By Julie Blaustein

Photo by Chris Brennan

FairTrade USA is the leading certifier of fair trade products in the United State. They are responsible for auditing and certifiying transactions that take place between US companies and their international suppliers and most importantly, guarantee that farmers and workers that produce Fair Trade goods are paid fair prices and wages.

Nimisha Ambati of Club Dine In! who has a most sustainable blog about eating and being physically sustainable, provided the following recap of the event. “Fair Trade hosted a sustainable party to launch its new name and brand identity along with its kickoff of National Fair Trade Awareness Month. Appropriately, the double celebration was held at Temple Nightclub – one of the greenest nightclubs in the nation. Temple Nightclub was the perfect venue as it combines modern design with decor dating back to the 11th Century, has an extensive composting and recycling program, has an on-site garden for their restaurant and is energy efficient.”

I was browsing my oh-so-favorite blog, The Coveted, this morning and was taken on a link express way into what may be one of my new favorite sites dedicated to all things green fashion!

Fashion Me Green is a site where ‘style goes green.’ They’ve taken a trendy topic, green, and combined it with real street trends and fads showing readers how their new obsessions can be worn or bought in an eco-friendly version. The sustainable fashion awareness project provides site browsers with style influencers and designers who have taken their brands green and a section called FMG Daily where you can get tips on what’s hot in green fashion and how to get it!

Another awesome feature to look at is the site’s ‘projects’ where they travel to fashion capitols of the world and select a fashion influencer and style them in entire eco-friendly outfits! This is what brought me to Fashion me Green, the San Francisco Project with Jennine Jacob of The Coveted and IFB.  They’ve taken her previously styled outfits by Jennine and re-created them into similar fits but using all green clothing and accessory labels.  Love what you see in the eco-outfit? Just mosey over to the ‘Shop the shoot’ section and there is everything you’ll want to know on how to get those green styles.

I am an advocate of solar power – but the biggest advocate? I don’t think I’d fit that bill, but maybe you do!

The new ‘Power the House’ campaign just launched to find the most devoted advocates of solar power and have them help get solar panels back on the White House. Using the many facets of social media, the Power the House campaign encourages the public to check their social-media-linked site to get their daily action plan and participate in a game that spreads the solar word.

Once completing solar missions around the social-sphere on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and Foursquare, players can earn points and win GLOMANA merchandise, like a glow-in the-dark t-shirt.  If you’re really into the idea and campaign, earning enough points to become the ‘Ultimate Solar Advocate’ will score you placement in a nation-wide press release when the campaign reaches 10,000 petition signatures!

The lead company driving the campaign, Sungevity, sent a request to the Obama administration to accept their offer of a free solar power system and launched their site to encourage the public to join in with them.  Looks like there are some participants and I hope it succeeds to reach their petition goal soon!

By Julie Blaustein

It was wonderful to get out of the city and experience the 32nd. Annual Harmony Festival. Not only was the schedule filled with workshops in health, arts, ecology, spirituality, dancing and both local and Grammy-nominated musicians such as Lauren Hill, there were over 300 vendors to buy cool merchandise and eat mostly healthy food.

The Verizon Grafitti Maker

Techie stuff was all around the festival too. Many of the vendors banners included .com in their names. Verizon was the proud sponsor of the Eco Rally that featured a Skate Contest, Skate Jam Mini Ramp Contest, Best Trick Contest and more. In addition they had a huge vendor space to demo their  products and provided goodie bags that included sunglasses and glow-in-the-dark necklaces for the concerts. They also provided a Graffiti booth that enabled folks to create neon looking wallpaper for either one’s desktop or mobile phones. The Brand Ambassador Tech Lead, Owen Powell, said that Verizon chose to exhibit and sponsor as the demo is on the young side and for the strong green movement at the festival.

Fun with Technology

Don’t miss next year’s 33rd. Harmony Festival. You can connect with them on Facebook and Twitter. They also offer free admission for volunteering!

Many more pics of the Harmony Festival can be found here!

If it weren’t for Buffalo Exchange and Crossroads, my closet would be busting at the seams. There’s nothing like doing a sweep through of your wardrobe and getting rid of those impulse purchases you never wore and trading them for something new!

Granted it’s not fun to lug bags of clothes and accessories throughout the streets of Berkeley only to have them take 3 pieces, but sometimes it’s worth the risk! On days where I don’t want to take the risk, I found a lovely option #2 called Rehashclothes.com.

Rehash allows members to trade clothing, accessories and books with others online! Join specific groups, socialize with other sellers and swap away! No waiting in lines, no lugging bags and no buyers. Everyone just swaps what they don’t want for what they do want!

Best of all clothes swaping may just be the way to start creating an eco-friendly closet with items you already own! According to stats on Rehash Clothes – each American throws away an average of 67.9 lbs of clothing and textiles per year! That is insane, amazingly wasteful and can easily be avoided by sites like this and consignment shops in local neighborhoods.

In addition to just trading clothes, you can find useful fashion and green living advice from members, post in forums and even post/attend live swap events to share offline and online!

Did you know to get that pearly or sparkly shimmer in nail polish, fish scales  are often used? Yep. After learning more about SpaRitual nail lacquers, which are vegan and free of toluene, formaldehyde and DBP, I’m beginning to examine my beauty products more closely.

In fact, DBP, or dibutyl phthalate, is an ingredient that was recently banned in the European Union as it’s been linked to cancer in lab animals among other things. Although companies like OPI claim the level of DBP in their polishes is so low that it poses no health hazard, I have to ask myself if it’s really worth the risk? And polishes like SpaRitual’s “Hope Springs Eternal” below look great and last just as long (I’ve tried them) as other top-of-the-line polishes, so I’m making the switch.

Another brand I came across recently is Yes To, Inc whose tagline is, “Paraben Free—Cruelty Free—Natural, organic skin, hair and lip care.” While on the hunt at Target for a new nighttime moisturizer, these products caught my eye. I purchased the Yes To Carrots Night Moisturizing Cream and absolutely love it. I require any moisturizer I purchase to smell good, particularly one going on my face, and this one feels and smells amazing.

Want to learn more? Here are some green beauty blogs I found:

• Gorgeously Green – http://www.gorgeouslygreen.com/
• Clean Green Beauty – http://cleangreenbeauty.com/
• The Green Girls – http://www.thegreengirls.tv/

Tell me some of your favorite green beauty products below!

By Miiko Mentz (@miikomentz)

Geeks on a Plane (GOAP) are at it again and this time they’re off to Hawaii for a week of fun in the sun and great talks and networking around technology, business, sustainability and life. The GOAP team and friends are part of [re]think Hawaii, which starts today and runs through November 5.

[re]think Hawaii is a week of events that is bringing together an international group of people — who might not otherwise meet — to rethink technology, business and sustainability. One of those events is Share Your Table’s Farm to Table Lunch that’s an invite-only luncheon of green, tech and business leaders who will feast on a lunch that’s 100 percent sourced from Hawaii, which is quite impressive given 85 percent of Hawaii’s food is imported. Sustainability is a critical issue that affects all of us, and I hope that [re]think Hawaii helps raise awareness not only in Hawaii’s own efforts to support its sustainability, but also globally.

[re]think Hawaii participants will attend a host of other events this week from Venture Capital Secrets and Startonomics Hawaii to BlogWorld’s Social Media Business Summit and the What They Don’t Teach You At Business School workshop that will be given by Duck9 CEO and Businessweek Blogger Larry Chiang (@larryChiang). Larry is also a guest writer at Bubblicious.

One lucky [re]think Hawaii participant is Mugasha CEO and Co-founder Akshay Dodeja (@dodeja) who we caught up with recently at the TechCrunch50 conference. Akshay was the lucky winner of the Girls in Tech [re]think Hawaii raffle giveaway that was conducted during TC50. Proceeds from the raffle went to Girls Inc., an organization celebrating girlhood and inspiring and supporting young girls to become tomorrow’s leaders.

Check out our interview with Adriana Gascoigne (@afgascoigne), GOAP co-organizer and Girls in Tech founder, talking about Girls in Tech, Girls Inc., GOAP and [re]think Hawaii; and at the end of the video we captured a few comments from lucky winner Akshay.

GOAP organizers are Dave McClure (@davemcclure) of Founders Fund and Startup2Startup, Brady Forrest (@brady) of O’Reilly, Adriana Gascoigne of SGN and Girls in Tech (GIT), and many others. Dave McClure, Larry Chiang, and Flowtown Co-founder Dan Martell (@danmartell) are the hosts of GOAP Hawaii. And [re]think Hawaii is organized by Christine Lu (@christinelu) and a unique group of people from around the world.

#rethink #GOAP

By Miiko Mentz (@miikomentz) and Alison McNeill (@alisonmcneill)

As we head on into the weekend we thought we’d get you in a weekend spa mood by sharing more interviews from the 2009 Face & Body Expo. So far we’ve shared our interviews with Danielle Farnan of GoSmile and Lisbeth Boger of Eminence Organic Skin Care. Next up are Sanitas Skincare and Sparitual.

Josie Dembikzak of Sanitas Skincare talked to us about the importance of having good skin and how it comes from the inside out. Sanitas skincare has both nutritional and topical skincare products. And we got to throw back a couple of shots (no, they didn’t contain alcohol) with Josie, check it out:

In the video below, Anya Whisenhunt of Sparitual shares with us the Sparitual philosophy of creating eco-friendly products, and she talks about a few of their vegan products from nail polish to bath salts. Sparitual nail care and spa product formulations are naturally colored and free of unhealthy ingredients such as synthetic dyes, formaldehyde and toluene, which are common ingredients found in most mainstream nail polish brands.

Sanitas has not jumped on the social media bandwagon and does not have a twitter handle or Facebook fan page (maybe after reading this they will engage). However, we did find an active Sparitual Facebook fan page and a Twitter handle (@SpaRitual), but no tweets. I suspect that the company didn’t create the Twitter handle. However, they should claim it because they have lots of customers and fans talking about them on Twitter.

The next time you’re at the spa, perhaps this weekend, ask about Sanitas Skincare and Sparitual.

Related Posts:

Face and Body Expo 2009: GoSmile

Face & Body Expo 2009: Eminence Organics