How to be a Green Fashionista

Living green is the new fashion, and anyone who’s anyone is doing it. It’s the little black dress and the semiformal sport jacket: a must-have for every wardrobe. There are organic beauty supplies, chemical-free cleaners, hormone-free dairy products and energy saving light bulbs readily available in a market near you. Even gas and car companies have caved in to the green revolution: Chevron is spending large funds to advertise its multiple new clean energy sources, and you can play its Energyville game at willyoujoinus.com, where you must power a large city while being environmentally sound. The game isn’t going to win any awards in the fun category, but it gives you a good idea about what available energy resources can provide. Another example is GM’s Chevrolet, which offers vehicles that run on ethanol, biodiesel and, for shorter commutes, electricity.

This fashionable green suit wasn’t stitched out of boredom or financial advancement (okay, po$$ibly a bit of the latter); it was created out of necessity. Some people and companies are doing their share, and others are doing their share of green washing. But what’s up with those who aren’t doing anything at all? If I am talking about you, my best advice is to start wiping your waste-making bum with the proverbial green cloth, my friend, because you are already behind in both resource conservation and fashion sense.

Where does one start when creating a diverse portfolio of a smaller carbon footprint? Start with what you eat. The average piece of food travels 1500 miles before it reaches your plate, consuming more energy in production and transit than the calories its worth! That’s right, your food eats more than you do. To maximize your caloric intake, you could follow the example of a couple I met in St. Johns University in Minnesota who are taking on the 100-mile diet: Everything they eat comes from within one hundred miles of where they live. With the exception of a few staples, they are successfully finding their food locally in a state not known for its row crops.

People all over the state of Vermont are also taking up this diet to become Localvores, according to Vermont Commons Monthly, and only eating locally grown food. The results? Small Vermont farmers are flourishing, Vermonters feel more connected with their food and the people who grow it, and everyone involved is performing a positive act for the environment. This diet craze is catching on everywhere, and for information on how to do it where you live, visit www.eatlocalchallenge.com and 100milediet.org.

Another area of environmental focus is how you get around, and what fuels the machines that run your lifestyle. On BioTour, we cross the country on waste vegetable oil, essentially someone else’s garbage. If you don’t own a diesel car, can you ride your bike or walk in place of driving when you leave the house? Even if it takes more time out of your day, just think how much less time you will have to spend at the gym.

A great example of alternative fuels comes from Barron, Wisconsin: We attended the Holstein Breeders Breakfast, a sort of cow beauty pageant, and learned about a sustainable energy system enacted on the host farm. It starts with a silo of rapeseed, which is connected to a machine that crushes the seed and extracts its liquid, or canola oil. The oil is used as fuel to run the farm’s recently converted tractors and transport semis, and the same machine takes the leftover seed husks and packs them into feed for the farm animals. In essence, there is little to no waste, and the vehicles have better emission ratings.

The nearby town of Blaire has adopted a similar system, and has turned that three-bar town upside-down. Farmers sell their oil to local restaurants for cooking, which is used and then collected by the Coulee Cooperative and sold back to farmers to fuel their vehicles. This cycle has greatly improved the local economy of this former cow town, which was severely damaged due to centralized dairy production.

After you’ve explored more local sources of food and alternative means of transportation, take a look at the products you use and the energy consumed in your home. There are natural versions of almost every product you need in the house, and if you can’t find it, then you probably don’t need it. And conserving in the home? Easy: catch the water that runs when warming up the shower and water the plants with it; Air dry the dishes in the dishwasher; Open the windows in the summer, retrofit them to keep in the heat in the winter; Do I have to tell you change the light bulbs?

A fine specimen of how to design an eco-friendly, energy efficient home is the Abundance eco-village in Fairfield, Iowa. Each of the buildings in this friendly neighborhood has been constructed to use one-tenth the energy of the average U.S. home. Because of the reduction, renewable energy resources power all of the home’s energy needs: Photovoltaic and wind power for electricity to cool their drinks and hot water solar to warm their showers. These sustainable communities aren’t so uncommon; people are building bio-domes all over the United States. This isn’t a bad Pauly Shore movie (is there a good one?), these are spacious and attractive homes that most would gladly inhabit.

Being green will soon be the sexiest trait a person can flaunt, and the examples to follow are endless. Besides the highly replicable designs of sustainable living above, I have been inspired by more environmentally conscious efforts across the country. There are intra-school energy conservation wars, local and organic foods finding their way into cafeterias, compost piles behind apartment complexes, high school kids petitioning for lower carbon emissions, and even vegans in Wisconsin. These examples should serve as microcosms for how humans across the planet can and should live. Together with aid from government and our neighboring communities, we can overcome the challenges that arise and bring these designs into reality.
Green is my favorite color. Really, I’m a redhead, it just works. But the New Green is a fashion everyone can wear; So let’s hope it spreads faster than wildfires in California, floods in Mexico and drought in the southeast, because like it or not, these high magnitude disasters have been the consequences of its delayed runway show. And Hollywood, let’s make sure this is one outfit that doesn’t go out of style.