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SOCIAL
MEDIA SUICIDE
While more than 400 million consumers are active online social network
users, a growing subset are getting off the social media carousel. Many
consumers are quitting online soc nets, like Facebook and Twitter, over
concerns they worsen their offline lives, with some even going full
cold turkey. Free services like Web 2.0 Suicide and Seppukoo (Japanese
word for "suicide") have helped tens of thousands of social
network users completely erase their online profiles. But Facebook isn't
taking it all lying down, blocking the servers of both Web 2.0 Suicide
and Seppukoo, with cease-and-desist letters in the post. So, as online
social networks proliferate to the point of bewilderment, users are
starting to push back, reclaiming some of their personal lives from
the Web's entanglements. They may not be ditching digital friendship
in droves, but they are getting back to good old fashioned face-to-face
interaction. (source: Iconoculture).
CARBON
SAVING WINE
The key to wine may lie in the soil, but it's the container that carries
a heavy carbon footprint. That's why Yealands, a sustainable winemaker
from New Zealand, is producing wine in plastic bottles. Shattering the
shining, purist image of glass, the recyclable PET plastic used in Yealands'
newly launched Full Circle range generates 54% less greenhouse gas emissions
and uses 19% less energy. The plastic bottles boast a weight saving
of 89% over glass, earning them kudos as carbon-saving cargo. To ensure
that the wine quality is unaffected, Full Circle bottles use new DiamondClear
technology, which keeps oxygen out of the wine, and feature best-before
labels advising customers to drink the wine within 18 months. Yealands'
owner, Peter Yealands, believes that plastic-bottled wine is here to
stay: "Tim Atkin, one of the UK’s leading wine critics from
the Observer, has declared war on overweight packaging by vowing to
boycott wines sold in heavyweight wine bottles," he says. (source:
Springwise).
SCENT
OF NOSTALGIA
Recently, several fragrance lines have played on the idea of nostalgia,
real or imagined. For instance, a fragrance range called Histories de
Parfums has produced scents like 1969 to conjure an era of flower powered
revolution. Their site reads: in 1969 the world was forever changed
it was a year evolution, and revolution. We witnessed the first man
walk on the moon; John and Yoko’s inspirational “Bed In”
and a society that began to question the establishment. The Stonewall
Riots pushed for further acceptance, and the Beatles last public performance
marked the end of an era. So what better way to celebrate this historic
year than with Histoires de Parfums provocative fragrance appropriately
named 1969? (source: PSFK).
TRANSFORMING
HOMEMAKERS
There is a new trend for stay-at-home mums who provide wholesome, frugal
and sustainable homes for their families, even going so far as to maintain
their own chicken coops. In a society equating success with large paychecks,
these highly educated women are going against the grain, embodying a
new vision of empowerment, homemaking, selfsufficiency, and sustainability.
It’s a subtle revolution for women, shifting the focus of feminism.
In the traditional definition of “housewife,” a woman primarily
defined herself through her relationship to her house and her husband.
The “femnivore” aims to change all that. Femivorism is grounded
in the very principles of self-sufficiency, autonomy and personal fulfillment
that drove women into the work force in the first place. Given how conscious
(not to say obsessive) everyone has become about the source of their
food — who these days can’t wax poetic about compost? —
it also confers instant legitimacy. Rather than embodying the limits
of one movement, femivores expand those of another: feeding their families
clean, flavorful food; reducing their carbon footprints; producing sustainably
instead of consuming rampantly. What could be more vital, more gratifying,
more morally defensible? (source: NY Times).
