Jennifer L. Taglione

A finale of firsts in so many ways.

For the first time in five seasons, three female contestants dominated the finale and were able to show their collections at New York’s Fashion Week in Bryant Park. Tim Gunn was the guest judge in the runway show for the first time.

And also for the first time, the winner promoted the use of sustainable fabrics in her collection.

Leanne Marshall, known for her more architectural styled clothing throughout the season, wowed the judges and and the audience with her exquisite and innovative collection during the runway show. And after, when asked why she should be the winner of the show, she explained how she is always thinking ahead and that half of her collection was made using sustainable fabrics.

Sustainable fabrics are made from organic or natural, earth-friendly materials and methods. The processing is easier on the environment or recycles other materials–even plastic bottles! Sounds fashionable, don’t you think? Actually, it calls to mind images of stiff fabrics like wool, hemp, linen, and bamboo. (Yes, bamboo. Like the tree. Haven’t you heard? It’s the hottest fabric now.) Even the judges commented that Leanne’s collection could have looked “granola-ey.”

Yet Marshall delivered an eco-friendly collection that was filled with such fluidity, grace and movement that it was, well, breathtaking. Does this look like recycled plastic or hemp?

Added bonus: The winner gets a Saturn Hybrid! Being eco-friendly here too!

Check out Project Runway at BravoTV.com for more details on the collections of season 5.

And check out Green Choices for more information on sustainable fabrics.

How did you do with your eco-friendly challenges for Week One?

Quick Recap:

1. Turn if off:

How I did: Diligent. Only forgot to turn downstairs ceiling fan off once at bedtime!

2. BYOB:

How I did: Great! Local grocery store was giving away free bag with purchase of eggs. Eggs were on my shopping list anyway! Free bag plus the store was out of regular eggs and were substituting organic for no additional charge. Bonus! And, I saved 5 plastic bags (I test-bagged my groceries after!)

3. BYOB of H2O:

How I did: Check. I did not invest in a cool new one yet, but instead of buying bottled water, I used to-go containers already in my house.

4. Go Paperless:

How I did: Well, I actually did this about 3-4 weeks ago but I’m already seeing the benefits: no bills in my mailbox!

5. Recycle:

How I did: Check! I was actually amazed how much I accumulated by looking at the bottom of my containers.

Bonus: Looked up my local farm stands and visited. Bought local pumpkins and apples!

On to Week 2!

1. Go Vegan! Hey, I said things were going to get harder every week! But, this time I mean try it for just a day. Did you know that reducing your meat and meat by-product intake by 20% you can actually impact the environment as much as if you switched to a hybrid car? That breaks down to 1.5 days a week. So this week, try it for a day! Check here for great ideas how:

2. Here’s a bright idea: Change your bulbs. Buy a pack of CFL, or Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs, preferably Energy Star quality. You don’t need to redo your entire house this week; that can be very costly! But invest in at least one pack this week and start updating as your lights go. Check out Energy Star’s Website for tips on how to update your home and where the lights should be.

3. Paperless Squared: Take being paperless to the next level. You e-file your bills, now cut out the junk. Contact the Direct Marketing Association to stop all that unwanted solicitation and Credit-Card Opt Out to stop pre-approved credit card offers. Continue your paperless battle and save the lives of trees in your neighborhood.

4. Chill Out. Feeling the chill outside? Work with it. Adjust your thermostats accordingly. Fall and Winter up north? Avoid turning on the heat until necessary. Hey, I was the first one to turn it on when I lived at home in cold upstate New York with mom & dad, believe me. But instead, throw on some comfy sweats and snuggle under the blankets with some hot apple cider. Begin lowering the thermostat in your house day by day to help your body adjust. Fall & Winter in the South: Thank Mother Nature for the break in the heat by turning off the a/c and throwing open those windows! Learn to adjust.  Utilize ceiling or portable fans to move the cool air.

5.  Clean up your act. Engage in a little “fall cleaning.” It’s time to switch the closets over to winter wear and pack up the remains of summer. But before you do, go through and see what you didn’t wear this year—or what you hate to admit that you did wear—and pack it up to donate instead of packing it up to not wear next year. Check around the house for any other items like books, movies, kitchen gadgets, and toys. Redecorating? Call your local Goodwill or shelters to see if they need your old furniture.

Bonus: Educate yourself. Being green is easier when you have the knowledge. Get facts and read up on issues that might interest you to help you stay on task. For me this week was about how to eat healthy and be green, or as I like to think of it Green Eggs and Ham.

Thinking outside the Box

It’s amazing what costumes you can create with a cardboard box or two!

Solve this Rubix Cube and win the costume contest!

• Rubix cube: How to Solve the Rubix Cube Costume!

• T.V. & a Remote Control: Think box with aluminum foil antennas (also makes a good robot). Get really creative and draw your fave show on the screen! And with remotes as complex as they are today, you can spend hours inventing new buttons for yours!

• Lego Pieces: How to Make a Lego-Block Costume!

Get a group of Lego friends together and see what you can build!

• Box of Popcorn: We made this costume and carried fresh popped popcorn to enhance the look—and smell—to make it realistic!
• Candy Land, Chutes & Ladders Board Games (works for Monopoly, etc): Using posterboard, make a full-size, playable board for your body. Carry dice, playing pieces and cards!

• Operation Board Game (ambitious):How to Make a Working Lifesize Operation Board Game Costume!
• Operation Board Game, Box-less version (easier) Use a leotard, sweatsuit or scrubs: Easier, Box-less Human Operation Game Costume!

All you need is someone in a doctor costume to operate on you!

Raiders of the Lost (& Found Again) Closets

Yours, your mom’s, sister’s, brother’s, dad’s, friend’s, neighbor’s, cousin’s…etc:

• Ghost: Old classic but bring it back to life by adding makeup and eyelashes or different props to your sheet.

• Hippie or 70s inspired: You know somewhere in your closet or maybe your uncle’s there are a pair of bell-bottoms calling your name and begging for you to put them back!

• Old Man/Woman: Even easier than ghost: throw flour in your hair and find yourself aged at least 30 years!

• Miss America: Playing dress up has never been funner! Any long dress will do. Then make your own sash to read “Miss America, Congeniality, Princess Pretty” or even, “I’m not a Plastic Bag”

• Tourist: All you need is some tacky, mismatched clothes and a camera on a strap!

• Bikini/bathing suit: So many costumes, so little space to list them all here. Challenge yourself to think what you can be in your bikini!

• Princess Leia: see bikini reference above! A gold bikini—or a long white dress—and putting your hair into two braided buns and you have a costume! You could also get two cinnamon buns and attach them to your head as a punny reference!

• Madonna: Just think underwear as outwear. Put bras on top of your clothes!

• Fairy: My own green costume 2 years ago. I had a green dress with an assymetrical bottom that I thought would be a great fairy dress. I made a wreath for my hair out of twigs and leaves and tied them with ribbons and pins I already had in my house. I made my wand with the tops of three fake flowers glued on to the top of sticks, again twined with ribbons. Then rolled it in glitter to add a bit of sparkle. My wings were recycled from a costume a few years prior. It was a hit and all my friends wanted to keep my wand!

For unique green costume ideas, just look around your house!

Really Unique but easy to do:

• Basket of Laundry: Take an inexpensive and thin plastic laundry basket and cut a hole in the bottom. The hole should be big enough for you to fit in, but be able to sit on your waist (if the hole is too big you will have to attach straps to keep it up or be figity all night). Fill the basket with laundry (clean or dirty!) and pin dryer sheets to your body. Also, add bottles of eco-friendly detergent to your basic to help support your cause.

• I’m not a plastic bag” Anya Hindmarch’s hit fashion statement. Create a body-sized bag with canvas or light-colored burlap, attach a handle to the top and write the “I’m not a Plastic Bag” on the front. Be fun, ironic and green.

• Beer Pong Table: Add straps to a long piece of cardboard, painted tan or brown (to look like a table). Glue on plastic cups in rows or make it look like a game in progress. Bring ping bong balls along, but be prepared to be asked to lay down so people can play! **Can also fill cups up with construction paper, foam, sprayed cotton or solidifying liquid (used to hold silk flowers) dyed with food coloring to look like beer.

Just bring ping pong balls, extra cups and your favorite organic beer and you are ready to be the center of the party!

Going Green for Halloween

Back when I was a kid, we were living a Green Lifestyle and we didn’t even know it. There were homemade costumes, unique candy collecting bags and we did all of our trick-or-treating on foot in our neighborhood. With a little time and imagination, we can get Halloween back to the way it used to be: fun and eco-friendly!

Green Tips:

Trick or Treating:

·         Buy eco-friendly candy or locally produced candy. Or give out treats that have practical uses like pens or pencils and fun shaped erasers. It might not make you the most popular house in the neighborhood, but you will be the greenest!

·         Turn on the porch light but not every light in the house to alert trick-or-treaters that you are home

·         Walk: keep as local as possible to reduce unnecessary driving. I remember my neighborhood was actually closed off for Halloween to allow children to walk around safely.

·         Unique Candy Totes: I don’t know about you, but I never had one of those hard molded plastic pumpkins to hold my candy. I had a pillowcase and that was fine by me! Do you know how much candy you can fit into a pillow case? Guaranteed sugar high till the following Halloween!

o   Pillowcases

o   Reuse your Reusable Grocery bags!

o   Purses or Briefcases complete costumes for Princesses, Prom Queens, old ladies, teachers, lawyers and secretaries!

Parties

·         Electronic invitations. Set up with Evite, post on Facebook and send out e-mails. Paper invites are so 1999.

·         Set up a Car-Pool/Designated Driver. Not only keeps with green living, it reduces the drinking and driving risk.

·         Costume contest: Most original homemade costume wins! Encourage your guests to be create AND green!

·         Serve organic/locally grown treats: Apple pie anyone?

Costumes

·         Dig through your closet. Then check out the closets of your friends, mom, dad, brother, sister, etc.

·         Hit the thrift store. Vintage clothes make great costumes.

·         Think outside the box. It’s really amazing what you can create a cardboard box, some paint and little bit of time

·         Use your imagination! The more inventive the better. You can really create a unique, one-of-a-kind costume!

See our blog on unique green costume ideas

It’s Week One of our decision to live a Green Lifestyle! Let’s start out with five simple things to try to incorporate into our lives this week to become more eco-friendly. And why these five simple things are so important to help our world.

1.       Turn It Off! The easiest, most inexpensive and eco-friendly trick of them all. When you leave a room, even if it’s only for 30 minutes to get a snack, turn off all lights, televisions, fans, computers. It’s okay, you can turn them all back on when you return! The best part, it doesn’t cost you anything to do it and it doesn’t require anything except remembering to do it! But it reduced your electric strain on the environment AND cut back your energy bill at the same time.

2.       BYOB! That’s right: Bring Your Own Bags to the store! How many trips do you make to the store a week? I know I run to Super Target 2-3 times a week since its right across the street and on my way home from work. And they are notorious for their overuse of plastic bags. This week alone I took home 16 plastic bags from them! That’s 16 bags for one person, and it’s only Wednesday! There was a time when it was frowned upon to bring your own empty bags into a store—you looked like a professional shoplifter. But not anymore, now you look eco-savvy  (and with all the popular new designs, you actually look fun and fashionable too!) You can purchase them or reuse the bags you have amassed in your house already. Start by keeping a couple by the front door and in your car so you are prepared for any quick stops at the store you might make this week. And keep track to see how many plastic bags you don’t use this week!

3.       BYOB of H20. By now most people have heard, Glaceau’s Vitamin Water has 125 calories (in 20 fl oz) while Gatorade’s Propel has only 25. But not everyone has heard that in 2006 we drank 30 billion bottles of water. And at most, 20% of those bottles were recycled.  That leaves 24 billion bottles of water cluttering up our landfills. And those numbers are from before the major surge of vitamin & flavor enriched waters that have the hit the shelves in the last two years! Instead, a calorie-free and eco-friendly alternative is to bring your own water! Invest in a reusable water bottle to carry with you. Stay hydrated and save the planet, one unused bottle at a time!

4.       Go Paperless! For the last few years I’ve paid all my bills online, yet still received paper bills in the mail that I diligently filed every month. Most of which were unopened since I had already checked and filed them online. I filled a 20×20 box full of paper to be shredded and recycled. Think of how many trees I could have saved if I had just clicked the “go paperless” button when prompted on each website. Check with your billing companies and sign up this week to go paperless. Instead, print out only your billing confirmation page and save a tree.

5.       Recycle! If you don’t already have a recycling bin, make one this week! I used two extra garbage bins I had in my house to sort with. And make a conscious effort.  Check the bottom of plastic containers, boxes and glass jars to see if it can be recycled.

BONUS:

6.       Discover your local and seasonal foods. This one will take a little more research but it’s worth it! Instead of shelling out extra money at your supermarket for over-sprayed and shipped in fruits and veggies, discover your local farmer’s market or stand. So many of us only eat fresh during the spring and summer harvest months. But did you know that oranges are actually a winter fruit? We know fall is a great time for apples, pumpkins and different kinds of squash (acorn, butternut and winter) but it’s also a season for pears, grapes, pineapples, pomegranates, broccoli and cauliflower! Check out the National Resources Defense Council-www.NRDC.org for a breakdown of what’s in season locally for you!

Congratulations on taking the first step to becoming Green: making the decision to do it!

The second step is sticking to the decision!

Going Green is definitely the new fad, like Crocs (when will people get over these?), the Atkins diet or Katy Perry. It’s everywhere you go, everyone’s talking about it and it makes you kind of want to try it to see what all the fuss is about—Going Green, that is.

 Like all fads, there is a high risk of burnout from being overexposed and overwhelmed. And the Green/Eco-friendly trend could be the most overexposed fad of them all.  If you ask Google “how to be eco-friendly,” they will give you 2.8 million pages to look at! 2.8 million! There is already a term for this potential burnout: “Green Fatigue.”

Now, I haven’t made it through all 2.8 million pages (I’d say give me another few weeks, but by then we will probably have 5 million pages to view) but some of the eco-friendly tips I came across are time consuming tasks and very costly, despite promises that “Going Green Saves You Green.”  And some are so daunting that, well, I’m just not ready for them at all. In fact, when I saw the Swash Toilet Seat for Paperless Hygiene I actually ran and hugged my Charmin toilet paper and almost gave up my new resolution to be green.

But most of the eco-friendly tips I found are actually basic things I actually do everyday, like turning the t.v. and lights off when I leave a room. So instead of getting overwhelmed, I decided  I’m going to start small and work my way up to those, um, more daunting endeavors.  It’s like starting an exercise plan: Take it slowly and set goals for yourself. And get a buddy to motivate with you. That’s why I’m inviting you to join me on my journey to becoming eco-friendly and aware!

I’m going to break it down in a week-by-week guide of challenges that I’m giving myself to help erase my ecological footprint. And I hope you’ll challenge yourself along with me!

In addition to weekly challenges, I’m arming myself with knowledge. Hey, if I’m going to defend the planet, I’m going to have to be armed with something! In addition to researching all sorts of valuable environmental facts and green living tips, I’m going to start to test some of the hundreds of eco-friendly and organic products hitting the shelves today to give you an honest consumer opinion. By next year maybe I’ll even be ready to try that Swash Toilet!