Posts Tagged ‘Shokay’

“New” Luxury Fiber: Green and Fair Trade Yak Down!

Saturday, October 9th, 2010

If you’re a fan of cashmere — and who isn’t? — you luxuriate in its buttery softness and marvel at how something so light and airy can keep you so warm. Let us introduce you to a “new luxury fiber” that’s all-natural, humanely harvested and rivals the softness, warmth and versatility of cashmere. Ladies and gentlemen, meet Yak Down.

Few people in the Western world have ever heard of yak down. But Tibetans have raised yaks for generations in the Himalayas, using the rugged animals’ fiber for warm clothing and their milk for nourishment. Like cashmere goats, yaks have two coats: a coarse outer coat, and a super-fine, soft insulating undercoat. Every spring, when the yaks shed their undercoat, the soft fibers are brushed out, cleaned, and spun into fabric that’s ultra-light, cashmere soft and truly luxurious.

The relatively new Western market for yak down has started to provide a vital line of industry for people who have been living in poverty. One of the pioneering suppliers of yak down has been Shokay International Group (Shokay is the Tibetan word for ‘yak’). This small company with big ideas was started by two Chinese women who were classmates at Harvard University’s JFK School of Government. Their initiative — to create a worldwide market for a new sustainable luxury fiber, while creating jobs and opportunities for impoverished villages — won the social enterprise track of the Harvard Business School Business Plan Contest. Shokay employs more than 2,600 Tibetan yak herders in western China, and an additional 40 hand knitters.

Elegant Roots is proud to offer some of Shokay’s most popular yak-down products. Check them out! These’ll have you saying “what’s cashmere again?”

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Posted in Fair Trade/ Social Justice, Sustainable Fashion | 2 Comments »

Five Eco-Friendly Gifts for Baby

Tuesday, June 15th, 2010

A new baby is one of the most delightful reasons to buy a gift — but it’s not always easy to choose an item that will please a picky parent. Here is a roundup of five thoughtful gifts we’ve found that are all-natural, non-toxic, high-quality and gentle enough to meet the standards of any new mom or dad.

ButtNakedBaby_X-01All-Natural Organic Baby Care Set by Butt Naked Baby — We’d call it a “spa set” for baby, because the ingredients are so luxurious … but some of the items here are really necessary! All the products in this fabulous six-piece gift set are responsibly handcrafted in small batches in the USA, using only the best organic ingredients. There are no skin-irritating fragrances, parabens, mineral oils or dyes; rather, this lush and sustainable gift set looks and smells clean and natural. The set comes with Moisture Milk lotion, Healing Baby Powder, moisturizing Baby Balm Stick, soothing and protecting Diaper Balm and relaxing/hydrating Baby Oil. It’s all wrapped up in an organic-cotton “Butt Rug” that can be used as a diaper, burp cloth or changing pad. These trustworthy products are among the finest we’ve found for baby.

DreamSacks_Blanket_XaDowny-Soft Bamboo Baby Blankets by Dreamsacks — Once you feel these buttery-soft blankets and learn about their fabulous qualities, you won’t want to swaddle baby in anything else. These lovely loom-woven blankets are naturally antibacterial, hypoallergenic, breathable and moisture-wicking. Luxuriously soft, light, warm and comfortable, Bamboo Baby Blankets are loom-woven from 100 percent pesticide-free bamboo — harvested responsibly from renewable forests and crafted under fair-trade conditions. Choose from several colors.

Dimples_OrganicSet_X-01Organic Cotton Baby Ensemble by Dimples — We just love this gorgeous 3-piece newborn set made from 100 percent organic cotton. And it’s not just us — Babble.com calls it “absolutely beautiful — so soft and snuggly … exactly how I want to bring [new baby] home.” Ecofabulous.com agrees: “Magnificent newborn gift.” The all-natural ensemble has a swaddling blanket, a playsack with drawstring tie, and a cap with flaps for those sweet little ears. The soft cotton contains no pesticides or chemical treatments whatsoever: gentle, handcrafted and using only non-toxic dyes, it’s nothing but softness against baby’s sensitive skin. Choose from the gorgeous hand-embroidered striped “Bee” or “Rose” designs in size 0-3 months.

BabyShokay385x260Fair-Trade Luxury Baby Hoodie/ Booties by Shokay — These beautiful, soft-as-cashmere hoodie, booties and rattle set is woven from the sustainable “new luxury fiber” — yak down! Tibetan yak herders have been humanely harvesting the rugged animals’ luxurious, downy undercoat for generations, but only recently has this sumptuous fabric been available in the Western market. This set is gorgeous, handcrafted and will be the softest, warmest items in baby’s layette; they’re hand-washable and feel like cashmere. Treated only with nontoxic, low-impact dyes, this heirloom-quality baby set contains a sweet hoodie with an “eternity knot” clasp, snuggly booties with plush pom-poms, and a soft rattle in “Bee” or “Bug” design. This is not only a gorgeous and memorable gift, but it supports Tibetan herders and weavers in fair-labor conditions.

EnGry_PoliceCars_XEnGry_PrincessHorse_XFair-Trade Wool Car Set or Plush Pony by En Gry and Sif— We just love En Gry and Sif, a business started by two wonderful Danish sisters whose charming baby-and-kid products employ excellent design, strict eco-friendly standards and top-notch craftsmanship by women artisans in Nepal. Non-toxic toys are a wonderful gift, and En Gry and Sif’s fun Wool Car Set and Plush Pony toys are soft, safe, easy to grasp, cute and colorful enough to delight both babies and toddlers. They’re made with 100 percent wool-felt and colored with gentle low-impact dyes. The two-piece car set comes with a Police Car and Ambulance; the Plush Pony is tan with pink spots and a yarn mane.

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Posted in Gentle Baby & Child | 14 Comments »

Tuesday Tracts: Social Enterprise — A Fish Story

Monday, September 21st, 2009

Ordinarily, we write these Tuesday Tracts to feature people who promote social justice through enterprise.Elegant Roots Blog

Today, though, it’s about the nature of social enterprise. Social enterprise blurs the distinction between “not-for-profit” and “for profit” entities. For-profit social enterprises, though organized to realize a profit, are not organized to maximize profit. Rather, the moving force is the notion that commercial viability through the opening of markets for economically marginalized people creates a strong, resilient and vibrant level of security and stability that improve all facets of life: nutrition, health, independence, education, etc.besweetxhosa_artisans-2-at-721

The elegant notion at ElegantRoots.com, from which we take our name, is that a people’s traditional arts when applied to a commercially viable design creates a win-win for artisan and recipient. But only when a market can be opened and maintained for the resulting product. The artisan wins, enjoying a traditional lifestyle and a growing independence, rather than being forced into the ever growing but not sustaining large urban sprawls. The purchaser wins by having a nonpareil product from the touch of an artisan’s hand. elcorazon_b-72-4x41

Creating a market for these products extends the benefits of globalization to people who have been otherwise left out.

But I promised you a fish story.

You know the old proverb: give a person a fish and you feed her for one day, teach a person to fish and you feed him for a lifetime…. Well, social enterprise pushes this further: Buy fish from a person at a fair price and you improve lives in a community immeasurably in innumerable ways beyond a full stomach.

Especially when you apply the long tail of the internet. E-commerce is the perfect way to create a market big enough for these wonderful, but specialty products.

Where do the social enterprisers come from? Typically, some event gives them exposure to a need and they organize their lives to fill it. That’s the story of Richard Speedy of Julio Pagliani bringing to an updated world the jewelry beading of the indigenous Tarahumara of Mexico’s Sierra Madre. It’s the story of Nadine Storyk Curtis of Be Sweet bringing to the world scarves and shawls from the mohair textile traditions alive in women’s collectives in South Africa. And of Marie So and Carol Chyau of Shokay International creating a luxury market for the incredibly soft yak-down produced by Tibetan herders.community-picture-72dpi

And the same is true for next week’s Tuesday Tracts featured social entrepreneur, Ellen Dorsch of Creative Women, bringing to the international market the textile skills of women of Ethiopia, Swaziland, and now, Afghanistan.

This is what ElegantRoots.com is founded on. We exist to extend the market for the Tarahumara of Mexico, for the South African women, for the Tibetan herders of western China, for the last family-run cotton mill in the USA, for jewelry designers who work with recycled materials, for all the artisans …. for people, planet, profit for all — the Triple Bottom Line.

Later.copy-small-box-row

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Posted in Fair Trade/ Social Justice, Green Entrepreneurs, Sustainable Lifestyle | No Comments »

Ecological Intelligence, Part 2

Tuesday, June 30th, 2009

I find myself wanting to quibble with Goleman. Maybe it’s because I’ve cast myself as a “book reviewer” and I’m under some obligatory contentiousness. Or maybe I’m just argumentative by nature — but when Goleman introduces the subject of Life Cycle Assessment (more on LCA later) by the ancient chariot story and concludes that the chariot is merely an illusion, I’m in full quibble mode.

The Visudhimagga, a 5th century Indian text, we are told, poses a riddle: “precisely where is what we call a ‘chariot’ located? Is it in the axles, wheels, the frame?” The answer is “nowhere” since what we mean by “chariot” is a mere temporary arrangement of its components: “It’s an illusion.” Until it runs over you; then your pain says “that was no illusion.”

I prefer the representation of synergy presented by George Leonard in Mastery. Leonard uses the example of the radio, another amalgam of parts, to suggest that the schematics of the radio are every bit are “real” as the functioning radio (and better in the sense that schematics are easier to modify and more effective at transmitting the details of the notion). And, if the schematics are as real as the radio, then the idea of the radio is also as real.  For LCA, there is power in Leonard’s presentation.

Every product we purchase is comprised of many components, each with its own set of industrial processes for extraction, synthesis, packaging, shipping, combining, and disposal. Each process for each component has a measurable environmental impact.  For the glass jar for pasta sauce, for example, there are 1,959 distinct component processes. For the Zulu baskets offered by Elegant Roots, for example, there are far fewer; there is the native grasses harvested by hand, the ilala palm leaves harvested by hand, the fruit and vegetable dyes harvested locally, yes, by hand, and there is the hand weaving — all accomplished in the weaver’s locale. Of course, the one-of-a-kind museum quality basket by Laurentia Dlamini exists in another category from mass produced glass pasta sauce jars. The same is true for the hand-brushed yak down, hand-knitted into a soothingly soft, undyed baby hoodie by Shokay.

For industrial products, though, the LCA can show us the true effects of what we buy and use. Even recycling warrants scrutiny, simply so we see the effects of how we’re doing things. If LCA information were available to all of us, we’d see that “green” and “eco-friendly” are charged terms. “Greenwashing” is the labeling a product “green” by focusing on only a single, or very few, of the hundreds or thousands of a product’s component processes.

The danger of Greenwashing, Goleman suggests, is that we are lulled into thinking we’ve done all we need to do if we buy an organic cotton t-shirt. That’s paternalistic. And it makes the good the enemy of the perfect. Just give us the information, we can deal with it.   This fear is, “don’t feel good about what you’re doing because it can never be enough.”  But every little thing we do when multiplied by a billion makes a difference. And feeling good about doing one thing, under the principles of positive reinforcement, should encourage us to do more good things — feeling good is a strong positive reinforcer, so we will repeat the behavior. So, hey, feel good all the time.

Want to feel even better, buy organic cotton shirts for baby that are not bleached or dyed. EvokeBaby’s Grow with Me Set

Buy Less But Buy Better. That’s the motto at ElegRoo.

I’m finished quibbling with Goleman. Let’s end on a note of complete agreement: “Green” is best used as a verb. “Green is a process not a status.” We’ve got to be thinking about “greening” every step in a product’s value chain.

Later.ecointelcover3

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Posted in Book Reviews, Gentle Baby & Child | No Comments »