Celebrating Earth Day in Style

Top Five Ways to be greenCHIC

1) Edit your closet.With the help of a consultant or on your own, take the time to go through each item of clothing in your closet. Remove those items that don't flatter, don't fit, look worn or, for whatever reason, you simply don't wear. This excess in your closet just prevent you from seeing and wearing the good stuff! Also take out items that need to be repaired and put them in a pile to take to your tailor. Either donate or consign your edited items. In other words, when it comes to your closet, less is more.

2) Recycle your clothing.
According to the Council for Textile Recycling, Americans discard 11.9 million tons of clothing, shoes and textiles each year. Rather than throw that torn t-shirt in the trash, donate it to a group such as The Salvation Army or Goodwill, which sells such items to fabric recycling groups. Or, see if your item falls into a category of a few clever companies who have devised ways to bring items too shabby for donation full circle, keeping them out of landfills. One such company is Nike, who will accept athletic shoes of any brand, turning them into "Nike Grind," a material used in sports surfaces (basketball courts, running tracks) donated to children's organizations. Another is Patagonia - drop off used Patagonia or Polartec fleece garments at a Patagonia store or mail them to the company's service center, and they'll recycle the old fabrics into new clothing. Council for Textile Recycling www.weardonaterecycle.org                                                         Nike Reuse-A-Shoewww.nikereuseashoe.com                                                                     Patagonia Common Threads Garment Recycling www.patagonia.com/recycle

3) Use a greener dry cleaner.
Even better, try to avoid dry cleaning as much as possible. My clients have heard me lecture about the evils of conventional dry cleaning, as it is both bad for our clothes and the environment. The standard solvent is perchloroethylene (PERC), a central nervous system depressant that is listed as a hazardous air pollutant under the federal standards. I advise that clothing be immediately removed from the plastic bags, so the chemicals won't be held in and damage your clothing even further. However, the PERC will slowly be released into the air in your home. So the best solution is to ditch your conventional dry cleaner altogether. Spot clean or machine wash when you can, and if you must dry clean, a less toxic alternative is a GreenEarth dry cleaner, a silicone-based solvent used in modified dry-cleaning machines. To find a GreenEarth cleaner near you, go to www.greenearthcleaning.com.

4) Be material-istic.
Choosing eco-friendly fabrics is important not only to the environment but to your health. Take cotton, for example - you've seen all those commercials portraying cotton as the "feel good" fabric. Well, it's actually an environmental disaster. Growing conventional cotton is THE most pesticide-intensive process in the world. Only 3% of the world's farmland is used for growing cotton, yet conventional cotton uses about 24% of the world's insecticides and 11% of the world's pesticides (50 million lbs. in the US alone) - which permeate the air, damage the soil and seep into the water supply. All of those chemicals in the field translate to about a third of a cup of chemicals (which include such known cancer-causing agents as cyanide, dicofol, naled, propargite and trifluralin) on your cute little cotton tee. So...opt for organic cotton, which is becoming more available in the marketplace. Other eco-friendly fabrics include silk, cashmere, linen and wool. (For green goods, visit Molly Green boutique in Homewood or check out www.greenwithglamour.com.)

5) Bag the shopping bags.
Shopping bags, both paper and plastic, are bigger environmental offenders than you realize. Recycle your bags and/or reuse them by taking your favorite one with you on your shopping trip for all your purchases. Even better (since many of those high-end bags are made of a laminate paper-plastic combo and cannot be recycled), give up bags completely and carry a chic tote in which to bag all of your buys.