Green Cotton

We all know one of the easiest and simplest ways to go “green” is to bring reusable bags to the grocery store. Did you do this the last time you went to the store? Maybe not. If you are like me, you might have forgotten to slip one in your bag for the last minute errand you did not anticipate. With the best of intentions, it is a lot harder to execute this simple act on a consistent basis.

Yet, despite the challenges, many are happily succeeding at this all-important change in behavior (just check out your local Trader Joes, Food Coop, Farmers Market, or Whole Foods for some indication). If the market provides any clues as well, with more than several dozen reusable bag companies on the market, demand is strong and growing. This is great! Indeed, let’s celebrate these efforts, while also recognizing we can still do more.

At the same time, it’s interesting to look at companies and organizations that are taking this simple green grocery bag step a little further. Recognizing the growing trend, why not push the envelope and see how much impact one can achieve from a single re-usable bag? That is exactly what Laura Bush asked when she started Feedprojects.org 3 years ago in 2006 with her debut bag FEED 1.

Three years have passed since FEED1 and to their credit, the bags are now stocked at nearly every Whole Foods in the country along with several other major chains. In addition to raising $4million dollars through FEED bags (donated to the World  Food Progam (WFP), the bags seem to have  increased interest in global hunger alleviation, while also fomenting the demand for reusable bags.

So what are these bags all about?

Unlike traditional “fair trade” bags, which benefit artisans in developing countries at point of purchase in those countries, Feed bags benefit people in developing countries at the US checkout line (eg once they are purchased here). As an example, the FEED 1 Bag sells for approximately $30 dollars and with that, supposedly provides 100 meals to hungry children in Rwanda. By the end of 2007, FEED raised donations for the World Food Program (WFP) to feed over 37,500 hungry children in school for one year. In 2008, FEED Projects various partnerships will lead to over $4 million for WFP school feeding.

The problems being address will clearly take some time to solve, but one step at a time, each bag counts.  According to Feedprojects.org, “hunger and malnutrition kill more people than AIDS, malaria, and TB combined. Almost 400 million children around the world go to bed hungry every night. In fact, every five seconds a child dies because he or she is hungry.”

While it is true that no single solution will solve global malnutrition, what’s not to like about a simple campaign supporting a simple product that raises awareness about global malnutrition while helping to solving it…AND reducing plastic grocery bag use (remember it takes up to 1,000 years for one bag to decompose in a landfill).

In addition to the hunger impact, all FEED products are made as eco-friendly and fairly as possible. The bags are produced with high-quality, 100% organic cotton and natural burlap. FEED works with only audited and certified fair labor facilities.

Images courtesy of http://www.feedprojects.org/content.asp?tid=16.

Bergdorf Goodman and Rugby by Ralph Lauren have joined in the fun, too. Each of these retailers collaborated to create a version of the FEED Bag.

Bergdorf’s FEED 2 Bag (featured above) supports the Kenyan community as it was handcrafted by a group of deaf Kenyans.  Furthermore, each bag purchased feeds 2 hungry Kenyan school children for an entire year.

The Rugby FEED Bag gives money to The Feed Foundation to support student activists who go abroad to join the force in combating hunger around the world.

Bobbi Brown and Lauren Bush recently collaborated to create a FEED makeup bag that will benefit disadvantaged women who have joined the UN’s food for work program.

So check it out, and see what you can do next time you bring your re-usable to the store. Why not make it an act of social impact as well. Can’t hurt, right?

To see  and read more on FEED’s ever-expanding array of bag selections, visit the Feed Foundation.

Photos courtesy of Feed Projects

By Morgan Laske and Shana Yansen

Autonomie Project is a relatively new Fair trade, eco-friendly, and vegan fashion company based out of Boston, Massachussetts (USA).

The company began in 2007 when group of friends came together in their frustration with the fashion and footwear industries due to their lack of transparency, use of sweatshops and harmful chemicals.

Autonomie’s mission is to supply high-quality, stylish garments to ethically conscious consumers. Autonomie caters to the shopper who wants to align their personal style with their values. Autonomie makes this possible by providing a range of fashion options that all have a positive social impact on the environment, while raising awareness about today’s most pressing global issues. To Autonomie Project, the most effective solution to reducing sweatshops and child labor abuses is to create their own production ecology with reliable, transparent and supportive working conditions and operations. And that is what they did. Autonomie didnt just want to “do no harm”, they wanted to take things a step further by benefiting the communities who make their clothes, and helping to break the cycle of poverty. Toward this end, Autonomie Project:

- AP provides their workers with a fair wage so they can beat out sweatshops and enjoy a healthy, sustainable lifestyle.

-  AP works exclusively with small, independent cooperatives and Fair Trade-certified facilities located in developing areas of the world where they can allot a portion of our funds to be used for initiatives that will uplift their entire community, such as building a health clinic or bringing a steady water supply to a small village.

Autonomie Project currently produces shoes, flip flops, hand bags, t-shirts, winter hats and accessories. In terms of materials, they use organic cotton, all natural FSC (Forest Certified Council) rubber, and other eco-friendly & locally-sourced materials.

The AP apparel does not end there however, their T-shirts are also 100% organic cotton, very comfortable, and stylish.  The cotton is ring-spun and combed for extra softness and colored with eco-friendly dyes.

The tee featured above is the “Fight Global Poverty / Warming” design in light blue ink on charcoal so that you can declare to the world where your eco priorities are at. Made right here in the USA.

Autonomie Project’s bag collection is hand made by a women’s knitting cooperative in rural Peru. The newest styles are made with 100% Fair Trade-certified organic cotton yarns that are naturally dyed.

The incredibly soft yarns used for the bags hail from a Fair Trade facility in Lima and are processed using completely natural and traditional methods. No dyes, chemicals or other synthetic processes have been used to grow, soften, or color the fibers. By buying a bag, you help the 25 mothers of Northern Creations grow a sustainable business and improve the standard of living for their families and community.

Autonomie Project works with small, independent cooperatives and Fair Trade certified facilities located in developing areas of the world including Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Peru, and the USA. The products are relevant and fashionable, vegan , eco, and always sweatshop-free.

Since we wrote about the Fair Trade the Whitehouse initiative last week, Autonomie Project is also a supporter of that campaign (no surprise!). Check out that initiative and become a part of it, if you have not already.

There are several cool things going on at the Autonomie Project site worth checking out:

- Buy Fair Trade: First, if you are in the mood to shop or have a gift in mind for someone, check out their stylish, high-quality Fair Trade items.
- Blog: Autonomie runs a blog and encourages other to blog about them too. Get involved.
- Affiliates Program: If you are a company or non-profit you can also sign up as an AP Affiliate and get customized banner links that will earn you a commission on any sales brought in from your online outreach efforts.

Check them out!

By: Julie Finkel and Shana Yansen

“Proud Mary” was born in 2006 in the heads of two young women who met in Brooklyn as a vision of fair trade, chic fashin. Molly was trying to find a way to utilize her liberal arts education and Harper wanted to see her fair trade and fashion ideas come to fruition.

The women soon found a way to reach both these goals by working alongside different artisan cooperatives on a trip to  Guatemala. The goods produced are designed as a collaboration between the two Brooklynites and artisans in Guatemala. This has resulted in products that are both modern, eco-chic, and high quality with just enough touches of traditional weaving patterns to make them feel truly Guatemalan, an aesthetic Proud Mary refers to as “Ethnic Modern.”

Proud Mary sells three product lines called “Diamante,” “Raya,” and “El Sol.” Through all their partnerships, Proud Mary ensures workers receive double the average compensation for consistent work, and have been able to connect a number of artisans to the micro-finance loan group, Nest.

Diamente is an artisan group based in Guatemala City who are known as the most accomplished foot loom weavers, and who have pioneered many types of brocade weaving.

This wonderful tote with gold straps in the “Diamante” style uses traditional Latin American designs.  Woven on a foot-loom. Available at Proud Mary.

Raya are a group of Cakchiquel-speaking Mayans living in the San Antonio Palopo region of Guatemala. They use traditional weaving techniques over a thousand years old to create belts, hair bands, and friendship bracelets on narrow looms called “telar de palitos,” as well as backstrap looms.

El Sol uses ikat fabric crafted by a master weaver from Totonicapan. This process involves a special dying technique, and then placing the fabric in the warp of a loom to produce unique patterns and images.

This pillow illustrates the design used for all products in the “El Sol” collection, a pattern created as a mistake originally but which has become highly demanded.  Find this and more from the El Sol collection on Proud Mary’s website.

Green Cotton applauds the goals and accomplishments of Proud Mary and we hope to see even more in the future. Check out their collections on their website.