Top Ten Green Fashion Blogs
August 28, 2008
Last week saw the launch of the very first green fashion magazine called boho. It is printed on 100% recyclable paper with soy-based inks, and unlike other magazines that have a green theme, this one is devoted entirely to fashion. Real fashion–not just hemp and Earth Shoes. We’re talking haute couture here.
For those of us who have an interest in both fashion and ethics, this marks a great milestone in our efforts to green up a notoriously un-conscious industry.
But boho isn’t the only source for green fashion news and information. A handful of dedicated bloggers have made it their mission to publicize the independent, sustainable designers and manufacturers that are making the world a beautiful place, in more ways than one.
Here are the best of the best in the world of Green Fashion Blogging: The Top Ten Green Fashion Blogs!
Victoria Everman is a “creatively versatile eco-powerhouse.” She’s a freelance writer, fashion model, on-camera personality, public speaker, and official U.S. spokesperson for Twice Shy Clothing. She’s got an industry insider’s view of sustainable fashion and beauty!
2. Eco-Chick
Starre Vartan has been writing Eco-Chick since 2005. This month sees the release of her new book, The Eco Chick Guide to Life: How to Be Fabulously Green. She and her team of editors cover the green movement from the female perspective, focusing on young, urban, and hip women with a passion for green.
3. Green Girls Global / Green Guys Global
A blog based in the UK and contributed to by style-loving ladies around the globe (hence the name), this blog has one of the most extensive ranges of topics I’ve seen. It’s is always fresh, with plenty of up-to-the-minute news about the world of green fashion.
4. Green Cotton
Written by Shana Yansen, the founder of Jute & Jackfruit, a new sustainable clothing company. Yansen not only writes about fashion, but has great insights on the manufacturing process for organic clothing.
Vintage, recycled and second-hand clothing are a huge part of the sustainable style movement. DCGFB documents the pursuit of high fashion that has been derived from the mother of all second hand stores: The Goodwill!
“A style blog for the eco snob,” brings fashion and sustainability together through interviews with designers and retailers, coverage of current events, and plenty of humor.
Focuses on recycled, reused, second-hand, vintage, and re-purposed fashion. The author also writes about general ‘green’ topics and her pursuit of an organic lifestyle.
This site focuses mainly on the manufacturing and processing of organic fabrics, and it is a veritable goldmine of information for anyone who is really interested in educating themselves about the industry.
A huge collection of features about and interviews with sustainable designers; along with coverage of green fashion news, current events, and shopping!
10. Eco Fabulous
A comprehensive look at the world of eco style, including regular posts on women’s fashion, shoes, accessories and handbags.
Wind Power Generated From Kites
August 26, 2008
Wind Power From Kites
The world over, experiments are under way to generate wind power from kites. Wind power from kites or other objects suspended in air are not new, but have been mostly ignored for decades. The first U.S. patent for such a device was filed in 1966, and similar patents in the States were filed throughout the 1970’s and 1980’s. But these precursors to wind power generators such as KiteGen were simple affairs that generated small amounts of power. Today, prompted by climate change and the need for cheap, clean electricity, they can generate upwards of 10 Megawatts per kite, with larger wind power kite farms projected to generate 100 Megawatts or more. In fact, current projects claim that a single farm, or array of wind power kites, could generate the same electrical output as a Nuclear power plant.
KiteGen – Italian Wind Power
KiteGen is the Italian entry into the field of wind power, using one or more kites in series, and anchored to a single base. As the kites are buffeted by high level winds, they spin, and this spin is captured by the base unit, where it is converted into electrical output. This method shows that generating 100MW from a single installation is both plausible and conservative. KiwiGen is a similar project, but differs in the capture mode. Where Kitegen uses a single base unit per kite which generates around 10 Kilowatts, KiWiGen employs a carousel approach, where a series of kites are flown from a ground-based, circular platform, targeting the Gigawatt range of wind power generation. Both types boast a small to non-existent carbon footprint, ease of placement and production both on land and in marine based applications, and operational costs that are less than half of conventional methods.
WPI Kite Power Team
In the United States, Worcester Polytechnic Institute has recently begun the WPI Kite Power Team, which has successfully built and demonstrated small scale wind power generation in a similar fashion. This project isn’t in the same league as the Italian endeavors, which are aiming for the production of gigawatts, but the early results are certain to mean larger experiments are yet to come. This model use the up and down motions of kites, and converts it at the base unit into rotational power which in turn drives a generator. The result is a small ground unit and a typical air foil, such as those used by wind surfers. The design uses a commercially available sport kite which is 10 meters squared in size.
Kite Generated Wind Power Makes Sense
By flying the kites at higher altitudes, wind power generation is increased, constant, and reliable. Where traditional wind turbines cannot feasibly be built to capture winds at high altitudes, these kites make efficient use of higher elevations, translating into increased power production at a reduced cost. Because of their small requirement of surface area, installations of this sort could easily be implemented in areas, including remote areas, offshore installations, and even rooftop mountings. The largest restriction on their usage comes from air traffic, as the extreme elevations would require a no-fly zone in the zone being used to generate wind power. It has been “worked out that flying kites in a figure of eight pattern means the air flowing over them travels even faster than the ambient wind speed. When a kite needs to be reeled in, it is angled so that it falls out of the sky like a glider, without the need for much power.”
OneHundredMonths – 100 Months for Climate Change
August 23, 2008
The 100 month countdown
Without positive, permanent action taken RIGHT NOW, the latest estimates say we have 8 years and 4 months before climate change has reached an unstoppable point of build-up. And while the first thought of many is undoubtedly that the naysayers are on their soapboxes again, let’s point out that the report released today in The Guardian, a UK newspaper, says these numbers are based on the conservative outlook.
You see, the problem is that what we do today doesn’t have an affect for many years. Exactly how many years it takes for today’s carbon emissions to reach their full impact is under question, but the optimistic voices say 5 years, while the pessimistic ones say it could be as much as 20. The reason 5 years is the positive outlook is that until the emissions that are being released as I type have had their full impact, any reductions that are made tomorrow won’t begin to make a difference. If it requires two decades for today’s emissions to reach their full impact, then there is absolutely nothing that can be done to stop the buildup from 1988 through 2008, and we are, quite literally, in a world of hurt. On the other hand, if the maximum is only a 5 year waiting period, then by 2013 the efforts that are now underway may begin to reduce the catastrophic effects of buildup.
Aside from the United States’ Bush administration, there is no longer any doubt that climate change is happening, and that it is being sped along by the human population. The polar ice caps are definitely melting, the coasts of countries all over the world are certainly being eroded at geologically breakneck speeds, and water shortages are without question affecting regions which have never in recorded history felt such shortages. These are not opinions, they are well documented facts that can be seen in great detail by following the links included in this article.
Oddly, the 100 months countdown isn’t even a new number. In the early 1990’s U.S. Newspapers ran a series of syndicated articles on climate change, and estimated that irreparable damage would be attained in no more than 20 years. Those estimates were based on the best climate research available at the time, and here it is backed up, just over 10 years later, by climate research that has made tremendous amounts of progress in recent years. The only thing that has changed, it seems, is that humanity has allowed half the time they had to fix the problem slip away without any sort of positive action. It seems that the general public just doesn’t care about what will happen in the future.
As an example, take my roommate. He has 3 computers, all of which run most of every day, and only one is actually used for any real computing. Another one is used exclusively to monitor incoming telephone calls with a program that could run in the background on even an old 386 machine. He is infuriated that I explain it’s important to use water efficiently. “This is Florida,” he says, “there’s water everywhere.” That he can say this while ignoring his three computers and sitting in front of a television news program discussing the prolonged drought in south Florida is nothing short of amazing, but he is the rule, not the exception.
The question is, what will you do with the 8 years that are left for your way of life? Will you bother to fix the leaky faucets, or reduce your power consumption? Or will you decide that someone else will solve the problem, and that anything you can do as an individual makes no difference? Every single one of us has just been informed that we have 8 years to make drastic changes in our way of life, or climate change will take that way of life from us. What we do with that time will be the definition of our species. As I complete this article, the countdown clock says 70,481 hours remain.
John McWayne Doesnt Know How Many Houses He Has – Poor Little Guy!
August 22, 2008
Poor OLD John McWayne, I mean McCain. He forgot how many houses he has! Silly old sod! That must be really tough. I’m going to pass on a handy hint I was taught long ago by my grandfather and use to this very day. Every day I wake up, I hit the little ‘maid’ button next to my bed, summon my maid and ask her not only how many houses do I own, but also which particular house and country do I happen to be in that morning. It always helps to get things straight first thing in the morning.
Someone who forgets his own number of houses, surely must be in touch with the basic issues of health care and education in America right? I wonder if there’s other ‘how many’ questions we could pose that he would have trouble with?:
- How many more wars will you get into or start if you are president John?
- How many countries will drastically lose faith in America with you and the Republicans in office for at least four more years John?
Well, I could go on, but you get the picture. Perhaps there is a few ideas from comments here I can add to this post!
WebEcoist is Alive!
August 20, 2008
Well, we’re a day late here unfortunately. It’s funny that this has come along as we are going to do a bit of a rundown of the green blogs we check out regularly. Now, we have another one to check out and add to the list.
WebEcoist is a sister site of WebUrbanist. Here’s the quick rundown from the creators:
WebEcoist is dedicated to the premise that the natural environment is not only fundamentally important to us in practical terms but is also amazingly intriguing in all kinds of ways many of us rarely consider. WebEcoist, like its sister site, is dedicated to in-depth and original articles on all kinds of subjects from art, design and technology to daily green living and environmental exploration. Here the idea of ‘going green’ does not just mean sorting your recycling – it is a way of looking at the world and thinking about our place and actions within it. Here you will find a vast amount of information condensed into articles and series that bring a wide range of useful and interesting eco-info right to your web browser.
I had a look and I must say, the design, the initial articles and the striking images are already pointing to a great blog! So, check it out, I think you’ll like it. Just come back to Ecoble now and then:).
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