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Anyone afflicted with a bout of nostalgia will tell you how certain smells push them in the long forgotten worlds of past memories- some happy, some sad. Fresh rain on the asphalt reminds me of my adolescent monsoons in Bombay and a pomogrante scented candle from Henri Bendel reminds me of a particularly happy time in my life that is only a faint, hazy memory that I try recalling everytime I light that candle.

I read this fantastic article in BrandChannel today about brands learning to incorporate an olfactory element in their overall experience. Remember those Westin Hotel advertisements promoting their White Tea scent? Even Anthropologie stores have a french chatlet-like feel to it, complete with the music and the amalgamated scent of the soaps, candles and perfumes.

Another example are magazines — esp. fashion mags. I typically relate my copy of Vogue to rich, expensive perfume (even though the strips are only advertisements) I’ve already written about scented credit cards and scented cell-phones in the past, it will be interesting to see how brands, both physical and virtual experiment with this emerging technology.

This also reminds me of a lovely short story I read aeons ago. The story is set in a little town of Europe. Mr. Thimble owned a flailing hotel that losing all it’s customers to his competitor’s hotel that was right down the road. So in an effort to lure back his customers, Mr. Thimble hired the best chef in the country and decided to rename his restaurant to "The Seven Bells," But he asked the painter to draw only six silver bells below the name. When the hotel reopened the next day, people were puzzled about the new name and the bells. Invariably, some would walk inside the hotel to point out that there were only six bells painted and the seventh bell was missing. Once inside the hotel, the delicious smell  from the chef’s kitchen had them extend their stay to lunch or dinner and if they were tourists, they often ended up staying at the hotel. Slowly, the word spread about the food and Mr. Thimble’s six bells became the pride of the town!

You get the idea? (yea, he also went on to live a happy life )

Several clips from “The Inconvinient Truth,” statistics from Columbia uni. professor Jim Hansen and powerful oratory from Al Gore later I emerged out of Town Hall, a changed person. I feel like I am part of something universal, a movement that’s larger than life.

During the elections, I had the opportunity to see John Kerry. He came to my university to encourage students to vote for me and I remember not being impressed with his speech at all. It didn’t move me. But today, sitting on those plush front seats in Manhattan’s Town Hall listening to Al Gore gush passionately about protecting the planet and fighting global warming, I fell deeply in love with this man’s mission, vision and sense of purpose.

Global warming is not a myth. We are witnessing a climactic shift right now. In the last 30 years, the temperature of earth has risen by 1F. And another 2F are in the pipeline. If the temp. on Earth rises anymore –earth’s temperature will leave the climate range it has stayed in since one million years. And when that happens : it will be catacylismic. A 20 metre rise in sea-level will submerge half of Manhattan, 50 million people in India and millions of people elsewhere.
Animals are already migrating north — If global warming continues at the current rate, 50% of animal and plant species will exterminate within the next century.

I urge you to please visit, “www.stopglobalwarming.org” and do your bit.

I will use Al Gore’s introductory remarks to drive him the point:
1) Global warming is real. It is happening. Look around you.
2) We, human beings, are responsible for it.
3) The results are bad, approaching worse.
4) We need to fix it.
5) WE HAVE THE TIME. The window has not closed yet.

Do you remember learning about chloro-flouro-carbons in school? In the 90’s, scientists convinced the nation that CFC’s were depleting the ozone layer. The media paid attention, the government paid attention and the public took action. Result? we won the battle. Within the next decade, the CFC’s problem will be entirely solved. The gases are already on the decline in the environment.

If we could do that once, we can do it again. If we were active once, we can once again find the perseverence to believe in this cause. If we need to sign a petition, raise a protest or lobby the government– we can do it. Because without the government’s support, it is a lost battle. If you want to know why, visit the sites I mentioned and use your common sense.

Before we hit an irreversible change in climate, it’s time to renew the political will of Americans. And one more request: watch the Al Gore movie, “An Inconvinient Truth.” He is going to release the powerpoint presentation of his movie under the Creative Commons Licsence and allow users to use his presentation in our voices. So we will soon have that available too.

We have the tools, we have the determination and the will power– all we need to do now is act on it. And collectively if we try, there is something each of us can do to save our planet.

1) Become vegeterians. Or atleast change your eating habits and eat lower down the food chain. Believe it or not, it helps conserve the environmental balance.
2) Use car-pools. Or buy hybrids. Or use public transportation. I do not own a car and do not intend to. Partly because I am lazy but mostly because it is one less contributing to pollution and traffic.
3) Save paper, save electricity. Don’t keep your chargers plugged in if you aren’t using them. Little things — just pay attention around you.
4) Leave me a comment– tell me how YOU are doing your bit.

***

What we believe, defines us. My moment of clarity came one afternoon in Florence. Florentine leather wholesalers fiercely lured us into their showrooms and showed us their varieties of leather. “Feel this,” he said, thrusting a beautiful, buttery soft violet leather coat in my direction. “This is newly-born lambskin. Touch.. touch.. this is so soft.”
He had leather coats of every imaginable animal, in every imaginable stage of growth. I was repulsed. “Baby calfskin, cowskin, baby lambskin….”
Gory images of dead animals being skinned for the coats stacked precariously in the 1000sq. ft showroom flashed in my head one after another. I could not bear to stay there anymore. I had bile rising in my stomach.
Ironically, Florence killed my fascination with leather.

It is difficult to stay true to my ideals and beliefs especially when a lot of what I do is so closely connected to the fashion industry. BUT, but BUT– you do what you can, when you can and how you can. It’s not an SAT exam, no one’s watching you, and no one’s holding a gun to your head. We may be long dead before the climate takes a turn for the worse, but our children will be. So let’s do what we can, let’s spread the word, let’s believe.

Al Gore narrated an interesting anecdote. He said, in Chinese, the word Crisis is represented by two symbols plugged together. The first symbol by itself stands for danger and the second symbol by itself stands for opportunity. So danger+opportunity=crisis.

I am a part of the solution. Will you join me?

A new wave of thinking has gained more tangibility in  recent years and everyone is jumping in to find a way to contribute to this Viridian culture. Whether it is  Steven Speilberg’ and Tom Hanks driving Toyota Prius’s, magazines like Elle and Vanity Fair producing green issues or designers like Jamie Salm adapting a sustainable, responsible approach to his products — for once, joining the trend and going where the river flows is not a bad idea.

I first met Jamie Salm at a Dan Pink speech in Philadelphia last year. A soft-spoken youth, with piercing intelligent eyes, Jamie’s face or name (pronounced as Hay-me)is hard to forget. Still a budding journalist with no outlet for *my desire to contribute*, I scribbled his number on a spare sheet and tucked it into the back-folds of my purse. I promised I would call him for an interview soon.

Jamie, a Columbian native and an industrial design graduate from Philadelphia’s University of the Arts, started MioCulture in 2001.Founded on strong principles of sustainability and eco-intelligence, his products demonstrate responsible thinking and environmental advantages. Like the reusable tiled wall-paper made of waste or the multi-use Bale chairs. The climb has been steep and rough– but today MioCulture boasts of an impressive portfolio having designed for Bloomberg and Anthropologie.

I pulled out the number today and gave Jamie a call — here’s what the brillaint designer had to say.

StyleStation: Were you always environmentally conscious?
Jamie Salm: No. Not in the sense I am now.

StyleStation: What changed you? What made you re-consider your options and decide on your current design philosophy? Was there a defining moment?
Jamie Salm: There were many defining moments. All economic acticity has ecological impact. There were several projects I did as a student in school that made me realize the very importance of sustainable design in our daily lives. (His college thesis was, "furnishings made of waste-paper)  And after that, it was just a matter of common sense. You know? When I was thinking what am I going to dedicate my design to… it was a obvious choice that it had to be eco-friendly. That it had to be responsible.

StyleStation: Has it been difficult to sustain your business because of your philosophy? Were you ever forced to compromise?
Jamie Salm: At times it is difficult to explain to people my ideas and what I am doing. But I understand that people haven’t had the opportunity to look at the world the way I have. My education, my experiences…. So it becomes a matter of working within their frame. Its not as much about telling them what they are doing is wrong, but its more about encouraging them to do right.

StyleStation: There has been a major shift in the collective consciousness of the design and architectural community about sustainability and responsibility in the last couple of years. What caused it?
Jamie Salm: We opned shop in 2001 and our first collection of products featured in 2003. During tha time, there was not as much retail-based interest in sustainability. There are several reasons why this shift has occured. First off, it has to do with the perception of value of a thing. When designers are designing something, they think, how do I add value to this? It is possible to create anything today– the challenge lies in how we create it, in asking.. why should we make it? Ethical questions about the products have become more important than the product itself.
Ofcourse function plays an important role but now designers are thinking — if I can choose to make something, why not make it better? why not make it eco-friendly?
And it’s not about feeling guilty, it is about making your contribution.

….. whats your contribution?

As a little girl, I hoarded those wispy polythene bags. Going shopping with mom was a treat – I got to add those plastic bags to my collection. The pretty pastel colors were probably why I was so fascinated with those bags. During the early 90’s, my school adapted the recycle-rejuvinate policy and I immersed myself in C.A.R.E (Charlesian Association for Rejuvinating Environment) I can’t remember how exactly I disposed the polythene bags, but I did. And I grew a garden with other C.A.R.E girls on the terrace of my school. (Our garden was washed out one particularly rainy night) But even now when I go to Whole Foods, I insist on using a paper bag or often, carry my own cloth bag.

I was bemused when I read this article on BBC . Anita and Shaleb Ahuja employ slum-swellers to collect discarded polythene bags from the dumps. After cleaning, these bags are molded together into thick plastic sheets which is later used to make those trendy bags pictured above.
Will women buy them? I hope so! This humble bag makes a statement on a nation’s conscience that those $1000 Prada and Louis Viutton bags can only aspire to.

Didn’t we learn in third grade geography and plastic bags threaten the flora and fauna? Birds choking to death by having their beaks and feet entrapped in plastic bags. Cows dying as result of consuming toxic plastic waste — every week Indian newspapers carry such reports.
In 2000, about eighty to hundred cows died everyday in Lucknow because of consumption of plastic bags. Early this year, there were reports of 2-25kg of plastic discovered inside bodies of dead cows in Gujarat.

By 2010, India will be world’s 3rd largest consumer of plastic and no surprises, 50% of the plastic is used for packaging purposes. In the 1996 waste mangement meeting of the Ministry of Environment and Forests, a buy-back policy was suggested to plastic manufactures but the idea was rejected. The minutes of the meeting reveal that plastic manufactures simply did not want to accept any responsibility for the waste it produced. But a decade later, there is still no effective solution for the tonnes of plastic waste produced each day.

Environmental issues have been tossed around carelessly in parliamentary debates since ovre a decade. In 1996, Himachal Pradesh became the first state to pass a “Non-Biodegradable Waste Act,” that bans the use of plastic bags in the state. Goa, Karnataka, Kerala and Sikkim also have restrictions on the use of plastic. Last year, the government of Maharashtra ordered all plastic-producing units (1000 units in Maharashtra alone!) to shut plants within a month. A brilliant move but hopeless timing — 1 lakh people left jobless.

But change happens at a microlevel, in this case, maybe the Ahuja’s are the torch-bearers for this predicament. By employing slum-dwellers, the Ahuja’s are not only generating employment but doing their bit to reduce an iota of waste from the choking, congested, about-to-explode city of Delhi. This solidarity for a cause and this contribution towards humanity is exemplelary.

Hopefully, the Indian Ministry of Culture will realize the worth of their cause and grant them a well-deserved “craft” status. (The Ahuja’s run a non-profit and if their skill is recognized as a craft, it will be available to plenty government sanctions and funds)

Other References
Indian Express
Bbc
Mindfully Org