Green Options

The Hello Craft Summit of Awesome was this past weekend, and it was fantastical! The Summit included workshops, demonstrations, and talks about all aspects of crafting and crafty business from planning a show to greening your process. I spoke on the Crafting a Green Craft panel with the amazing Liz Grotyohann and Jeff Fein-Worton of Cosa Verde and Jamie Chan and Blas Herrera from Urban Fauna Studio.

[Green Crafting Panel at the Summit of Awesome. Photo by Christy Petterson]

Inspiration
Liz and Jeff kicked things off with some green crafty eye candy. I was particularly struck by a soap-making company that they talked about: Ethically Engineered. The Chicago soap-maker produces 100% organic vegan soaps using solar-powered equipment. Even their packaging is recycled and biodegradable!

Amazing, right? That’s the sort of crafty practice that I feel like most green crafters are working to achieve. Not everyone is quite to this point yet, but don’t despair! One of the themes that ran through all of the talks on this panel was the idea that you shouldn’t let the fact that you can’t do it all stop you from lowering your crafty impact wherever you can.

I’ve been attacked by naysayers who claim one cannot be an environmentalist and consume meat. I beg to differ, but that’s my opinion.

For years I was a happy vegetarian. My husband is a devoted carnivore. We have five children and my vegetarianism fell to the wayside. I’m not a short order cook, my husband DEMANDS meat (and luckily fish qualifies as meat in his world) in his dinner and chances are the kids and I are eating the same meal. That’s a little thing called life.

Does this mean we are not green?

[photo by Jon Gos]

Atlanta is the poster child for shortages within the U.S. lately. The national news has been paying a bit less attention to the severe drought conditions here to focus on our recent fuel shortage. When the water crisis first broke, it felt like I couldn’t have a conversation that didn’t turn to watering restrictions - on what days we were allowed to water our gardens, that shameful neighbor who ran his sprinklers for over an hour, or the pros and cons of taking navy showers.

Then hurricane Ike hit, cutting off the supply of boutique fuel the EPA requires in this city, and conversations took a sudden turn around here.