Tips from eco-entrepreneurs

Several sustainable business owners in Toronto shared their thoughts about being resilient and ecologically responsible during the recession.

Natalie Stephenson, owner of eco-fashion store, Heart on Your Sleeve said that the recession is a time for reevaluating her business spending patterns and priorities. She said she’s taking her business online rather than keeping a store in Kensington Market. Stephenson said, “I think the hey-day of consumer products are numbered. People are seeing now that the most important things are not things that you acquire with money.”

Rebecca Sweetman, executive director of The Paradigm Shift Project, makes documentaries about sustainable development projects abroad. She said eco-frugality is “just common sense.” She said being eco-frugal is doing a lot of things your grandmother told you to do, like re-using old tea towels instead of buying consumer products like Swiffer wipes, cleaning out old bottles to reuse them, and growing veggies in your garden.

Another way to save money and energy is by switching from regular light bulbs to compact florescent ones. They last longer and only use a quarter of the energy. The bulbs actually pay for themselves after 500 hours of use.
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Try a twitter search on Eco-frugal:
http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=eco-frugal

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Quoted on this series on Eco-frugality:

http://www.freedomclothingcollective.com/
http://www.heartonyoursleeve.ca/
http://www.theparadigmshiftproject.org/
Food Not Bombs
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Really_really_free_market
http://www.globalaware.net/
http://www.lesliejermyn.com/

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Tags: environmentalism