Brian Skerry has been a National Geographic photographer for more than 25 years, focusing on life under the surface of waters around the world. He’s photographed whales, sharks, scallop farms and kelp forests, and through it all, he’s been inspired by what visual storytelling can accomplish.
“Good science and good visual storytelling, and people just sharing what they know, is an important way to move that needle in favor of a healthy future,” Skerry said in a recent interview. “I started diving 47 years ago exploring these waters, and it’s staggering to see just how much it’s changed.”
But Skerry has been alarmed of late by what he’s seen through his camera lens: nothing.
“It’s very hard to tell a story about loss by going out and photographing nothing,” Skerry said, referring to some dramatically different marine habitats. “Going out to some of these places that I describe, they don’t look anything like they used to.”
One way that Skerry is bringing the ocean – and specifically, the Gulf of Maine – to people around the world is through a new three-part PBS series Sea Change, for which he is the co-producer and a photographer. Sea Change examines the history and condition of this 7500-mile-long stretch of water.
One of the Gulf’s historical features is that it is fed by cold water from the Arctic, the warm Gulf stream from the South, and inland rivers that flowed out in the ocean, creating a near-perfect oceanic mix.
“It was formed after the last ice age, after the Laurentian ice sheets retreated,” Skerry said. “It left this perfect recipe of ingredients to create the proliferation of life.”
This life includes not only the lobster and seafood that the East Coast is now famous for, but 3,000 other marine species, not to mention marshes, estuaries and kelp forests. But the other famous fish, cod, from this region, was fished almost to extinction.
“As we’ve overfished this body of water, I think we’ve created a lack of resiliency. It is weaker because of that,” said Skerry.
The overfishing of cod has been well-documented, but in more recent times, climate change has become the more immediate threat to the Gulf. The temperature of the Gulf of Maine water has been heating up faster than 99% of the world’s oceans, a result of glacier melt. This data is expounded on in a recent article Skerry wrote for National Geographic.
“It’s like making a perfect cake. If you change the recipe a little bit, or don’t mix it just right, it changes dramatically,” Skerry said.
Sea Change is a way to visually localize climate change.
“I wanted the audience to understand that climate change is not something that’s far away,” Skerry said. “It’s not happening just in the poles. It’s happening in your own backyard.”
One example covered in the series concerns Eastport, a place where he used to go on dives when he was younger. “You would see big schools of juvenile fish, pollock, codfish on the shipwrecks in Cape Cod Bay,” he said. “We would see invertebrates, sea anemones. There was just that abundance.”
And his experience when he returned to photograph for the documentary?
“I went into that same place, and it was just mud and bad visibility, and hardly any of those animals that I used to see,” Skerry said. “It was very dispiriting. You come out of the water at night or during the day, and you just kind of shake your head at how quickly this all changed.”
Another example of the change in the gulf is the explosion of the green crab population. Green crabs, an invasive and destructive species that feeds on seagrasses, thrive in the milder water. But the documentary puts a more positive spin on the species by showing some of the people who are adapting to climate change.
Mike Masi is a fourth-generation lobsterman who has made the shift to green crab fishing. Once the molting pattern of the green crabs was discovered, they could be fished and sold as soft-shell crabs. These soft-shell green crabs are now turning up on menus in the region.
Sea Change also explores the indigenous population of the region and how clam farming is being affected by climate change.
“Gaining the wisdom from those types of voices and the scientists and other people who have a deep connection to this region helps us understand the natural history,” Skerry said.
Skerry and the crew also took some cameras out to Cashes Ledge, which is 80 miles off the coast of Maine and is known for its healthy kelp forest. The forest there has maintained its health mainly because it’s far enough off the coast.
“The scientists said it was as good as it was in the late 1980s,” Skerry said. “But there were troubling signs. There were these invasive red algae that we were seeing in the coastal forest that helps accelerate the decline of these kelp forests. So, this is a place that remains largely unprotected, and is a place that really cries out for protection.”
And as deep-sea mining begins to become more accepted, it’s places like the Cashes Ledge, and perhaps the 36,000 square miles of the Gulf of Maine at large, that need to be protected against not only climate change dangers, but the forthcoming devastation that will inevitably come from the mineral extraction of ocean floors.
“We’re living at this pivotal moment in history where maybe for the first time, humans understand both the problems and the solutions, and we just need that collective will to move toward the solutions,” Skerry said.
“At the end of the day, I think there is great hope. You know, I think what was exciting and encouraging for me were these people’s stories that, with every one of these characters, you see a resilience, you see a recognition of what’s happening, but also a desire to try to solve the problem.”
The post Gulf of Maine in Peril: PBS Documentary Explores the Ocean’s Threats and Resilience appeared first on EcoWatch.
https://www.ecowatch.com/brian-skerry-sea-change-documentary-maine-ecowatch.html
Curating a conscious home is a thoughtful process involving much consideration — who made my products, how they were made, and what are they made from — and this guide aims to support you on your journey towards finding ethical and sustainable home decor you truly love.
What is Sustainable Home Decor?
Sustainable home decor includes any home decor that is made in a way that takes into consideration both the makers and the planet. Sustainable home decor will be ethically made using eco-friendly and natural materials. Eco-friendly decor will also be produced using sustainable supply chain practices. This includes using renewable energy and recycled or compostable packaging.
While there are numerous sustainable home decor brands, some of which are featured below, first consider what’s already been made in order to prevent contributing to new waste. Secondhand, used, or DIY home decor options are typically more sustainable than buying new.
What is Ethical and Fair Trade Home Decor?
Ethical and Fair Trade home decor is produced in a way that adheres to Fair Trade standards and is, ideally, Fair Trade Certified. Fair Trade means paying artisans and makers a fair, living wage and providing ethical working conditions. Ethical home decor also includes supporting goods made by artisans using traditional heritage techniques and art forms. Many cultures around the world are at risk of losing their age-old artisanal crafts forever in the age of mass manufacturing.
It’s important to note that sometimes a major brand may use an “eco” fiber while still supporting irresponsible labor practices, and excessive production amounts that inevitably lead to a lot of waste. This is not true sustainability in my mind!
Most artisan-made home decor is ethically produced and directly supports the makers. However, it’s important to check if a brand or marketplace is transparent about their business practices to ensure they are ethical or Fair Trade.
Where Can You Find Sustainable Home Decor?
In terms of environmental sustainability, looking secondhand and vintage is always a great first place to look for sustainable home decor.
But if you’ve scoured those options and haven’t found what you’re looking for and/or if you’re looking to financially support artisans and traditional crafts around the globe, this shopping guide is designed for you. You’ll discover many brands with artfully designed and artisan handmade goods for furnishing any space among this list of decor brands.
All of the brands in this guide use natural and/or recycled fibers and avoid the use of virgin synthetics like polyester; however, some brands do use materials that are not the most environmentally-friendly option on the market, such as conventional cotton.
And of course, I wanted to choose brands that followed slow, thoughtful production practices, prioritizing artisan handmade over factory labor and quality over quantity.
So without further ado, here are my favorite small-batch, artisan-made, and ethical home decor brands.
Note that this guide includes affiliate links — as always, we only curate brands vetted for sustainability that we love (and that we think you’ll love too).
1. Urban Natural
Categories: Accent Pillows, Tabletop, Lighting, Wall Art & Mirrors, Blankets & Throws
Eco-friendly home retailer Urban Natural is on a mission to curate high-quality furniture (and other home goods) built with quality and free of toxic chemicals. Urban Natural carries several sustainable home decor brands, including artisan brands Ethnicraft and Jaipur Living as well as ethically USA-made brands Farmhouse Pottery and East Fork.
2. GOODEE
Categories: Pillows, Lighting, Wall Decor, Planters, Baskets, Blankets, Candles
GOODEE is an ethical marketplace featuring numerous sustainable artisan brands and designers. You’ll find a variety of beautifully crafted home decor goods to suit a wide range of styles. Goodee is a Climate Neutral and B Corp Certified company. They publish an annual impact report so you can easily ensure their business practices align with your values.
Our favorite brands on Goodee are Texidors, Baba Tree, Makaua, and Tensira.
3. Healthier Homes
Categories: Rugs, Lighting, Tabletop, Baskets, Wall Decor & Wallpaper
Founded after years running an award-winning healthy home building firm and publishing a book by the same name (Healthier Homes) this retailer is a go-to online destination for finding non-toxic home goods. The eco-friendly home decor on Healthier Homes is primarily made with natural materials like clay, cotton, seagrass, mango wood, and bamboo,
4. Will & Atlas
Categories: Baskets, Tabletop
Will & Atlas is a women-owned small business making most of their homewares from plant materials like jute, palm leaf, and hogla grass. Their natural fiber baskets are flexile but sturdy built to hold blankets, pillows, laundry, magazines, toys, or just to stand alone as a decor piece. You’ll also find jute coasters and placemats in their tabletop collection.
The brand is committed to ethical practices, partnering with nonprofit fair trade artisan groups in Bangladesh and craftspeople in the U.S. to build long-lasting production relationships.
5. Ten Thousand Villages
Categories: Baskets, Pillows, Throws, Candles, Wall Art, Planters & Vases
Founded 80 years ago, Ten Thousand Villages is the original fair trade store. Throughout the decades, the nonprofit business has continued their commitment to fair wages, safe working conditions, as well as sustainability.
As a founding member of the World Fair Trade Organization, with artisans around the world from under-resourced communities. Most of the products they carry are made from recycled, upcycled, and natural materials.
6. MagicLinen
Categories: Curtains, Kitchen Linens
Linen is an exceptional material for home decor — there’s a reason we say “kitchen linens!” It’s natural, beautiful, and is often high quality.
I purchased a set of linen curtains from Magic Linen one year ago and they remain one of my favorite home decor pieces. The fabric they use meets the OEKO-TEX® STANDARD 100, meaning its been tested for harmful substances.
7. Passion Lilie
Categories: Pillow Covers, Table Linens
Passion Lilie is a fair trade fashion and lifestyle brand with ethically made home decor, too. The Fair Trade Verified brand has handwoven cotton blankets, organic cotton kitchen linens, unique ornaments, and hand-dyed throw pillow covers.
Each piece is made by Passion Lilie’s partners in India who pay living wages and ensure a safe working environment. Beyond this, the brand supports efforts to enable artisans to continually develop their skills and creates opportunities for community development.
8. 54kibo
Categories: Throw Pillows, Wall Hangings & Artwork, Mirrors, Baskets, Rugs, Lighting
A destination for modern African artisanal decor, 54kibo curates a stunning selection of ethically made home decor. The pieces on 54kibo are made with time-honored techniques using locally sourced materials with rich histories. The designs are exceptional, but the stories behind them make the pieces beautiful additions to your home beyond the surface.
9. The Citizenry
Categories: Baskets, Planters & Vases, Tabletop, Wall Decor, Mirrors
The Citizenry partners with artisans around the world, ensuring safe conditions, fair wages, and offering grants to their artisan partners so that they can expand their businesses.
Their online collection features small-batch artisan-made home goods made from locally-sourced and natural materials like palm leaves and indigo dyes.
More Sustainable Home Guides:
Sustainable Furniture Brands to Furnish a Conscious Home
Best Eco-Friendly and Zero Waste Kitchen Products
Easy Swaps for a Low Waste, Sustainable Bathroom
The post 9 Beautiful Places to Source Ethical and Eco-Friendly Home Decor appeared first on Conscious Life & Style.
9 Beautiful Places to Source Ethical and Eco-Friendly Home Decor
Take a look at why hemp is heralded as a hero material and discover 14 hemp clothing brands that have tapped into its sustainable potential.
The exploration of fabrics has always been a starting point for sustainable innovation in fashion. After all, fabrics provide tangible proof that change is possible while having a direct impact on the environment in one way or another. Plus fabrics are responsible for an outsized proportion of a fashion brand’s carbon footprint and overall environmental impact, including biodiversity loss and pollution.
So, What is Hemp Fabric?
Hemp is a bast fiber produced from the cannabis sativa plant, where every part of the plant can be utilized for over 25,000 industrial uses including clothing, biofuel, bricks, paper, and textiles.
Contrary to its popular association, hemp is actually the sober sister to marijuana. Unlike its recreational sibling that’s grown for its psychoactive THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) properties, hemp contains less than 0.3% THC, a value that was the driving force behind the legalization of hemp production in the 2018 Farm Bill. So while you can’t really get high from hemp, you can definitely enjoy its material benefits — which are plenty!
What is Hemp Clothing?
The simple answer is that hemp clothes are garments made from hemp fabric! But the important caveat here is that most hemp clothes on the market today are not made from 100% hemp fabric. They are usually blended with other fibers, like cotton.
At this point, hemp fabric manufacturing is not at the scale or technological level that the manufacturing of cotton (the most popular natural material) is, making 100% hemp clothing more expensive to produce. Also, pure hemp fabric is also known to be quite stiff until a couple dozen washes later, so blending it with a fiber like cotton can make it softer and easier to wear on the offset.
100% hemp fiber content clothing does exist, it’s just rare at this point. Though we do think this will change with more sustainable material investment happening in the textiles industry.
Is Hemp Clothing Comfortable?
It depends! The softness of hemp clothing will vary based on how the fabric was produced and if it is blended with other fibers like cotton or lyocell. Pure hemp clothing can be rougher than cotton, but hemp is known to get softer with every wash.
Also, since hemp is a natural bast fiber that comes from the softer parts of the plant’s stalk or stem, it is softer than the coarser leaf fibers.
Can Hemp Clothing Protect From The Sun?
A lesser known benefit of hemp clothing is that it can reportedly even help shield you from harmful UV rays. According to skin cancer research, a fabric’s UPF (Ultraviolet Protection Factor) value is a number that coincides with the fraction of UV rays it allows to pass through and hit your skin — the higher the UPF number, the better the protection.
Research claims that hemp has a UPF of >50 (according to European standards) due to natural pigments and lignin within the fibers, which act as UV absorbers.
Is Hemp Clothing Sustainable?
There are a lot of benefits to hemp clothing. But don’t just take our word for it, we’ve listed some of hemp’s most impressive sustainable qualities below:
1. Hemp is not resource-intensive
Hemp can be grown under a variety of agricultural and ecological conditions and has a capacity to grow rapidly.
Hemp clothing vs. cotton: With a high yield of 250% more fiber than cotton, hemp requires less land to grow, has no need for harmful pesticides or chemicals, and needs as little as 1/3rd of the water compared to conventional cotton. (Though individual use cases may vary based on the region that each of the crops are grown.)
2. Hemp is a restorative plant
Growing hemp can also help contribute to the maintenance of soil quality, courtesy of its anchored roots which prevent soil erosion and nutrient loss.
In fact, research shows that hemp can be used to restore contaminated soils through ‘phytoremediation’ — a process that has proven successful in the early 90s when industrial hemp was planted in some of the polluted Ukrainian regions near the Chernobyl disaster where much of the land was rendered useless. The experiments showed that hemp helped remove radioactive elements from the soil.
3. Hemp can absorb carbon more than other plants
Hem can act as a carbon sink. According to a Cambridge University researcher, a hectare of hemp can absorb between 8-15 tonnes of CO2, giving hemp plants a vital role in reversing carbon emissions.
Impressed yet? Ahead, discover 14 brands that have some of the best takes on this sustainably versatile fiber.
Note that this guide includes affiliates. As always, all brands meet very high standards for sustainability and are brands we love that we think you’ll love too.
Where to Find Sustainable Hemp Clothing
1. Patagonia
Have an outdoor adventure coming up? Run for the hills in some of Patagonia’s functional hemp styles that’ll have you covered no matter what path you set foot on. Whether it’s a jacket, sweatshirt, pair of overalls, or technical pants, these styles are hard-wearing and made to last.
Patagonia stands by hemp as one of its hero fabrics and claims to consciously partner with suppliers that use unique processing techniques to minimize waste. The brand has also created unique performance materials by blending hemp with organic cotton, recycled polyester, and TENCEL
lyocell.
Many of Patagonia’s clothes and gear are sewn at Fair Trade Certified factories that ensure all workers earn a living wage.
Size range: US 0–18
Price: $$-$$$
2. tentree
If you’re on the lookout for easy hemp styles that make you want to lounge around in them all day long but still look cool enough for a coffee run, tentree has you covered. Taking an earth-first approach with everything they do, this Canadian brand has been sowing the seeds of sustainability throughout its operations and supply chain. Their clothes are ethically manufactured and workers are provided with living wages.
P.S. Did you know that the brand derives its name from its carbon offsetting initiative that plants ten trees (ten-tree) for each item purchased?
Size range: XS–XL
Price: $$-$$$
