Our daily bread, or: Deliver us from evil.

I leave it as the film does: uncommented.

WiS #1: leather.

WiS stands for THE question that made me insecure since I started this blog:
What is sustainable? What is sustainability?

Some things seem quite obvious, some answers are not as questionable as others, such as: cotton produced without pesticides is good. or: to use the bicycle whenever possible instead of the car is good. (yes, I just state these and at this point leave out the "because ..." and all potential additional circumstances that would be to consider).

The above product (mypaperbag via Lilli Green) is not, as the name suggests, made from paper, it is made from leather. Associative chain: papebags are more ecofreindly than plastic bags. cottonbags are even more ecofriendly (are they?). What about a leatherbag... can leather be ecofriendly at all?

First I have to say I am not a vegetarian.

Which means that I am ok with eating dead animals, which includes that I am ok with them being killed for ending up as my food. I am concious about it. For me personally this also includes that I eat meat only once every two weeks or so and if, then mostly bio-certified.

Transferring this principle to leather would mean, that I am ok with products made from dead animals skin. Admittedly I love leather. It is a beautiful strong, soft and natural material. And as I consider it very longlasting and a byproduct of "meat-winning" (I use this term as I am explicitly not okay with what is called meat-(mass-)production) it seems to me to have two sustainable aspects:
firstly it stands against throwaway-culture of cheap and sleazy products and
secondly it is part of the efficient and not thriftless and thoughtless use and spoil of the animal.

You might laugh but I mean it - It makes me think about what I learned about native americans when I was a little kid, how they were respectful with and valued nature (and animals) and were thankful for every bit it provided them.

Of course these ideas have some presuppositions: the animal should not be killed for only the leather. the animal should not have suffered from mass-production-conditions, neither during lifetime nor when being transported or killed.

I could only find one label/certificate (by the International Association of Natural Textile Industry (iVN)) that comes close to my ideas, but it rather focuses on an eco-friendly production-process of the leather and health-standarts for workers. It does not say anything about the "production" of the animal or the endproduct made from the leather...

Do you know more?
and what do you think about leather and it's sustainability in general?

Do it, c'mon, do it.

In view of the current situation in Libya (the green on the right is the flag of Libya) and after a sleepless night about what happens in the world everywhere - I come to you with a demand: Raise your voice!


"Avaaz - meaning "voice" in several European, Middle Eastern and Asian languages - has a simple democratic mission: organize citizens of all nations to close the gap between the world we have and the world most people everywhere want."

As I am sure that you also wish the world to be a better place:
I ask you to join this community.

It sometimes opens your eyes for things going on you wouldn't have guessed (e.g. "corrective rape"), other times it just gives you an easy way to let your voice/opinion on current issues make a difference (e.g. to support the people and the democratic movement in Egypt or against the crackdown of WikiLeaks). You are always free to choose wich campaigns to support and wether you just want to complain and let people in power know about it or if you even want to support (ad-/media-)campaigns (e.g. against stonings) financially. Of course there is also the possibility to suggest campaigns and actions to this huge community.

Sign up with your e-mail adress in the upper right corner of the avaaz-website. Let's start with a first step. And be stunned how many people ALL over the world want the same and can make the whole greater than the sum of its parts!

Light, lighter, the lightest.

by Stamo 

I ♥ silk and silk-likefabrics. The simplest cut is soo elegant in a silky version... silk can be everything, sporty, chic, comfy, bright, light. And I can not imagine anything softer on my skin.

Also I have an incredible crush on pink. Wich I don't understand, as I am not a pinky girl, but it always grabs my attention, I can't help it. And I can admit: A bright strong pink on a boyish cut overall or a minimalistic, pure dress, never combined with anything else but black... that IS something I'd really love to have.