmade jewelery by Fox Le Magpie.

What kind of impact are you hoping to have on the sustainable fashion industry?

HTHT hopes to show that there is not a one-way approach to sustainability. There is a trade off to every choice that is made, and the fashion industry needs to go a lot further than just offering organic material and fair trade. We hope to encourage creative thinking, locality, mindfulness, material diversity, community engagement, empowerment and resourcefulness.

Where do you see sustainable fashion heading in the future?

A growing awareness around social and environmental issues in the fashion industry is important for the future of sustainable fashion. Business and policy play an important part in building sustainability, yet often the most poignant contributions towards sustainability are people centered. In the future we hope consumers will feel empowered to be less passive and more engaged with their products and the making process. We hope sustainable fashion will be about longevity of
products, beautiful design, durability, reconnecting with nature, understanding limits and recapturing values.

The post Here Today, Here Tomorrow Brings Shoppers Close to Design Process appeared first on EcoSalon.

Tired of supermarket shopping for packaged junk? So are four city food projects.

Oh supermarkets. You are cheap, you are convenient, but sustainable? Not even close.
If I walk half a mile in either direction of my home in Brighton & Hove I will fall over six supermarkets, with a seventh currently under construction. Only two out of those seven shops require me to cross the road. Evolution wasted its time giving me legs.

As for the rest of the city, there are no official statistics, but I counted 47 chain supermarkets, which works out about one shop per 5,000 people. Is that too many? Residents certainly think so, and no new supermarket opens now without a slew of protests.
Placards aside, foodies of Brighton & Hove are at the forefront of the fight against the inexorable onslaught of strip lit aisles and bags of grated cheese. Here are just four projects aiming to get local, fresh and sustainable food back on our plates and into our bellies.

Harvest Brighton & Hove
Harvest B&H exist solely to get people growing and eating more local food. Jess Crocker, Harvest manager says, “We want to make the city the food growing capital of England.”

Alongside educational events, such as courses on balcony gardening, preserving and pickling and fermenting workshops, Harvest also acts as an umbrella organization for a number of offshoot projects. These include a garden share scheme, giving landless people who want to grow food access to unused gardens, The Scrumping Project, which collects excess fruit from trees around the city to turn into jams and juices, and the demonstration vegetable garden, a productive allotment placed in the middle of one of the city’s busiest parks where passers-by can see just how much food they can grow in a relatively small space.

hiSbe
Sisters Amy and Ruth Anslow want to fix the whole food system, from farmer to fork. It’s a big task, but the two women aren’t to be deterred. At the beginning of this year they both gave up their jobs to dedicate themselves to finding a way of making sustainable, fresh food accessible to everyone. They began by creating their “8 Everyday Choices,” a simple guide to making better food buying decisions. By the end of this year, they hope to have opened their first shop, something they describe as a middle ground between the cheapness and convenience of supermarkets and the expensive middle-class mazes of trendy organic boutiques.

They are currently negotiating a lease on premises in central Brighton, and in the meantime their campaigning continues, helping people navigate the complexities of what is sustainable and what isn’t.

Amy says: “There’s this perception that supermarkets are always cheaper. It’s drummed into us by the market but the reality is when you do a like for like comparison on a lot of produce from supermarkets to farm shops, farmers markets or independent stores there isn’t always a huge price differential and in a lot of cases its cheaper.”

Brighton and Hove Alternative to Supermarkets
Not unlike hiSbe, Brighton and Hove Alternative to Supermarkets recognizes that the food system is well and truly screwy. Initially, a few interested people got together to discuss opening a People’s Supermarket, but very quickly realized that another food shop might not be the answer to their wishes. They want to make sustainable, local food accessible to as many people as possible, and shops come with a number of inhibiting factors, such as overheads to drive up prices and their static nature restricting catchment area.

Ideas currently being looked at include a pop-up shop, a food delivery service, or a number of food pick-up points located around the city.
Members of BHATS include academics, people who work with NGOs, co-operatives, and think tanks for food poverty. While they are taking their time formulating a cunning plan, they are all motivated by something much larger than profit.

Moulsecoomb Forest Garden and Wildlife Project
Proving the vital link between food and community, Moulsecoomb Forest Garden and Wildlife Project is dedicated to reducing anti-social behavior and helping young people who have been excluded from school by teaching them how to plant, grow and cook their own food. Based in one of the most deprived areas of Brighton, the project has helped countless teenagers and improved their long term employability by giving them skills when the schools system had given up on them.

That’s what I call, sustainable.

Image: Miamism

The post Sustainable Food Fights Back: 4 Projects of Interest appeared first on EcoSalon.

Building a better London might just start with a broom and social networking.

The news tells us that communities have had their hearts ripped out. Yesterday morning, the streets of London were littered with debris, smashed glass and bricks, buildings were burnt or pillaged and three nights of rioting and looting had left the city smoldering.

Dan Thompson sat at his home in the coastal town of Worthing, West Sussex, 60 miles south of the capital, and tweeted a plea for anyone nearby to bring him coffee. He hadn’t slept all night, having started the idea of #riotcleanup on Twitter the previous evening. Soon the hash tag was trending, more popular than #LondonRiots, more popular even than Justin Bieber.

More importantly, thanks to Thompson, thousands of people had mobilized to meet at various points around London, Liverpool and Birmingham. They brought gloves and heavy-duty trash bags and flasks of tea. They called themselves Riot Wombles. Hilariously, people complained that in some places the council street cleaners had been too efficient and there was little for them to do.

Pictures began arriving on Twitter. Crowds marching down the streets, not with the masked faces of rioters looking for shops to loot, not an insurgence of violence and anger, but instead armed with brooms and smiles, ordinary people who had taken time off work and out of their lives looking for a mess to clean up, shops to help repair.

For many, this photo taken outside Clapham Junction station has become emblematic of the community whose heartbeat was said to be flat lining.

Meanwhile, an exhausted but elated Thompson was attempting to deal with over 100 tweets a minute.

In his every day life, he runs the Empty Shops Network, bringing disused buildings back into service to give cheap space to artists, makers, social enterprises and charities. While that network proved a good starting point for #riotcleanup, the majority of momentum came from the community, from people who love where they live, who wanted to show solidarity against threat and used the speed and might of social media to do just that.

While much of old media wrung its hands over the use of new media in organizing the riots, mostly through the Blackberry BBM network, the reality is that social networks were also streamlining positive action, like a rapidly charging defibrillator.

We are now onto day four of the riots.

Some 16,000 police in London last night ensured a quieter night in the city, but Manchester, Nottingham, Liverpool and Birmingham still suffered. Three people died trying to protect their community against violence.

No one knows why it is happening, although many have speculated. But this kind of violence almost certainly doesn’t happen in a vacuum. The rioters may not have a cohesive, coordinated voice, and while some are without a doubt opportunistic thugs, others are angry about something. We now have to ask ourselves: What, exactly?

As we reflect, we have to remember that while a handful of disenfranchised and disaffected people began destroying cities, the rest of the country collected together in an astonishing display of community. #riotcleanup mobilized thousands. Hot on its heels was Anti-riot: Operation Cup Of Tea, a Facebook group encouraging peace-loving members of the public to upload photos of themselves eschewing acts of violence and instead enjoying the most British of pass times – tea drinking. It currently has 220,000 members, 20,000 more than when I started writing this article an hour ago.

Then there is Something Nice For Ashraf, a reaction to the shocking video of a young Malaysian student who was injured in the riots and then mugged while bleeding profusely. He allegedly lost his front teeth, alongside a replaceable but probably still much loved bicycle, mobile phone and Sony Playstation. The Tumblr seeks to do something nice, to show Ashraf and his family that people in England are not really “scumbags and dickheads.”

Despite what Malcolm Gladwell would have us believe, social networking, in all its furious righteous indignation, its frenzied panic and easy moral outrage, is shaping up to be a new heart center of our communities, a simple place of gathering in an increasingly fractured world where we can show we are strong and caring and willing to stand together, where we can show what we can do with a little bit of love and care.

On Twitter, @riotcleanup now has nearly 88,000 followers. There’s nothing to tidy right now, so they’re playing #cleanupanthems for amusement: Litter Sweep Symphony; Where The Streets Have No Stains; Broom Shake Shake Shake The Broom; Sweep Caroline. It’s silly and self-deprecating, making light of what has been a harrowing and shocking few days. More than anything, it’s incredibly British.

After all the asking why is done, this is the message we should take away from the events of the last few days, this strength and humor, this common goal to live somewhere peaceful and fair and safe, and the knowledge that we have the drive to achieve that goal.

Someone tweets @riotcleanup: Nice idea, but what if they riot again tonight?

@riotcleanup replies: Then we clean up again tomorrow.

The post London’s #riotcleanup: Keep Calm and Carry a Big Broom appeared first on EcoSalon.

The Permacouture Institute’s Dinner To Dye For makes one appreciate how clothes get color.

Armed with stacks of foraged plants from around the canals of London, Katelyn Toth-Fejel explains how manufacturers refuse to disclose the ingredients of synthetic fabric dyes. “We don’t know what’s in them,” she says. “It could be anything.”

So began Dinner to Dye For, a workshop run by the Permacouture Institute, an organization that seeks a truly holistic approach to fashion where nature and culture nestle side by side instead of battling each other head-on. The institute is a transatlantic operation, with education programs in both the UK and U.S. Their courses span small scale school projects to university programs, marking seeds at seed libraries for their fiber and dying potential to running workshops like Dinner to Dye For.

Alongside her role as European co-director of the Permacouture Institute, Oregon-born Katelyn is also an artist and lecturer with an obsession for plants and natural science, and can rattle off chemical reactions with ease, giving them context and meaning and even humor.

At the workshop, Katelyn explains how mauve was the first synthetic dye, accidentally created from coal-tar in 1860, and how its discovery very quickly triggered a revolution in fabric production leading to today’s highly industrialized, highly chemical dying industry. She also describes her time in India in the fabric dying districts of Delhi, watching gallons of effluent being poured directly into the streets, a toxic run-off leaching wherever it wanted to go.

This particular workshop is held at Here Today Here Tomorrow, a sustainable fashion shop and studio in Dalston, London. On the table are three metal pots, each filled with boiling water and in turn filled with fennel, cowslip and blackberry, all plants that grow in abundance around London in the summer, creeping through cracks in the paths and overrunning any tiny patch of earth visible on the city streets.

We are given swatches of silk and wool and encouraged to fold, knot and clamp the fabric before dipping them into the steaming vats. Katelyn tells us she became fascinated with natural dying after taking a mandatory science class as part of her arts degree, during which she accidentally created beautiful red shades out of madder. In the meantime, my silk, soaking in the fennel stew, begins turning a vibrant, shocking shade of yellow.

We remove our fabrics from the dyes and rinse them once in a tiny sink. “If you were using synthetic dyes you’d need to rinse them with about twenty pan-fulls of water,” Katelyn says, pointing to a ten liter pot. One can’t help but think how much water consumption is a resource being over abused just knowing this fact. We move forward, channeling our kindergarten selves and make potato stamps, using an iron paste to make the dye go darker in places, creating patterns along our fabrics.

Talk about sustainable fashion is often focused on what the fabrics are made from, how sustainable the feedstock is, how the people are treated all along the supply chain. While these are undeniably important, it is easy to overlook one of the most fundamental aspects of our clothing: what color is it? How was that color made?

Natural dyes do come with problems. You can’t get the range of colors available with synthetic dyes, plants have to be sustainably sourced, there is a lack of consistency between batches. But synthetic dyes are also not perfect: they fade over time and with washing, they can be polluting and, as established, a little enigmatic when it comes to constituent parts.

With our swatches drying we sit down to eat. A bread course with sorrel butter, the leaves foraged alongside the other plants, a quiche with polenta pastry, courgette blossoms and fennel, and for desert sour lemon pots with sweet and succulent blackberries, the fruits of the brambles used in the earlier dying session. The food is delicious, conversation interesting. We take time to eat slowly.

Permacouture’s Dinner To Dye For

“It’s a totally closed loop system,” Katelyn says. “We’re using weeds to color fabrics and feed ourselves and any left overs are turned back into soil.”

It’s a method that can be scaled up too. One project Katelyn witnessed in France involved making dyes from waste materials and bi-products from existing industries such as farming. While it doesn’t always make sense to use a natural dye over synthetic, Katelyn says they are just one alternative, in the same way that wind is one alternative to coal.

And of the fascination with naturally dyed clothes: “The colors never come out exactly the same. When you look at the fabrics they aren’t one single color like on clothes you would buy, they’re made up of hundreds of shades. It just feels more special this way.”

Dinner to Dye For is run by the Permacouture Institute. Go to their site to learn more about upcoming workshops.

All images: Katelyn Toth-Fejel Co-Founder of the Permacouture Institute

The post Permacouture’s Dinner To Dye For (London Style) appeared first on EcoSalon.

Existential angst? That’s for amateurs. True purveyors of panic disorder know that solastalgia is where all the cool kids hang out.

You might know it: that feeling of powerlessness when you see your local nature reserve steamrolled to build a new housing estate, or the helplessness you experience over climate change. The feeling that, as an individual there is so very little you can really do, and worse, there is no escaping it. Move to the wilds of Canada? I don’t think so. Run away to the Australian Outback? Not a chance.

For me, it began after watching The Age of Stupid. I left the screening gasping for breath. That’s it then, said my brain. Humans are too stupid, too selfish, too ignorant. My life, my plans, my hopes will never come to fruition because in 10 years time we’ll be embroiled in all-out global war ending, inevitably, painfully, finally, in a Cormac McCarthy-style denouement of doom and horror. Wonderful.

My form of campaigning – environmental journalism – came to a pretty abrupt stop after that. I couldn’t focus on anything environment related without being sent back into that panic. I didn’t want to read anything or speak to anyone. In a desperate rush to meet a deadline without doing any of the things that are usually required to write an article I used an old interview with a very well known politician, got all my facts wrong, wrote an opinion that was funny round the dinner table but mortifying when I saw it in print, got threatened with the Press Complaints Commission and that, as they say, was pretty much that.

A year and a half later and I’m just about ready to get back on the eco-horse. I’m feeling strong. I’ve got a bucket full of optimism and another of patience. I’ve started speaking to old contacts again, explaining that my absence was largely down to panic and terror and the occasional insanely unprofessional outburst.

Curiously, instead of cocking their heads to one side in faux sympathy with the crazy lady I’ve found people relating.

“Omg,” they say. “I know exactly how you feel.”

“Some days it’s all I can do to keep it together.”

“Some days I have to lie down in a dark room for a very long time.”

“It’s not just the weight of work on my shoulders,” one person told me, “I feel like I’ve got the entire future of humanity on them.”

Environmental campaigners deal with a lot. News about the state of the world is bad enough, but to be interested in conservation or renewable energy or growing your own food or not wasting stuff is also to open yourself up to plenty of abuse: we’re all soap-dodging, tree-hugging, work-shy deluded, good for nothing liberals, not to mention all those secret meetings we have about being power crazy commie socialists who want to control the world through taxes and fear and conspiracies about invisible see-oh-twos.

Because it’s something we’re passionate about or interested in, it doesn’t seem to follow that it can also be stressful. Yet daily, we are surrounded by the loss of things we care deeply about. Daily, we are let down by ineffective laws or politicians. Daily, we are disappointed in humanity. These aren’t the kind of things that fly in gently and kiss you on the forehead and it’s exactly because of that passion and interest that it is stressful.

Porcelain, Kate MacDowell

The existence of solastalgia was first discussed in Philosophy Activism Nature by Professor Glenn Albrecht in 2005. In academic circles, it’s a word that crops up from time to time but it isn’t something we hear in everyday conversation. Perhaps more commonly discussed is ecopsychology, which on a very basic level links psychology and ecology, suggesting that exposure to the natural world can aid, among other things, mental health problems.

The corollary of ecopsychology is that our diminishing natural environment can create or exacerbate mental health problems, or simply lead to a serious freak out. But while ecopsychology has its own eponymous peer-reviewed journal, and there are organizations dedicated to helping those with mental health problems find solace in the great outdoors, those involved in environmentalism are largely unsupported.

It is, of course, entirely possible that there is no support out there because no one is asking for it, but maybe no one is asking because no one else is asking. We can’t keep it quiet forever though, people are starting to notice we’re cracking up. So here goes nothing:

Hi. My name’s Sarah and I find dealing with all this environment stuff pretty stressful. I don’t want to have another conversation about arsing wind turbines or bloody recycling. I just want some action. Climate change scares the living daylights out of me and makes me furious in equal measures. Please be nice to me, and to everyone else out there. In the meantime I’d like to offer some tips for keeping it together when it all seems to be falling apart.

Look for the positive stories
Joy can be found in small places. Every success, no matter how small, is inspiring. Environmentalist and author Paul Hawken said, “If you just look at the data, and you’re optimistic then you’re not looking at the data. However, if you look at the people, and you see what’s happening in the world and you’re not optimistic then you don’t have a heart.”

Tell people you’re not prepared to discuss it
If you want to use reusable nappies, it’s no one else’s business. Tell them it’s not up for discussion. If you want to sell your car, it’s no one else’s business. Save your energy, save your sanity.

Don’t read the comments
Just say no to comments, unless they are on a particularly supportive and positive website (I heard about this great one called Ecosalon). Put the internet down and walk away.

Spend time with people who get it
Is there a Green Drinks in your area? If not, set one up. You don’t even have to talk green, but you know if you do it probably won’t make your head explode.

Celebrate life
That’s what it’s all about after all. Hug some trees, call your mom, smile at a stranger, spread a bit of joy. Feeling really enthused? You could even hug a climate change denier.

Image: Spanner Films, An Artist’s Journal, Tigr

The post Hi, My Name Is Sarah And I Need An Ecopsychologist appeared first on EcoSalon.

The digital age has irrevocably changed the way we communicate, but has it also changed the way we view our friends and relationships?

What’s in a name? In the olden days, when telephones were things that stayed at home connected by wire to a socket in the wall, we all knew by heart the numbers of our closest friends. It was comforting, almost poetic: first name surname number number number, like the rhythmical beat of a train on the tracks. The sound of the phone number of my mother’s house from my childhood, long confined to history and newly replaced with another, longer, less sing-songily elegant number, still invokes in me a feeling of comfort and warmth.
These days, the phone and user have switched places and the phone is definitely in control: I have no idea how to get hold of my parents without my mobile showing me the way. I feel anxious if I leave the house without it, not because I suffer from some kind of modern day Hyper Communication Syndrome, but because if I got lost I would never ever ever be able to find my way back again. Whom would I call? How would I call them? Even if I found a pay phone, what number would I dial?

And worse, I don’t even know anyone’s surname any more so I couldn’t look anyone up. Scrolling through my phone book is like a hilarious litany of drunken nights out, but not very useful for actually getting hold of anyone.

My friend Jen, who I met while organising a friend’s hen party and who was charged with making a cake for said party, is listed as Jen Hen Cake. I’ve now known her for nearly five years. No idea what her name really is.

Caroline Jo is Caroline who was met through Jo. Sophie Tattoo has lots of tattoos. Jenny Flapper Dress was met…well in truth I have no idea who Jenny Flapper Dress is. Maybe I’ll text her and find out.

My husband, my actual husband to whom I am married and share a surname, is listed in my phone as Toby Drums. I met him while he was playing the drums in another friend’s band.

There is a theory that says a person’s name influences their role in society. J. W. Splatt and D. Weedon were the authors of an article on incontinence the British Journal of Urology. The Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales is named Igor Judge.
But nominative determinism is not new. It is, in fact, how all surnames came to exist in the first place. Frank Johnson was John’s son. James Fletcher put the fletching on arrows. Dave Cooper made barrels. All these names were given to identify, to allow others to know their place in society.

Even early in the 1900s, thousands of immigrants to England from Europe changed their surnames in order to better find their place. My grandfather was one of them, changing his Polish name (Schakowsky) to something considerably more Anglicised (Lewis) in order to more fully assimilate into his adopted country.

And today, parents agonise for nine long months to come up with the perfect name for their children, but by the time we get to school we all end up being called what our classmates want to call us, anyway. We all nestle neatly in to a niche somewhere and it makes sense that our names end up reflecting that.

These mutating identities are nothing new, it’s just that now we record things in a different way, often a much more public way (see: Facebook, Twitter, blogs).

It would be easy to assume that our relationships must be diminished because of this loss of personal information. How can you possibly be proper friends with someone if you don’t even know their surname, if you can’t possibly recall their mobile from memory? I would argue that these things are simply the natural evolution of language and culture, and while I don’t expect Jen Whateverhernameis to suddenly and officially change her name to Jen Hen Cake, it is a connection we share, a way we become more fully assimilated into our social circle, a sign of affection that I do actually know who she is and what she does, and our friendship is better for it. Even if I can only maintain it on speed dial.

What do people call you and why, or what odd names have you found in your phone book?

Image: Pink Poppy Photography

The post Of Names and Numbers appeared first on EcoSalon.