Lily Inspiration: The Benefits of Buying Local

Victoria, B.C. is a small city that I believe is Green at Heart. 46% of Victoria residents take the bus, walk or ride a bike for their daily commute, and we all live in neighbourhoods that are focused on creating sustainable communities. I think people in Victoria believe shopping locally is a positive choice they can make with tangible benefits for themselves and their city.

Whether it's groceries or accessories, buying from a local source vs. a national (or international) chain makes an impact on greenhouse gases and carbon emissions when examining the true cost of shipping. Also, where an item is manufactured can have a smaller environmental footprint depending on the energy resources consumed in the process. Here in B.C., 86% of our electricity comes from hydroelectric dams, with the remainder powered by natural gas, both of which produce far fewer detrimental emissions than coal burning power plants.

A major benefit to any community is economic sustainability. Local producers and retailers create local jobs and quite often choose to shop locally themselves, helping to support other businesses and investing in community projects that national chains might overlook.

However, I think the most tangible benefit for customers is choice. Local businesses are able to listen to and cater to their customers' requests and provide diversity in an otherwise homogeneous market. Here at Smoking Lily we keep a Request List handy for items we don't have at the moment, and are able to accommodate variations in our products that national chains can't offer. Also, because we care about the quality of our products, we offer a one-year repair policy on everything we make (and we're often able to repair our older products that have seen better days for a nominal cost!). All in all, shopping local is a wonderful way to support your community and environment and get something for yourself that you can't get from the big shops.

Smoking Lily Loves the Environment

I'm not sure if the small, local business model just inherently goes along with environmental awareness in a P.B.&J. kind of way, or if that's just the way we roll here at Smoking Lily--maybe a bit of both?--but I find we've often got "green" on the brain around these parts. In celebration of Earth Day this coming Friday, we're going to feature a number of "eco"-themed posts over the next two weeks on topics ranging from environmentally friendly fabrics to the simple things we do as manufacturers to keep waste in check.

In addition to reading about some of the things we're doing to stay green here at Smoking Lily, you can get more involved by checking out Earth Day Canada's site for listings of Earth Day events happening in your own 'hood. The Queen of Green blog from the David Suzuki Foundation's very own Lindsay Coulter is also a fabulous source of information on all sorts of the little, everyday things we can all do to get more down with Mother Earth (and I just noticed that Lindsay is pictured wearing our very own David Suzuki fundraiser dress in her latest blog post--woo hoo!).

Go, Earth, go!

Green Buttons

Oh, how I love our new(ish) Button Skirt, in all its fabulousness! Between the incredibly charming buttons, the comfort, and the fact that it goes with practically everything, what's not to like? Better yet, it's made from Tencel, an extremely "eco" material.

Tencel is the trademarked brand of Lyocell fiber produced by the Austrian company Lenzig AG, one of the largest manufactures of man-made fibers (such as modal, rayon, and viscose) in the world. Man-made--or cellulose--fibers sort of straddle the divide between natural ones, such as cotton, linen, or silk, and synthetic materials like polyester or nylon. To make a long story short, manufacturers take a natural source of cellulose--for example: wood, bamboo, or eucalyptus--turn it into pulp, then do very unnatural things to it, allowing them to spin the fibers into pretty much anything they want (which explains why rayon, modal, etc., can all look and feel so different from garment to garment). Unfortunately, the systems for processing the fibers tend to be fairly chemically intensive; what makes Tencel so amazing is that Lenzig AG has managed to make the operation a 99% closed-loop cycle. To boot, they even use FSC-certified sources of cellulose grown on land unsuitable for farming!

For anyone interested in learning more about fabric, fashion, and the environment, I highly recommend Future Fashion White Papers, a great collection of essays revolving around these topics.

Happy Earth Day, everyone!