Beauty Engineered For Ever: Designed to Save the Environment

Beauty Engineered for Ever believes that being green shouldn't compromise your style or performance. Based in New Zealand, these creative designers bring chic simplicity to their array of environmentally-friendly products. With B_E_E, you can clean-up well and be green too. Not only have they taken the dangerous chemicals out of our common household products, they flaunt easy of use and beauty in design. Boasting New Zealand's Environmental Choice accreditation, B_E_E mixes up ingredients like South Pacific kawakawa, lavendar oil, spearmint, and eucalyptus to create happy household essentials. Their safe and gentle products include laundry detergents and whiteners, multi-surface cleaners, and dish cleaning liquid.

Wild Bunch & Co: Fancy Organic Juice

We love organic products, but when it comes to Wild Bunch & Co, it's the bottle design that really gets us. With packaging designed by Seed Creative Consultants, we're willing to try any of these products, no matter what's inside. Fortunately for us, what's inside will only make us better. The 100% organic juice retailer produces a variety of flavors to keep you happy and healthy. Designed to keep work-harried executives from missing their daily nutrients, Wild Bunch & Co makes juice with 35% more nutrients and vitamins than non-organic equivalents. Drawing from freshly pressed carrots, parsley, spinach, beets, celery, fennel, peas, and parsnips, Wild Bunch & Co juice isn't like your ordinary morning OJ. The company caters to serving bars, spas, offices, and health centers, and offers home deliveries. Unfortunately for most of us, Wild Bunch & Co is based in Singapore.

Avian Fashion Fever: Anunciação Winter 07 Collection

Anunciação is a charismatic Brazilian fashion label that mixes folklore with culture. Between color, fabric, and graphics, Anunciação combines sensual design and childhood nostalgia.

Designer Catalina Estrada mixes her Colombian heritage with Japanese mangas and European art. She creates illusive natural creatures to adorn her whimsical apparel.

This winter, the bird motif is making an appearance throughout her collection. Just as it is taking a turn in many jewelry designs, the bird motif has appeared on many fashion pieces. Catalina Estrada is only one example of an artist infusing her work with the feathered friends. As both delicate ornamental details and bold graphics, her fashions have captured this popular trend. If you’re not lucky enough to live in Brazil, check out the Winter 2007 collection at Anunciação online.

For more, check out Avian Fashion Fever: Handmade Jewelry.

Avian Fashion Fever: Handmade Jewelry

A top trend in fashion for 2007 has really taken flight. The emergence of the bird motif earlier this year has been readily accepted, and designers have been responding with new ways to wear your wings. Part organic form, part simplistic shape, the image of the bird is an excellent choice for accessories. Many jewelers have incorporated feathers, charms, metal cuts, and other bird images into their work. These small and delicate creatures lend a sense of whimsy to otherwise serious necklaces and earrings. Whether cut from metal or etched into porcelain, many pieces combine a vintage feel with modern simplicity. We’ve sorted through our favorite designers and pulled out the best handmade pieces to showcase this popular trend.












Olivia earrings from Bellissima Jewelry Design $41. Sterling silver with olive green swarovski crystal.
Hummingbird Hoop Earrings from Alex Monroe $218. Sterling silver or gold-plated silver.
Fred (Peace in Swedish) Necklace from Madame Bijoux $32. Hand-drawn on acrylic with sterling silver.
Flying Bird Necklace from Dreams and Jewelry $76. Copper with sterling silver.
Loop Sweet Baby Bird Necklace from Sweetberrybird $20. Brass with an aqua chalcedony briolette.












Soaring with Pearls Necklace from ERM Originals $17. Antique brass with pearls.
Swallows Journey Necklace from All Those Threes $30. Brass with turquoise.
For more see Avian Fashion Fever: Anunciação Winter 07 Collection.

Why You Shouldn’t Freecycle

Normally we would promote an opportunity to recycle your old goods into new use. When you have the chance to trade used clothes, appliances, furniture, and even homegrown vegetables with other likeminded recyclers in your neighborhood, usually you should. But the line stops at personal information. Which is why so many people are pulling out of their city’s freecycle network.
In 2003, Deron Beal founded the original Freecycle Network in Tucson, Arizona as a local organization. The group soon became a network popping up in other cities, and before long freecyclers spread across the nation. So far, the groups have been organized online through Yahoo groups. Each has local moderators, but Beal maintained ultimate control.
While freecyclers love saving goods from ending up in the landfill, unwanted advertising and harvesting of user information, is not something most signed up for. So when Beal announced changes were in order, many local freecycle groups began pulling away. The changes included the addition of a link that was said to connect everyone to a new site being created. But the link also took everyone’s email addresses and personal information, and then distributed this information to a third-party site. When groups began challenging the additions, they were deleted from Yahoo. Thanks to tactics like these, many members of the 3.6 million person worldwide organization are now looking elsewhere for their recycling needs. Beal is reportedly creating a new Freecycle website—to go live in November—that would not rely on Yahoo and would give him the opportunity to sell advertising. Other members, in turn, have stated that commerce should not be a part of Freecycle.
In the spirit of keeping groups local, many former freecyclers are now finding renewed strength in new organizations. The ReUseIt Network, with a similar ideal as the Freecycle Network, is seeing a new wash of members joining up to keep community recycling alive. If you want to continue the tradition of sharing quality used goods of all kinds—keeping items that may be of no use to you from ending their lives in a dumpster—then check out the ReUseIt Network to learn how you can start recycling furniture, clothes, and more in your local community.