We’re becoming increasingly aware of the implications of our actions and the direct implications to our environment. We shop more wisely (organic, locally, etc.) and watch our energy use.

But in the arena of jewelry, many of just don’t realize the ecological implications. Materials such as moissanite (a diamond alternative that doesn’t harm the environment) and recycled metals are becoming increasingly popular but still fall a bit under the radar.

Here’s a little more info. The next time you want to buy a piece of jewelry, consider some of these smart alternatives:

Traditional mining practices for gold can cause big environmental problems for communities around the excavation site along with unsafe work conditions and extremely low wages. It’s a complex problem that has gone on for years and finally is beginning to be addressed.

New choices are available for what some call green gold or ethical gold. Understanding and exploring our best jewelery choices can be found when you check out dirty gold.

• Keeping the peace with diamonds and semi precious stones.

Beautiful gemstones have been sought after for thousands of years and their beauty and value have created benefits for many people but also has brought about some very real problems for those caught up in the violence that can surround something of great value.

Conflict diamonds have been in the spotlight for several years because of their contribution to increasing fighting and violence in regions that have already suffered enough.

You don’t have to give up owning diamonds. Learn what to look for so you can enjoy the beauty of these stones without the guilt.

• Everyone benefits from fair trade jewelry.

The big focus in the jewelry industry has been on gold and diamonds but that is only part of the picture. What about other mined gems and minerals? Are they being sourced ethically and with concern for the environment?

Some companies are addressing this but it has become a focus of some companies that create fair trade jewelry. Here a concern for the environment and concerns for the women, men and children from around the world that work to fabricate all different kinds of jewelry come together in the creation of eco friendly jewelry. Problems of poor pay, unsafe working conditions or unfair treatment are not uncommon and are beginning to be addressed.

Look for companies that provide fair made, eco friendly and socially responsible fair trade jewelry.


• Recycled jewelry does it all from elegant to fun.

From recycled gold to recycled paper, jewelry designers are creating beautiful and creative eco jewelry by reinventing what was old or unusable. Fine jewelers are giving new life to old gold and gemstones while creating elegant and stylish pieces to please even the most discriminating shopper.

Then there are those who turn trash into treasure and create fun, fresh and unique designs. Many different styles can be found online. Locally look to shops like Whole Foods or other small stores that carry handcrafted items.

To read more about this exciting new trend in jewelry check out recycled jewelry for more info and tips on where to shop.

Whatever you choose you are sure to be making an eco fashion statement of not only beauty and style but as someone who cares about making purchases that actually help people and the environment.

Your next trip to the jewelry store may have you looking at jewelry in a whole new light. The choices are yours to make and with options like these eco jewelry looks like a glittering solution.

Source: Natural Living for Women

Oh, our fragile little planet. How does a delicate butterfly stand a chance? This story shows that butterflies carry strength in numbers…and sheer, magical beauty:

MEXICO CITY — The number of monarch butterflies migrating from Canada and the U.S. to Mexico has increased this year, a hopeful sign following a worrying 75 percent drop in their numbers last year, experts reported Monday.

The total amount of forest covered by the colonies - millions of orange-and-black butterflies that hang in clumps from the boughs of fir trees - more than doubled from last year’s historic low.

But concerns persist about the monarchs’ long-term survival, because their numbers remain well below average.

This winter, there are 9.9 acres (4 hectares) of colonies, more than double the 4.7 acres (1.9 hectares) last year, the lowest level since comparable record-keeping began in 1993.

“These figures are encouraging, compared to last year, because they show a trend toward recovery,” said Omar Vidal, director of the conservation group World Wildlife Fund Mexico, which sponsored the study along with the government Commission on Natural Protected Areas and the cell phone carrier Telcel.

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/02/14/2066404/butterflies-make-partial-comeback.html#ixzz1E2fRtYqE

Considering the abundance of wealth in pro sports and the price of a ticket to a football game, exorbitant, it’s nice to read about a couple who have a chance to go to the biggest football game of all, even though they’re homeless.

Ouida Wright is getting a break from her life at a Wisconsin homeless shelter to jet off to Dallas with her boyfriend to catch the Super Bowl.

Wright, of Green Bay, Wis., won two tickets, hotel accommodations and travel expenses from the Dallas Convention and Visitors Bureau in a contest that involved uttering a secret phrase — “Have you been to Dallas lately?” — to a “mystery man” walking around Green Bay, according to Fox 11 of Green Bay.

Wright said she and her boyfriend, Aaron, have “lost everything” and have been at the shelter for two months. They had just finished lunch at a soup kitchen on Saturday and were going to walk around Winterfest in search of some free fun, she told the channel.

She learned about the contest when people began to ask the couple if they had been to Dallas. Wright decided to give it a try, and on her fourth query, she’d found the mystery man.

“I thought it was a joke,” she said in an interview with Fox 11. “I’m homeless. Let’s face it. I thought he was just messing with me.

“And then we saw the cameras,” she said. “I just thought, oh my gosh. … We won Super Bowl tickets. It doesn’t get any more amazing than that. We had 90 cents in our pocket, and we have won a package that people would have offered thousands and thousands of dollars for.”

For Aaron, described as a fan who “bleeds green and gold,” it’ll be the trip of a lifetime.

“Ever since I was young, I always wanted to go to a Super Bowl with the Packers playing,” he said in the interview. “I’m still in shock over it.”

Wright, who has four children and used to live in Hawaii, said she’s never been to a football game. Her family used to gather outside a Kmart to listen to them.

Now, she’s thrilled to be heading south this weekend.

“What better than a couple in a homeless shelter,” she said. “Not that we’re more deserving, but … we’re lucky to get a can of soda or a movie. And we’re going to the Super Bowl.”

Source: AOLNews

Yes, I realize we don’t all experience Fall in the traditional orange and yellow leaf falling and chilly air way. But collectively we can appreciate the wonder of this time of year, even symbolically.

The foliage has been losing its freshness through the month of August, and here and there a yellow leaf shows itself like the first gray hair amidst the locks of a beauty who has seen one season too many.  ~Oliver Wendell Holmes

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.  ~Albert Camus

It was one of those perfect English autumnal days which occur more frequently in memory than in life.  ~P.D. James

Bittersweet October.  The mellow, messy, leaf-kicking, perfect pause between the opposing miseries of summer and winter.  ~Carol Bishop Hipps

Delicious autumn!  My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.  ~George Eliot

Winter is an etching, spring a watercolor, summer an oil painting and autumn a mosaic of them all.  ~Stanley Horowitz

No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace
As I have seen in one autumnal face.
~John Donne

Besides the autumn poets sing,
A few prosaic days
A little this side of the snow
And that side of the haze.
~Emily Dickinson

October’s poplars are flaming torches lighting the way to winter.  ~Nova Bair

falling leaves
hide the path
so quietly
~John Bailey, “Autumn,” a haiku year, 2001, as posted on oldgreypoet.com

October gave a party;
The leaves by hundreds came -
The Chestnuts, Oaks, and Maples,
And leaves of every name.
The Sunshine spread a carpet,
And everything was grand,
Miss Weather led the dancing,
Professor Wind the band.
~George Cooper, “October’s Party”

Youth is like spring, an over praised season more remarkable for biting winds than genial breezes.  Autumn is the mellower season, and what we lose in flowers we more than gain in fruits.  ~Samuel Butler

Everyone must take time to sit and watch the leaves turn.  ~Elizabeth Lawrence

A great piece about the power of a little generosity and ingenuity. Check out the Facebook page at the end to see how you can pay it forward too!

It all started with a trip to Trader Joe’s. Jenni Ware had just rung up her groceries, which came to a total of $207. But as she reached into her purse, she discovered that she’d left her wallet at home.

Ware was about to go home grocery-less when she received a kind offer from the stranger in line behind her, a woman named Carolee Hazard. Hazard offered to pay Ware’s entire bill, simply asking her to send her a check to cover the cost.

The next day, Hazard received a check for $300—$93 more than she’d lent to Ware.

“I didn’t know what to do with the money,” Hazard told USA Today. “I’d thought to mail a check back to Jenni, but in the day and age of Facebook, I turned to my friends to decide what to do with the money instead,”

A friend suggested donating the cash to charity. Hazard thought that was a great idea, and selected the Second Harvest Food Bank, matching the $93 with an additional $93 of her own.

Several of Hazard’s friends were so inspired by her actions that they decided to make their own $93 donations. Soon, their friends were following suit. The group of philanthropists created “the 93 Dollar Club,” and a Facebook page to go along with it. A year since that fateful day at Trader Joe’s, the club has raised more than $100,000 to fight hunger in America.

Now that their story is getting so much attention, Hazard has a bold new goal: doubling donations to $200,000. Want to help? Check out the Facebook page for more info.

Source: Gimundo

This summer, my garden has provided me with such pleasure. I’m not a great gardener. Heck, I’m not even a good gardener. But somehow, herbs managed to grow as well as some carrots, tomatoes and…weeds. Lots of weeds. Here’s a young girl who took her gardening a bit more seriously:

Alexandra Reau, of Petersburg, Mich., tended to her rainbow chard.

Lawn mowing and baby-sitting are standard summer jobs for the enterprising teenager. Alexandra Reau, who is 14, combines a little bit of each: last year, she asked her dad to dig up a half acre of their lawn in rural Petersburg, Mich., so she could farm. Now in its second season, her Garden to Go C.S.A. (community-supported agriculture) grows for 14 members, who pay $100 to $175 for two months of just-picked vegetables and herbs.

While her peers are hanging out at Molly’s Mystic Freeze and working out the moves to that Miley Cyrus video, she’s flicking potato-beetle larvae off of leaves in her V-neck T-shirt and denim capris, a barrette keeping her hair out of her demurely made-up eyes. Who says the face of American farming is a 57-year-old man with a John Deere cap?
Read more at The New York Times

I wanted to share a recent email from a friend of mine, who has been making some definite eco-friendly changes in her life:

I haven’t bought new clothes in years! And as a lawyer who frequently must dress to impress, you’d think this would be hard, right? Not at all. I have two thrift stores in my areas that I “pillage” every few months. I find designer names occasionally or at the very least, a simple, elegant and professional outfit. The funny part is, I’m often complimented on my clothing.

The way I see it: there’s enough clothing on this planet. Why buy new stuff? Use what’s out there. I also really enjoy going to second hand stores: I feel like I’ve really scored when I find something cool and the money I save can go toward things in my life I genuinely need.

This philosophy has also transferred to other aspects of my life. I just repaired an appliance that I normally would have tossed  (it was so simple.) I don’t feel the need for “new stuff” as much in general. I feel alright with what I have.

Michael J. Fox continues to be an inspiration to all of us, with his unbeatable attitude and tireless efforts put forth toward his cause and his disease, Parkinson’s Disease.

Michael J. Fox recently granted the wish of Gideon Strohaver, a 16-year-old from Michigan suffering from cystic fibrosis, by spending some quality time with him at the Central Park Zoo in NYC where they bonded over being “Incurable Optimists.”

Gideon caught Michael’s “The Incurable Optimist” special on television in his hospital and his teacher referred him to the Kids Wish Network in hopes Gideon could meet his hero Michael.

His wish came true and his family went on a special trip to NYC.  Gideon and Michael spent a day together at the zoo and Michael and his family were given tickets to the premiere screening of Shrek Forever After at the Tribeca Film Festival!

“He [Michael J. Fox] was so nice,” Gideon’s mother Kim said. “They just talked and talked as the zoo people kept bringing in animals for them to meet and pet. The one I think Michael and Gideon enjoyed most was the hissing cockroach. They both really enjoyed petting it and listening to it hiss.”

“He [Michael J. Fox] was just so sincere and so sweet. He even told us to call him Mike. He was just Gideon’s new friend, Mike,” she added. “It was a lot more than we ever expected. My daughter Olivia put it best when she said it was an ‘over the rainbow wish.’”

Source: OK!

Here at Only Positive News, we’ve talked about forgiveness a lot - and it’s for a good reason. Many people get stuck in a state of anger and pain in their lives. It’s hard to see the positive when you feel mired in the negative.

These techniques are deceptively simple but I like them for just that reason. Sometimes forgiveness is simpler than we think. Or we forget that there are actually techniques that can help us move forward today.

1. Allow yourself to experience anger, but don’t hold onto it for months or years on end. When the anger starts to consume you, you’ve held onto it for too long.
2. Express your feelings in a positive way through writing a journal or talking to a professional, close friend or family member who can help you make sense of the situation.
3. Try to step into the shoes of those who hurt you in hopes you’ll see the situation from their perspective.
4. Write a letter about your feelings to the people who hurt you. Using “I feel” or “I felt” are productive ways to start sentences.
5. Most importantly, have patience with yourself: “Remember, forgiveness doesn’t have to happen in a day.”

Like the simple but effective yogic advice to “be kind, starting with yourself,” we can always benefit from being reminded of these basic, healthy premises.

Source: YourTango.com

Take a look at this fact:

Worldwide, women receive only about 5 percent of agriculture extension services and own about 2 percent of land worldwide.

An obvious discrepancy, this article proves that when female farmers are empowered, it benefits the community as a whole.

Although women farmers produce more than half of the food grown in the world-and roughly 1.6 billion women depend on agriculture for their livelihoods-they are often not able to benefit from general agriculture funding because of the institutional and cultural barriers they face-including lack of access to land, lack of access to credit, and lack of access to education. Worldwide, women receive only about 5 percent of agriculture extension services and own about 2 percent of land worldwide.

But research has shown that when women’s incomes are improved, when they have better access to resources like education, infrastructure, credit, and health care, they tend to invest more in the nutrition, education, and health of their family, causing a ripple effect of benefits that can extend to the entire community.

In Kibera - sub-Saharan Africa’s largest slum in Nairobi, Kenya, where anywhere from 700,000 to a million people live - women farmers, with training and seeds provided by the French NGO Soladarites, are growing vegetable farms in sacks filled with dirt. More than 1,000 women are growing food in this way. During the food crisis in Kenya during 2007 and 2008, when conflict in Nairobi prevented food from coming into the area, most residents did not go hungry because there were so many of these ‘vertical farms.’

In Zambia, Veronica Sianchenga, a farmer living in Kabuyu Village, saw improvements in her family’s quality of life when she began irrigating her farm with the “Mosi-o-Tunya” (Pump that Thunders), a pressure pump that she purchased from International Development Enterprises (IDE). In many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, the task of gathering water - in the driest parts of the continent this can require up to eight hours of labor per day - usually falls to women.

Explaining that her children are eating healthier, with more vegetables in their diet, Mrs. Sianchenga adds that she is also enjoying increased independence. “Now we are not relying only on our husbands, because we are now able to do our own projects and to assist our husbands, to make our families look better, eat better, clothe better - even to have a house.”

In Rwanda, the Farmers of the Future Initiative (FOFI) helps to empower young girls and other students by integrating school gardens and agriculture training into primary school curriculums. More than 60 percent of students in Rwanda will return to rural areas to farm for a living after graduating, instead of going on to secondary school or university. While both young boys and girls benefit from the training, it is especially important for young girls to learn these skills, says Josephine Tuyishimire, so that they can avoid dependence on men for food and financial security. And so they can share what they learn.

Equality isn’t just a women’s issue, it’s a world issue.

Source: WorldChanging.com