Now that New York Fashion Week is long gone, I will just put this out there: I am totally lime green jello of any blogger who got to cover any aspect of NY Fashion Week, especially those that covered The Green Shows. Maybe this little blog will be able to cover the eco fabulousness at the next one. A girl can dream!

Here’s a round up of New York Fashion Week’s green scene from some of my favorite greenies around the interwebs:

• Ideal Bite is glad they opted to ditch the tents and go downtown:   Fashion Smashion…Unless It’s Eco

• Inhabitat gives us the run down on its fave runway shows:  NEW YORK FASHION WEEK: Top 5 Green Runway Shows

• An awesome slideshow of the greener side of style from Treehugger:  Green Fashion: New York Fashion Week Spring 2010 Ethical Fashion Show Highlights (Slideshow)

• Summer Rayne Oakes, eco fashionista extraordinaire, gives us the lowdown on the “Don’t Bag Indonesia’s Rainforest” event:  If the Fashion Industry were a Celebrity, she’d be scandalous…

• Ecouterre just covers it all, from Izzy Lane to Bahar Shahpar:  Ecouterre

See? You don’t have to be a frump to dress eco chic!

One of the greenest things you can  do (besides buying local) is cook at home. Say what? You heard me. Just think about it:

• It saves gas and you don’t have to pay to park;
• You’re not paying for flooty tooty (fancy schmancy in laymen’s terms) napkins, tablecloth and overall ambience;
• You don’t have to worry about your, uh, spirited kids pissing off some couple trying to grope each other under the table;
• No un-eco-friendly take home containers;
• The kids can get involved and help, which makes them more likely to actually eat something remotely healthy;
• You get to use all of the yummy, local organic produce you brought home from the farmers market.

My only dilemma involves meal planning. I’m not good at it. I have printed out little meal plan forms, I’ve read all sorts of blogs and articles, and I just can’t get with it. Maybe it’s just my free spirit (read: flaky). I’m one of those that waits until 5:30, and I’m like, “What the heck are we going to eat? Everything’s frozen!”

This is why I love the interwebs. Just a quick search, and I can find all sorts of high brow ideas that are translated into kiddlet appropriate fare. My fave resources are:

• Gastrokid
• GOOP
• Cookie Mag’s One Little Bite
• Tastespotting

I always get very simple and delicious ideas from these sites, and (most of the time) the kidlets approve. I have one admittedly “picky eater,” but I think some of these simple flavors will help my littles appreciate good food as much as I do.

Photo from CookingNook.com

I love me some Erykah Badu. After reading her interview on Babble, I love her even more. My girl homeschools, breastfeeds (baby Mars, the first Twitter baby according to Badu, is fed a diet of macrobiotic Twitty Milk), sees patients as a holistic practitioner and makes dope music. I mean, when does she have time to breathe? I love that she has such a passionate view on home education. No matter what kind of school your kids attend, there should still be some learning going on at home. Reading, debating, singing, dancing, painting, creating, playing, it’s all important. I think it’s awesome that she is so involved in her family’s education and promotes a healthy, creative lifestyle.

Living in a green home does not mean living in a mud dome or yurt you’ve made yourself (although I’ve seen some dooooope yurts!). The Marrakesh House takes living green and makes it hawt.

This insanely gorgeous private residence is located in Culver City, CA (I miss Cali!) and is apparently one of the greenest cribs in SoCal. Chris Paine, the documentary filmmaker that directed the brilliant Who Killed the Electric Car?, is the mastermind behind turning this home into 4,300 square feet of awesomeness. Wait, 4300 square feet? Seems a bit big, especially in this age of McMansion rejection and the living small movement. However, the Marrakesh House not only serves as a private residence, it also doubles as a sort of eco-community center where events are held to educate the community about art, architecture and living sustainably. Sounds like awesomeness on top of awesomeness.

The Salt Water Pool

The Victory Garden

All photos from The Marrakesh House website

Im So Fresh + So Green, au So Fresh + So Green, to So Fresh + So Green!

(Can you tell I have a little thing for Broadway?)

So Fresh + So Green has finally found a new home and a new look. Please feel free to take your shoes off, grab an organic apple and nose around.

(UPDATE: Mhm, just as I suspected – not only did these fools make the video, they submitted it to Cannes. I think a wise man named Charlie Brown said it best: good grief.)

Just when I ask how can we make people aware of certain environmental issues without scare tactics and tirades, this comes across my desk (thanks to Fabian):

(Video from HuffingtonPost.com)

Overlooking whatever truth may be in this video, I can’t help but wonder: what were DDB Brasil and WWF thinking? Hyperbolizing (is that a word?) a man-made tragedy to illustrate the power of a devastating natural disaster is just a bad idea . And saying, “No, we didn’t approve that!” and, “Stop running that, now!” and, “We’d have gotten away with it if it weren’t for those meddling kids!”  is a load of crap. They knew that mess was approved. If you’ve ever worked in the ad world in any capacity, especially on the creative side, you know that things go through so many approvals and changes, not to mention that stuff costs money. It’s a wonder anything actually gets published or broadcast. Advertising Age has the run down of how it went down, including Keith Olbermann’s calling out of everyone involved on his “Worst Person in the World” segment.

The cover of the August 31st issue of Time Magazine really grabbed my attention. It’s a picture of a package of ground beef with this statement:

WARNING: This hamburger may be hazardous to your health. Why the American food system is bad for our bodies, our economy and our environment – and what some visionaries are trying to do about it.

Times are rough, and a lot of people aren’t worried about the environment. A lot of people aren’t thinking about the living conditions of animals that are raised for food, conditions so horribly nasty that they can’t turn around or lie down and they’re given antibiotics to fight and prevent infection. Animals are fed a diet their bodies aren’t designed to digest, which makes it easier for them to get sick. Why? Because it’s cheap. Guess what that means? More antibiotics, and mutant ninja bacteria that are resistant to medicine.  People aren’t even aware of how this affects the obesity epidemic, with animals being fed cheap grain and shot up with drugs and hormones to make them bigger and fatter. Let’s not even start on the pesticides that are causing dead zones (read: no aquatic life) in bodies of water around the world or the mercury content of fish. People aren’t really worried about these things.

What people are worried about is being able to afford food at all. If it’s organic and good for you, fine, but if it costs too much, then organic be damned. This article seems to be trying to get average consumers to look beyond the hype that is the green movement and see how much cheap, unhealthy food will harm us all in the long run. Ever seen the movie Wall-E? That’s what how it’ll be: a barren Earth abandoned by greedy humans who’ve become gelatinous orbs with feet and hands, hovering in chairs that do everything for them. I think it’s super important to help people realize how America’s food industry is all about money and not at all about the health and well being of America. That sounds familiar, right?

So what’s the solution? My personal contribution is this blog (if I can get people to actually read it) and sharing the information I find when I go on one of my research tangents. I also do what I can with our grocery budget, but it’s hard. My strategy is to shop at the farmers market, buy organic when possible, buy less meat and try not to throw any usable food away. I eventually want to compost and create an edible container garden to offset some of our grocery costs (just have to figure out how to turn my brown thumb green). I can’t do the vegetarian/vegan thing, I will admit. I love hamburgers and steak sauce too much.

What do you think? How can we help people be aware without resorting to tirades and scare tactics?