What the Frick is Fracking?

Fracking.  Ever heard of it?  It's the hot-button issue in the natural resource world.  We believe that however your opinions end up, before you exert your opinion, your purchasing decision or heaven forbid, your vote, then you should know a little about the issues at hand.
The issue with fracking, which apparently is a form of, a part of, or the actual process of, drilling for natural gas, is that it may be contaminating ground water.  This is an issue because we drink water from ground sources (in case you didn't put that together).
The oil and gas industry will tell you it a highly regulated industry and process that is as safe as anything else ( like the BP oil disaster?  Sorry; couldn't resist).  Environmentalists will say it is a process that is detrimental to our health, contaminating water and air.
We could write on and on, citing different points of view, but our real goal is to educate and allow the reader to decide for themselves what they believe to be the truth - which often lies somewhere in the middle.

Check these links for additional information and remember, true power lies in the power of knowledge.
http://ow.ly/6pj3E 
http://www.gaslandthemovie.com/whats-fracking
http://ow.ly/6pj7w

5 things you can do this Earth Month

Earth Day, in case you didn't know, is April 22.  This is kind of like all those other "stop & think" kind of holidays:  pause for one minute and think about the meaning of the day.  We could go on a Wikipedia definition of what Earth Day is (Founded in 1970 to promote awareness and appreciation for the Earth's environment - actual Wiki definition), but let's focus on what is means.


What Earth Day means to us is that there are folks out there who know that without a healthy earth, there will not be healthy people living on it.  That's kind of a fact, really.  So, one day of the year, the goal of Earth Day is for us to screw our heads back on straight and come up with a few ways to try harder to do our part to take care of our piece of the planet.  That's right, where you live, work and play is your little piece of the world to do something positive.  You can do it - we all can!  Just start with that little piece. 


Since we're all busy and maybe not all of you are full blown tree-huggers, we've formed a little list of ideas to get you started.  Feel free to pick a couple and get started this weekend:

1.   Switch paper products to 100% organic content.  This is an easy one: you can find these items (toilet paper, paper towels, copy paper, napkins) at just about any grocery store.  25% of all trees are chopped down to make paper products.  Yuck.
2. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle...in that order.  That means buy less (except for your EcoChics Earthwear apparel, of course) and learn to re-purpose items you have.
3. Reduce your water consumption.  You could take shorter showers, turn it off when you brush your teeth & wash your car at the car wash.
4. Be aware of products with Palm Oil in them.  This is a lengthy one, so at your leisure:  www.theproblemwithpalmoil.org.  This is about the biggest environmental issue on the planet. No kidding.  We'll have a full report in late summer when one of the EcoChics trots off to Borneo to witness first hand the beauty and destruction.
5. Reduce your consumption of fossil fuels - condense your car trips, stop frivolous car idling, turn off lights at home.

Any or all of those ideas should get you off to an eco-fabulous start!