It’s April and you know what that means, beautiful spring weather is finally here! Earth Day is coming up soon on Friday April 22nd, which means we should all take a moment to be grateful for the beautiful planet we call home. To show a little appreciation for Mother Nature, why not try to introduce some environmentally friendly fashion and beauty into your life? Read on for some of our favorites.
1. Green Room ‘Eco Edit’ by ASOS
Green Room ‘Eco Edit’ is the ASOS approach to an eco-friendly line of clothing. All articles are either upcycled vintage, fair trade, or made from organic materials. For those of you wondering, upcycling is similar to recycling, but instead of the material being broken down to make new material, the material is reused by restyling or repurposing.
Fair trade is a movement meant to benefit small producers in developing areas. Meaning that the money used to buy the product goes directly to those small producers. That way there is ideally no taking advantage of the producer by larger distributors. In most cases, they will buy from these small producers at outrageously low prices and then sell the products for an inflated price point, making it impossible for the producer to make a living. Overall this line has incredibly cute clothes sourced and made by people who are doing their best to lessen their negative impact on the world. Also, check out their ASOS Africa line. The company partnered with SOKO, an ethical manufacturer in my motherland Kenya, to bring jobs to rural communities and offer a safe, ethical workplace.
2. Lush
This cosmetics company is founded on the principle that everything you put on your body should be as fresh, natural, and healthy as possible. Lush makes all their products in small batches by hand (each container even has a sticker with the face of the person who made it). None of their products are tested on animals ever. One of the company’s major campaigning efforts is actually to fight animal cruelty and testing. Nearly every product is completely organic and every product is 100% green, meaning that there is nothing that can be washed down the drain or thrown out that can damage the environment. Instead of using micro beads as an exfoliating property, Lush uses salt, sugar, or even ground up nuts. Even their crazy sparkly bath bombs use biodegradable glitter. How cool is that?
All Lush products are ethically or fair-trade sourced, vegetarian or vegan, never tested on animals, 100% green, the containers are recyclable, and they have a monthly charity cream where 100% of the profits made goes to that month’s charity. Seriously, buy from Lush they’re the best.
So often is the case that people use high prices as an excuse to not buy eco-friendly or ethical products. However, there is no excuse for that now! H&M is already known for having affordable and fashionable clothes, and now, those affordable prices have hit the green front with the line Conscious.
The line features tons of cute styles as well as fashion basics offered by the brand now made with fair trade materials and upcycled clothing. Speaking of upcycling, you can actually send your unwanted clothes to H&M and they will upcycle the materials to use in other garments. Give Conscious a chance and next time you’re in H&M try out some of the items from the line.
For a long time now I’ve been trying to lessen the amount of chemical laden products I use on my skin and this brand has some wonderful options for just that. The toner I use has a total of six ingredients and every one of them is organic. Much like Lush, Nourish products are all organic, natural, animal cruelty-free, and mostly vegan. Most of the products are also very affordable being between $10-$25.
5. Urban Renewal by Urban Outfitters
Good old Urban Outfitters, every time I’ve wanted to looked like a typical hipster they’ve been there for me. This time they haven’t disappointed because you can look vintage while wearing actual vintage stuff. We’ve all known Urban to have vintage clothes for a while now so what’s different about Urban Renewal? Well for starters everything is upcycled, so not only is it vintage material but it’s presented in a new way. Everything is hand updated in Philadelphia, so each piece is one of a kind. All the material is collected around the world as vintage, surplus, or dead stock meaning that it’s old but it has never been worn. So Urban Renewal is Urban Outfitters way of mass recycling, giving clothes that otherwise would’ve been thrown out a brand new start, which is pretty neat when you think about it.
In the words of Jane Goodall, “There are so many ways in which we are destroying the planet. And once we understand, once we care, then we have to do something.”