Did you know that spring is a popular time for renovations? Must be that we’ve all been cooped up in our homes all winter and are sick of the “same ole, same ole.” So, if you’re thinking about new paint, flooring, or furniture, we’d like to offer a few sustainable product suggestions for your home.

green flooring

There are quite a few choices on the market for sustainable wood floors, our favorites include cork, bamboo, or re-claimed hardwood floors from an old house. But what you may not know is that carpet can be sustainable too. Two companies who are working on environmentally friendly rugs and carpet are Shaw and FLOR.

Did you know that more than 5.6 billion pounds of carpet were discarded? The carpet industry is working on programs to encourage recycling. One of the many carpet companies who want to make sure all those tons of carpet are reused or recycled is Shaw. They have created carpets made from Nylon 6 that can be recycled repeatedly while keeping it’s aesthetic and performance properties.

We love FLOR’s modular carpet tiles–they’re creative, beautiful, and eco-friendly. FLOR’s founder is committed to sustainability and has designed the tiles from renewable and recycled content. Plus when you’re ready to update your room again in a few years, you can return your carpet tiles for recycling.

less-toxic paint

Household paint is full of harmful chemicals. It contains formaldehyde, pesticides, and other potential carcinogens. These are commonly known as volatile organic compounds or VOCs. In the past, low-VOC choices have left quite a bit to be desired as far as quality is concerned. But they manufacturers have been hard at work improving the paint in response to tougher regulations and consumer demand.

In the March Consumer’s Report article on household paint, they found some top-quality low-VOC choices fared quite well. And these paints are easy to find now too. Home Depot  carries a variety of low- and no-VOC paints. Don’t forget to choose eco-friendly paint brushes and rollers too.

sustainable furniture

It’s so tempting to rush out to Ikea and pick up a new living room complete with sofa, chairs, coffee table, lamps, and doodads, for $299.99. But we all know throw-away furnishings is just another one of our planet-killing habits.

Naturally, the best option is to reuse. Check out craigslist before you head to the retail stores. I picked up a great craftsman-style entertainment, complete with glass doors and lighting for $200. You can’t beat that! While I got lucky, my piece only needed to be dusted, you may have to use a bit of imagination, elbow grease, and a trip to the fabric or paint store. A little recovering can go a long way.

Of course, if you just have to have something new, buy a piece that’s going to last and is eco-friendly. Look for sustainably-harvested wood such as bamboo, oak, maple, and others. The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification is a great way to spot “green” furnishings. Or find a shop that makes new pieces from reclaimed wood, like the table here from Brooklyn Farm Table. If that’s not possible, avoid pieces made with toxic foam, fabrics, and finishings. Alternatives include natural latex for cushioning and hemp or recycled PET for fabric.

Now that you’re informed: get ready, get set, decorate! We’d love for you to share links to your favorite stores with us here. We’re always looking for more eco-friendly resources.

Cotton accounts for 40 percent of all textile products made each year and carries a heavy water footprint. It’s a fiber we haven’t yet been able to replace. There’s quite a bit of talk about organic cotton, but that’s far from being widely available, much less affordable. And the fact is, organic cotton still uses quite a bit of water for growing and just as much water as conventional cotton for production.

We thought it was worthwhile to take a look at just how much water it takes to produce this season’s fashionable jeans and the rest of the cotton textiles consumed each year.

The best study on the water footprint of cotton consumption we’ve found was conducted in 2005 by the UNESCO Institute for Water Education [download the report as a pdf]. The researchers take a look at the entire lifecycle of cotton and make very interesting points. We wanted to share some of them with you:

1. The Aral Sea lost 80 percent of it’s volume due to water being diverted for cotton upstream.
2. Nearly 70 percent of the all cotton is grown in China (25 percent), USA (17.8 percent), India (10.2 percent), Pakistan (9.5 percent), and Uzbekistan (6.1 percent).
3. Cotton crops in China rely completely on irrigation–severely depleting and polluting fresh water supplies.
4. Cotton is planted on 2.4 percent of the planet’s arable land, but accounts for 24 percent of all insecticides and 11 percent of global pesticides.
5. While 60 percent of the nitrogen applied to cotton fields is removed via harvested seed cotton, 40 percent of it remains behind, mostly in the local fresh water supply.
6. 2.6 percent of the global water footprint is used to grow and process cotton each year.
7. 44 percent of the water used for growing and processing cotton is exported.

What does this all mean to you and me? Well, it means that, with the movement of the cotton around the world, the people who bear the brunt of the water consumption are not benefiting from the products. And you don’t need a study to tell you that the cotton jeans you just bought for $38.95 at the GAP didn’t account for the costs to process the contaminated water downstream or for communities to find new sources of fresh water.

It’s likely that one day we will have to pay for the entire water footprint of that pair of jeans or cotton sheets. We sure hope that by then, we’ve found a sustainable substitute for cotton.

photo credit: Martin Labar / flickr

With all the buzz about the designs and the Haiti Relief show at New York’s Fashion Week, you may not have heard that the whole thing was a carbon-neutral event. While we’ve noticed more sustainable fashion on the catwalk, Fashion Week itself is full of planet-abusing decadence: celebrities flying in from all over the planet, limos shuffling everyone around, extravagant runway designs, lots of lights, and the cases of hairspray.

This year IMG Fashion, the folks who put on the show, didn’t cut back on any of the traditions, but they did commission CarbonNeutral Company  to conduct a carbon footprint audit. Turns out the show produces just under 1,000 tons of carbon emissions.

To offset all that greenhouse gas, IMG has made some on-site changes, such as recycling and using paper water “bottles.” But the bulk of the effort to bring the show to net-zero emissions is from sponsors Tetra Pak and O.N.E. Natural Experience. For example, Tetra Pak is underwriting two projects: a forestry management effort in the Big River/Salmon Creeks Forest in Mendocino, Calif. and the sustainable sourcing of local natural gas at two dairy farms in Idaho.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Fern Mallis, IMG Fashion senior vice president, said, “I think it’s exciting to think that our runways and lights and shows are lighting up a dairy farm in Idaho….It is the socially and politically conscious thing to do.”

photo credit: Lanterna / flickr

Last Friday evening AirDye® made its second appearance in a Costello Tagliapietra show during New York’s Fall Ready-to-Wear 2010 Fashion Week. (The plaid-clad duo also used AirDye in their spring 2010 collection.) We love working with Jeffery and Robert–they really know how to use color and fabric to achieve some of the best-styled clothing out there.

Of course, we’ve just got to share a few shots from the show, which unfortunately don’t do justice to what Style.com calls “their beautiful palette of desert-sunset hues.” Nor can you see how the duo plays up contrasts in the back of a piece, but we hope you’re as impressed with the collection as we are.

(photos from Coutorture/Getty)

So, now that you’ve seen some of the collection, here’s what a few of the fashionistas who were at the show said:

Women’s Wear Daily:

Going green never looked so chic, as Jeffrey Costello and Robert Tagliapietra presented a collection of their signature softly draped and pleated jersey dresses and separates in a dusty palette colored by AirDye, a sustainable dyeing method.

Style.com’s Meenal Minstry:

Spiraled and compressed folds added substance and weight to one look’s waist, while on another the pleats seemed almost spontaneously draped around the body. The designers tried out an interesting new technique on their signature jersey dresses and tops, anchoring them with woven silk backs, usually in a contrasting color plucked from their beautiful palette of desert-sunset hues. But for all that, there was actually a gorgeous simplicity to this collection. It marked both a return to their founding vision and a step forward.

NBC New York’s Catherine Blair Pfander on The Thread:

Conceived in a sophisticated palette of rosy browns, golds, and a multi-colored circle print called “Ghosts” (developed by AirDye, which developed a technique of dying fabric without water), the collection was composed primarily of draped dresses and skirt-n-top sets, with a few metallic pants thrown into the mix.  We were digging the “secretarial geisha” vibe, driven home by messy top knots and orangey-red lips.

“The storyline is of this young girl embarking on her life, taking that trans-Siberian train from Russia to Japan.  It’s a young, hopeful attitude,” says Robert.

The clothes did feel youthful–and the styling cast a charming, naive glow to the collection–but off the runway, we think this will prove an utterly ageless collection, with pieces that mothers and daughters will swap.  These are clothes to make women feel beautiful and intelligent. Honestly, who wants to feel any other way?

Second City Style, blogger Carol Calacci:

You have to marvel at how these two burly bears could be the designers of such modern, clean, soft and elegant pieces for women. The intricate gathering, weaving and perfect draping included a lot emphasis on the backs of the dresses this season, which unfortunately you cannot see from the runway shots….I especially like their use of two tones together, which seems to be one of their trademarks, for example the whole back of a dress may be a darker tone of the front.

Ana Louisa on the Grown-Up Shoes blog:

This may strike you as strange while you scroll down this page (of photos): nothing dramatic is happening here. Nothing crazy or mind blowing. But to me, this show is perfection. The simplicity of it, the gorgeous draping, the simple but flattering cuts and shapes are utterly delightful. The prints are incredible but even the solid colors are gorgeous.

What do you think, are these pieces you’d wear? And is sustainability ever going to have a larger role in the fashion world?

protecting profits in a water scarce world

Thera N. Kalmijn and R. Paul Herman have come up with the 10 R’s of Water Management and shared their plan with everyone in two parts (part 1 and part 2). You might think this is just overreacting by a couple of treehuggers, but you’d be wrong. They remind us that in 2001, hydroelectric power shortages forced the shutdown of aluminum plant smelters in the Pacific Northwest, resulting in the loss of 8,000 jobs. So, developing and executing on a water management strategy is just plan ole’ fashioned good business.

companies vague on water-scarcity risk, investors say

We know that water management is critical to avoid production interruption. So investors are keen to know the water-related risks faced by specific companies, but that doesn’t mean the information is readily available. A recent report by CERES shows that this information is often “boilerplate and vague.” A Business Week article goes into detail about the report including some of the companies CERES found to be most transparent with their water-risks.

water at the core of climate change

Alister Doyle, an environmental correspondent with Reuters, puts it quite plainly: “The main impact of climate change will be on water supplies.” Unlike many articles we read, Doyle suggests that conflict and disease can be avoided if we just learn from past successful examples of cooperation. Water shortages on the Indus River resulted in cooperation between India and Pakistan and Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia’s set up the Mekong River Commission. With up to 250 million people facing water shortages, it’s good to know that conflict is not guaranteed.

australia’s “top end” too dry to become food bowl

Imagine a place that gets billions of gallons of rain each year, but still can’t sustain agriculture. That place is northern Australia. According to Reuters, farmers and politicians had planned on converting this area into a “food bowl for the world.” However, topography, weather, and climate change mean that much of the water is for not. You see, the rain comes during a few months and the rest of the year is completely dry. During those wet months, most of the water runs quickly out to sea or evaporates quickly when the rain stops. Looks like the Aussies will have to find another way to make the most of this region.

TEDsters answer the question…

The folks with PUR are hanging out with all the big thinkers this week at TED and asking, “If water could talk, what would it say?” And to answer the question, you’ll have to check out PUR’s photo gallery. The extra cool part is you can “like” the album or Tweet it and PUR will donate 10 liters to those in need. Come on, click the link and make clean water happen for someone who would otherwise be without.