Natural Clothing Company newsletter_2010

December 2011

Holidays are here
One wish for 2011
$75 winner
Free Shipping and more in Dec

Holidays are here

Yes, Holidays are here! Unusually, even Seattle was covered with snow last month. On school closure days, it’s so fun to have the family together. That’s the best part of Holiday Season, whether it is Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanza – appreciate your family and have fun together.

We wish you the best season ever!

One wish for 2011

We have many wishes for 2011 but to pick just one to actually accomplish in one year – is to get scientists out of messing with our food supply and creating Genetically Modified Organisms. Who wants to feed their children some Frankenstein organisms? We just want plain food! Not a cross of fish and tomato, or a Frankenstein “enviro pig” or non-browning apples and … whatever somebody’s mad mind dreamed up.

Say “NO!” day in and day out to GMO and keep checking information at an Organic Consumer website http://www.organicconsumers.org/ and Jeff Smith website http://www.seedsofdeception.com

$75 winner green gift certificate

Congratulations to Marilee from Hawaii, our $75 Certificate Winner! You won our price drawing!!! You can read about her eco friendly life at our News page http://www.naturalclothingcompany.com/newsletter_2010

Discounts

We are very grateful for your loyalty and support. You give us hope, friendship and lifeline for a long chain of people involved in sustainable production - from the farmer and manufacturer to a retailer.

As a thank you we offer (on email mailings only). Yes, it’s OK to gift yourself if Santa does not do his job quite right…).

Happy Holidays and remember, we love to hear from you!

e-newsletter November 2010

Postcards from the Future

Teenagers Inspiring Positive Change

New items at Natural Clothing Co – Jewelry and more

Pay now, ship later

$75Certificate and discounts

Postcards from the Future

climate change What does really our future bring? Is it going to be prosperity with abundance and health or will the dust cover us following the civilizations of Egypt, Greece and Rome? "London Futures" exhibit shows 14 artisticimages of possible effects the climate change can impose on the city. In 'PostcardsFrom The Future', familiar views of the capital have been digitally transformed by illustrators Robert Graves and Didier Madoc-Jones.

Take a peak – these displays brings home the full impact of global warming and how Londoners would need to adapt - Parliament Square as a rice paddy, ice skating down the Thames and more. Definitely food for thought. But it's not all doom and gloom.

The original Postcards From TheFuture images were created in response to the G8 summit in Japan in 2008, where there was a lot of discussion about climate change but there was no visual aid ofthe impact. "Throughout that year we began to read about different climate change research and theories whilst at the same time witnessed the start of new ideas and technologies coming into play. We started seeing new landscapesemerge; for example, deserts and mountains covered with row upon row of wind turbines and solar panels etc. All this inspired us."Robert Graves and DidierMadoc-Jones

http://www.london-futures.com/wish-you-were-here-postcards-from-the-future-3/

Teenagers Inspiring Positive Change

What age should you concern yourself about what's going on with our food? Well, definitely it started way too late for most of us! But Birke Baehr is ahead. The 11 year old spoke about "What's WrongWith Our Food System? And How Can We Make A Difference?" on a recent TEDxevent in Asheville, North Carolina. He has already decided he's going to be an organic and biodynamic farmer when he grows up. He covered a lot of subjects thathis average school mate might seem not to care about.

But wait; there are more of teenage activists.Take a look at this link and see how they view themselves - the next generation of thinkers, artists, scientists, social activists and entrepreneurs.It is worth taking notice. http://www.tedxnextgenerationasheville.com/

News items at Natural Clothing Co – Jewelry and more

fashion jewelry clothing We are happy to announce that our selections of natural clothing and accessories are getting extended into jewelry and art. Check our web page within the next week and you will see beautiful jewelry from naturalmaterials and even gorgeous "upcycled" everyday items materials from 1800's. Thank you for your patience.

You want to also browse our selection of Women's dresses, jackets and more. We are updating our inventory with addition of beautiful bamboo and organic cotton fashion, just in time for holidays.

http://www.NaturalClothingCompany.com

Pay now, ship later

Holidays holiday gift ideas are sneaking upon on us way to fast! So a word of caution – our inventories are small so if you like any item, please reserve it now for the correct size and color. We have introduced "pay now,ship later" program that gives you ease of mind of securing the gift for your loved ones ahead of time. Just give us instruction at the checkout on when you want it shipped and we will save the item and ship when specified.

Discounts and giveaways

As always we are very grateful for you patronage! To honor this, please enjoy discount ( code for subscribers only) through the end ofNovember 2010. Also we are extending the $75 certificate drawing till the end of November – it's a great deal:

Just send us your comment, your photo, your story - what steps you take in your daily life, small or big to lead more eco friendly life. We'll publish it on our website and we'll draw one name for $75 certificate for Natural Clothing Company. We'd love to hear from you! email "My viewpoint"

from our readers....

We live in a 30 foot diameter Yurt made by Pacific Yurts in Oregon. We have a recycledplastic/wood simulated surrounding deck and live off-grid on 8 acres withvirtually no neighbors other than the local wild pigs which roam through ourbeautiful farm valley, seeking to make use of fallen fruit and return excellentfertilizer to our good soils.

We have a studio with covered deck, overlooking the valley and are 4 miles from the ocean, just down hill...through the avocado and mango groves. Goats are being raised on the lower lands below us so we know the temperature is conducive to livestock. We raised alpacas and llamas, sheep in Yelm for 15 years on 14 acres and I am a spinner (spinning wheel) of Ingeo, Soysilk, Milk Silk, Organic Cotton, Bamboo, Hemp, Flax, and 70 other fibers including the new exoskeleton of crustaceans "Chitin" and recently found a mother and daughter who produce 100% sugarcane fiber for sale globally from South America.

Just to give you a small idea of my background so you can sense a reason why I write to you: 20 years I have worked as an environmental activist in Greater Seattle and as a Wash. D.C. Lobbyist for Nuclear Disarmament also on the Exxon Oil Spill (closing 40 Exxon stations in Western Washington for 8 years through local vigils and boycotting), and more recently, in Yelm and now in Hawaii to create regional Farmers Co-ops with non-GMO products and practices.

My academic background is in Organizational Development and I put this to practical use in my vision of hands-on relationship to my daily choices. We use concensus decision-making as the primary mode for a non-heirarchical local plan. We believe in barter networks and this is especially helpful in an area where money and jobs are precious.

I believe you may appreciate being our guests and viewing the local region at 19 degrees latitude during your colder months and offering to share your farming info with us as we begin to develop our acres. We are on the verge of
installing Aquaponics to marry Tilapia fish farming with sustainable vegetable growing as is being done successfully in many areas around us here.

We live light on the land and are not able to offer the resort atmosphere some folks require. We have a healthy Subaru Forester AWD to get around and the free bus runs often and all over the island...the olympic sized 80 degree swimming pool in our village is open daily and free to all. Sunday drumming circle at the beach lasts for 5 hours and attracts the local dolphins to swim with us at 3 foot proximities. The humpback whales migrate beginning end of October through mid-April and forage(?) nearby and daily along our shores with audible spouting and birthings..

I am 63 and Bill is 64 but we are very active grandparents who love to share our lives with others. Bill crochets baby blankets for just about everyone and plays saxophone off the deck. I spin the fibers and do oil painting when we aren't involved with the land development.

Marilee W., Pahoa, HI

from our readers....

My actions seem to pale in comparison to Carlo's but here's a snapshot.
I drive a small car with a 4 cylinder engine and have offset its CO2 with TerraPass. I work at combining trips when possible and drive less than 10,000miles per year.
I have a home office and a solar water heater on my roof, that suppliesapproximately 70% of the hot water for our family of 4. Since buying the house 4 years ago we have replaced the old metal frame, singled pane windows with locally manufactured new double pane, lo-e, fiberglass windows and just did attic air sealing and R-50 blown in recycled cellulose insulation. When we bought our house I made sure it had good passive solar heating configuration,with the main living spaces and large windows on the south and good solar exposure. The furnace has not been turned on yet this fall. All the smoke detectors are photo-sensitive and not radioactive.

And of course CFL and LED lighting and Energy Star appliances and electronics are all we have bought. There are green upgrades yetto happen in the house and yard and we are making progress.

We have belonged to (and invested in) the Root Connection (a CSA share farm) for 17 years and gotten our produce in late spring, summer and early fall from the farm in Woodinville. It is delivered to drop sites all overthe Seattle area. The rest of our produce comes from organic farmers through theEdmonds farmers market, PCC, QFC and Albertsons. Our meat mostly comes from Thundering Hooves with no anti-biotics or hormones fed to their stock that are free range and grass fed.

I guess I forgot to mentionthe biggest things...that I have been designing solar green homes for 23 years,and helped found the NW Eco-Building Guild and Solar WA and Sustainable Edmonds.

Bestenergy,
Chris Herman, owner, Winter Sun Design, www.wintersundesign.com
Past-president, Solar WA., www.solarwashington.org
Co-founder, NW Eco-Building Guild, www.ecobuilding.org
Life member, American Solar Energy Society, www.ases.org

October 2010

Topics:

Reverse Trick and Tricking
Poem “Real Life”
Do we walk or talk?
Your yard can be a community garden
$75 Certificate

Reverse Trick and Tricking

Yeay! Halloween! That’s what our children are saying. Chocolate is one of their most favorites and they can’t wait till Halloween night. Yet, there is an ugly secret behind the wrapper. On the other side of the globe somebody else’s children are kidnapped, beaten and forced to hard manual labor 80 to 100 hrs a week, typically never seeing their families again, in order to gather cocoa for our sweet treat. We are not talking about a few cases. According to reports hundreds of thousands of children are being purchased from their naive parents (believing the kids will do work and come back) for a pittance in countries like Mali, Burkina Faso, and Togo. In some cases they are outright stolen, then enslaved on cocoa farms.

Companies like Hershey, Nestle, and Cadbury purchase their prime ingredient from Ivory Coast’s plantations where forced labor, human trafficking, and child slavery is common as confirmed by several studies, including 2009, the Payson Center, BBC and more. Recently, the Hershey Company issued its first ever (in 153 years) Corporate Social Responsibility Report with promises,but little action. No, they will never see a purchase from our family but we need more than that.

Please do support Fair Trade chocolate, where the practices are responsible and accountable to third party inspections. You can also download a card from sites below explaining these problems in the cocoa industry and how Fair Trade presents a solution, attached to a Fair Trade chocolate and distribute these to kids and adults.

More information is available at http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/fairtrade/cocoa/reversetrickortreating/ and http://www.greenamericatoday.org/emails/canews/20080925/

Poem "Real Life"

Being part of Green America's Green Business Network™, the oldest, largest, and most diverse network of socially and environmentally responsible businesses in America is a privilege and a pleasure at the same time. The ability to network with hundreds of likeminded fellows leads us to sharing a beautiful poem by one of them.

Real Life

real life
occurs in small
ordinary rooms
at odd times
of no particular note
with little events
unnoticed by most
unrecorded by any
without drama
laughter or tears
just us
you
me
making tiny choices
that become
the sum
of our lives

From Reflection, by Steve Kaye

You can find out more about Steve at http://www.stevekaye.com

Do we walk or talk?

Despite a lot of talk about the environment, Americans today are no more eco friendly than in 2000. That's what a respectable Gallup study found earlier this year. The numbers show that the change in our behavior is very slight and even reversed. For example:

2% or 3% of us are using compact fluorescent light bulb and buy more environmentally friendly products but...almost half of us (48%) now believe that the seriousness of global warming is generally exaggerated; in2009 it was 41%, in 1997 - 31%.

community garden

So what is the truth for you? You hear "Green, GREEN" everywhere.You see eco friendly tags and claims A LOT. Are we really more eco friendly? Dowe change our habits? What is true for you and your family? If we are not moving forward but keep growing mountains of trash and watch calmly as species disappear, what do you see will be the outcome?

Hit "reply" and write us what YOU think at report @ NaturalClothingCopmany.com. We are very interested in your perspective. We all share this place.

We'll draw a reward described at the end of the letter.

Your yard can be a community garden

Speaking of people doing something about it, you will enjoy meeting Carlo, our colleague from Sustainable Snohomish, as wellas Green Drinks (monthly casual get together ofgreen minded people). Carlo Voli decided to do minimize his footprint for real: he gave up his clothes dryer, does not use disposable napkins, cups etc, and bikes every where he can and grows an organic garden. But this guy thinks bigger than just himself. He turned his 900 sf offront lawn into a garden and shares it with his neighbors, creating a community garden. It makes total sense – the watering tasks are shared, as well as the bountyof corn, potatoes, cabbage and beets, lettuce and many others. For sure manystories and laughs were exchanged. If you have questions for Carlo and would like to follow his actions in your neighborhood, we will be glad to pass the message.

$75Certificate

Send us your comment, your photo, your story - what steps you take in your daily life, small or big to lead more eco friendly life. We'll publish it on our website and we'll draw one name for $75 certificate for Natural Clothing Company. We'd love to hear from you at report @ NaturalClothingCompany.com! (remove extra spaces from the email address)

Thank You!

Natural Clothing Company!

September 2010

Sept 21 International Peace Day

I think we all sense that our culture, as we know it, is ending. Good, bad and ugly. Well, it is hard to believe it on day to day basis, but what’s ahead of us really depends on our actions and thoughts, not the governments or banks.

To reinforce it, celebrate the International Day of Peace. It was set up in 1981 by United Nations and devoted to commemorating and strengthening the ideals of peace. The slogan “Peace = Future” says it all. Probably every single economic, social and moral problem could be resolved if we took our attention away from fighting and proving others wrong and turn to true solutions in peace.

My own musings about peace, from the perspective of growing up in a post war communist country are at http://www.NaturalClothingBlog.com.

Compostable hemp car?

Well, not that yet. But Canada’s Motive Industries Inc is working on its first bio-composite bodied electric car - Kestrel. The car is made of impact resistant bio composite material – hemp, grown in Canada. It is strong yet lightweight but can still transform into a body of a car with the properties of glass composites.

Remember, generations ago, Henry Ford recognized hemp and made a car with resin-stiff hemp fibers, as well as ran it on hemp-based ethanol. Ford told the New York Times that ethyl alcohol was "the fuel of the future" in 1925. "The fuel of the future is going to come from fruit like that sumac out by the road, or from apples, weeds, sawdust -- almost anything," he said. "There is fuel in every bit of vegetable matter that can be fermented. There's enough alcohol in one year's yield of an acre of potatoes to drive the machinery necessary to cultivate the fields for a hundred years."

85 years later John Wolodko from Alberta Innovates Technology Futures (AITF) states “Natural materials such as hemp can offer a green and sustainable alternative to conventional fibers used in composites”. It’s time.

Money grows in fair trade cotton only

Europe is using 20 and 50 Euro bills made out 10 to 14% fair trade cotton for the last three years. The Dutch mint was the first to start a project to print money using cotton for which the producers have not been exploited. Blends of cotton are preferred and as the mint says “currently there is not enough good fair trade cotton to make up 100% of a bill. But the fair trade cotton market is growing spectacularly.”

Well done to Europe, what about us? The US money is also printed also on type of a fabric: a blend of cotton and linen, with silk fibers. It is about time to use organic and fair trade cotton for that purpose!

Business attire of organic clothing

As you go through life recycling, caring about the planet and sustainability make the values even more visible in your business or workplace. Natural Clothing Company has several business Polo shirts, made of organic cotton or bamboo, Tee shirts, hemp/organic cotton shopping bags amd more coming. We can place your logo with water based print or embroidery. Send us your artwork and quantity to receive a quote for entire process to finish product. It’s a great idea to promote you values for sustainable world.

$50 Giveaway Winner and new discount

As promised we hurried up with a drawing and selected one customer from all who purchased from us recently to receive $50 certificate from Natural Clothing Co.

And the winner is … Ann L. from New Mexico! Congratulations, Ann, your certificate is in the mail!

For the rest of us, not all is lost. During the September we offer another wonderful reward for being our favorite customers – free shipping within U.S. (information for the code available for e-news receipients only) . As always, Thank you so much for being our customer and reading this letter. We appreciate it very much!

In Peace

Staff at Natural Clothing Company

July/August 2010

Thank you and off with polyester!

organic_clothing Thank You, our customers, for supporting organic clothing and helping us stay alive! Speaking to a group of green friends in our area I realized, that after running off plastic bags from grocery stores, maybe - next, we can run out the polyester (crude oil derived) from use in apparel business. Wouldn’t that be a day! If our clothes, after all the uses and re-uses eventually can end up in a compost and create more soil for veggies - that’s what I call a full circle! Keep reading to find your rewards for July/August!

Does five days of good food make a difference? organic_clothing

I have been eating veggies and fruits for few years now, on my twisty tourney road to a raw diet. Each day shows me the benefits of detoxifying characteristics of these foods- especially when I stray from it for few meals... But I did not realize that even five days of vegetarian diet has tons of benefits for a body. Boy, am I jealous of the researches – they stayed in Buddhist temple for five days to try the diet! Read on for more information (Thanks Happy Cow!)

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Life/Health-Fitness/Diet/Vegetarian-diet-can-help-keep-the-toxins-away/articleshow/5944253.cms

Sleep in the tree house

tree_house A dream comes true for green architecture. Talk about leaving no footprints! Sweden is such an enormous inspiration of beautiful furniture and ecologically responsible architecture that no wonder this concept was born there. A hotel made entirely of tree houses, each one designed by a different architect and unique in style and shape. And yes, it includes its own state of the art eco-friendly incineration toilet.

Read on at http://planetgreen.discovery.com/travel-outdoors/sweden-treehotel-guests-sleep-18-feet-off-ground.html?campaign=daily_nl but come back here for special discount!

Video Lost Generation (a must see!)

Now, this is really special. Having two teenagers at home, this video took my breath away. Submitted to an ARRP contest, it won 2nd place. It really is worth watching.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42E2fAWM6rA&feature=player_embedded