Green Options

In our highly connected world, travel can happen from any number of means, catering to just about any human desire out there. So why should you bother with Exquisite Safaris Philanthropic Travel? For many reasons, the top of which being that when you travel with them, $250 goes directly to organizations and communities where you visited. No opaque claims of a percentage of proceeds or other such vagueness. You get emailed a copy of the Wells Fargo bank transfer, showing [...]

Every so often, I like to make a philanthropic donation to an environmental group on behalf of the writers and readers of Eco Child’s Play.  This month, I have selected TreePeople for our small donation.

TreePeople is a nonprofit organization that has been serving the Los Angeles area for over three decades. Simply put, our work is about helping nature heal our cities. We offer sustainable solutions to urban ecosystem problems, focusing on three areas:

1. Training and supporting communities to plant and care for trees
2. Educating school children and adults about the environment
3. Working with government agencies on critical water issues

One of my favorite parts of elementary school was lunchtime. I always looked forward to my sack lunch.  My friends and I would compare our goodies and trade, as well as feel sorry the kids stuck with an overcooked, bland, awful school lunches.  Of course, I didn’t have a cool organic lunch tote, but I had one of those retro metal boxes, I think it was Scooby Doo.  Families today have more choices then we did in the Seventies, especially when it comes to eco-friendly lunches.

Print*Pattern*Paper offers many unique eco-friendly products from recycled stationary to totes. I especially like the Lunch Pack.  The Lunch Pack comes with a darling organic cotton sac, a matching organic cotton napkin, a bamboo plate, and bamboo utensils. The bamboo utensils are really cool, as I have never seen them before, but the spoon is rather shallow causing my four-year-old son to spill lots of yogurt with it.  The whole set makes a nice presentation, and for endurance sake, the bamboo plate and utensils may be better suited for dramatic food play.  The organic napkin and lunch sac are very hardy though.

This holiday season, you can save a cloud forest, adopt a tiger and remove 1 ton of CO2.  Although none of it will fit in a box or under the tree, Changing the Present makes all these things possible by giving consumers access to a variety of charitable initiatives so that they can give the gift of hope, health and happiness for a world in need.

Some perks include not having to go near a crowded mall, finding something for everyone on your list, and no lines, returns or exchanges.  Best of all, you’ll be making a tangible difference in the world with the cause of your choice, and it’s something that will last long after the latest retail trends fizzle out.

Changing the Present features more than 1,500 meaningful charitable gifts that users can browse by cause or nonprofit to find the perfect gift for friends or their own charitable giving.

Building on a commitment to changing the social norm when it comes to gift giving, and seeking to spark positive change in the world, Robert Tolmach, CEO of WellGood LLC, spearheaded the team that implemented this important effort, and was kind enough to share more details about the program with me in a one-on-one chat about the future of giving.

When giving gifts for the holidays, we try to follow a couple of guidelines.

Homemade or hand-made items always outrank mass-produced. If we have to buy something that is mass-produced, we go to an independent business, not a chain, because spending our cash locally makes a difference in our communities. We try to think of others who aren’t as fortunate as us, so organizations that teach and help people to sustain themselves get our vote.

I’d like to share my list of 6 gifts that make a difference. Maybe you’ll see something that calls to you as a gift for that someone that has everything.

Heifer International

Heifer’s mission is to end hunger and poverty while caring for the earth. For more than 60 years, Heifer International has provided livestock and environmentally sound agricultural training to improve the lives of those who struggle daily for reliable sources of food and income. And since 1944, we have helped 48 million people through training in livestock development and livestock gifts that multiply.

You can give the gift of honeybees, a goat, a llama, or a flock of ducks to a family or community in need. These gifts aren’t charity, they’re an investment in people and villages all over the world.

If you’re going to change the world, wouldn’t you like it to be epic?

Stacey Monk, Co-founder and CEO of Epic Change, does, which is why she and Sanjay Patel decided to launch their unique approach to sparking social change by converting people’s “epic” stories into financial resources they can use to improve their communities, their lives – and the world.

Rooted in the best practices of successful businesses and charities, their somewhat novel approach to funding uses donations to provide interest-free loans to finance community improvement efforts, which they repay by generating revenue-driving projects based on each epic story, and then recycle by duplicating those ideas in other communities, effectively spreading hopefulness and change to everyone their program touches.

I had the opportunity to talk with Stacey to dig a little deeper into their change model, and this impassioned former management consultant with a degree in Public Policy from the Heinz School of Public Policy and Management at Carnegie Mellon University boasts an impressive resume, but her most compelling attribute by far is a genuine desire to promote positive change and a dewey-eyed hopefulness that makes me believe she can.

TOMS Shoes: Shoes for Tomorrow, based in Santa Monica, California wants to give its products away. And you can help.

When TOMS’ founder Blake Mycoskie went to visit Argentina on vacation, he discovered more than he expected. While touring, he was exposed to the Argentinean soft shoe called Alpargata. He was also challenged by the poverty he saw, including the villages with children who did not even have shoes. As a result, he decided to create an organization that would be able to fill the simple, but necessary, need of putting shoes onto the feet of children who needed them.

When a talented friend and associate, Marcia Yerman, who happens to be an advocate for women’s issues insisted we consider featuring Jody Weiss, founder of PeaceKeepers Cause-Metics in Relevant Times last year, I paid attention. There are so many reasons to be amazed by Ms. Weiss and the wonderful ’cause-metics’ she has produced - great, natural AND benefiting women and the world in many ways . . .

Then, when we got some samples to play with, and I was really impressed! 

Nau, a rather new high performance clothing company has the best looking sustainable clothing on the market. Thankfully, they have taken some progressive and responsible steps as a consumer products company to reinvent sustainable fashion, and improve communities.

The all-encompassing Nau design philosophy requires a balance of three criteria: beauty, performance, and sustainability. Many lines seek to meet one objective, but the most interesting consumer products out there are those that seek

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It’s a fast-paced world, and we all have a lot of commitments. Work, family, friends…everything takes it out of us. So just how do we fit saving the planet into our busy schedules?

I see this answer as two-fold. First, there are things that we can do as individuals related to our little piece of the world: the choices we make in our daily lives around everything from transportation to laundry detergent add up

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