Grass Routes

the key.to Berlin Fashion TV

currently you don’t hear too much here on the blog because we’re putting all our energy in supporting new green fashion events like thekey.to, build a new office, a new website and also need holidays sometimes. Here on this video you can get a glimpse from our thekey.to project and our new office. The sustainable cardboard furniture is done by fairactivities. An even better impression gives the blog post of Sebastian Backhaus and his pictures on flickr. For the German speaking fashionistas among you: Kirstin Brodde published a Green List to help you on the way…

Grass Routes Presents: thekey.to, International Event for Green Fashion & Culture in Berlin

thekey.to is the new international fair for green fashion and sustainable lifestyle. Between 1st and 4th July 2009, a selection of sustainable fashion labels ranging from street-wear to high fashion will be on display in Berlin. The chosen brands are pioneers in fair and ecological production and will showcase innovative design combined with the very highest quality.

The fair itself shows a new direction: all display furniture will be made of impeccably sustainable materials. Thanks to its unique architecture concept, the event will be able to be nearly 100% recycled. And the fair will be about more than fashion. With slow-food gastronomy, sustainable design, organic beauty, cultural highlights, fashion shows, workshops and parties, thekey.to presents the entire progressive lifestyles spectrum.

This event is organized by Gereon Pilz von der Grinten and Rostislav Komitov (creative agency fairactivities) with Frans Prins (Grass Routes Foundation). To put it into Gereon’s words: “global trendsetters today want style with background and a committed attitude. This is exactly what is offered by thekey.to. We are presenting progressive and innovative designs, green avant-garde, which are set to bring about a fashion and lifestyle revolution for the future.”

Frans explains that “thekey.to is the first event to present the whole spectrum of this visionary consumer movement. Designers and buyers in this developing market will gain from the fair an early vision of the latest developments, as well as a place to network and develop ideas. With this event we revolutionize our culture itself. We no longer need lifestyles that destroy our nature and neglect our social values, we need lifestyles based on real sustainability and a sense of quality. thekey.to will be a forum for sustainability. Berlin’s creative climate makes it the ideal city for this fair. Together with Berlin Fashion Week and Bread&Butter, thekey.to will strengthen Berlin as a key fashion spot.”

Between 1st and 3rd July, the fair is reserved for accredited fair professionals and press. 4th July is public day, where visitors can get informed and buy products. The location will be kept a secret from the public up until two weeks before the opening: “we want to increase the excitement, to provoke people in a positive way and to realise an exclusive event”, explains Gereon, “thekey.to is the key to an open door.”

Picture: thekey.to founders Frans Prins, Gereon Pilz van der Grinten and Rostislav Komitov.

Earth Hour: Largest Climate Action Ever

This Saturday the largest global climate change action ever will take place. 2,140 cities, towns and municipalities in 82 countries have already committed to VOTE EARTH for Earth Hour 2009, “as part of the worlds first global election between Earth and global warming.”

For the first time in history, people of all ages, nationalities, race and background have the opportunity to use their light switch as their vote – Switching off your lights is a vote for Earth, or leaving them on is a vote for global warming. WWF are urging the world to VOTE EARTH and reach the target of 1 billion votes, which will be presented to world leaders at the Global Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen 2009.

Let’s see how far we can bring it… 1 billion people joining one action is quite LARGE…

How: switch off your lights for one hour

When: Saturday 28th of March, 8:30PM local time, wherever you live on planet earth. Saturday 28 March 2009

via: Sustainablog

World Water Day: Is Blue The New Green?

Today it’s World Water Day. We all know how important water is for life. Still, the process of privatization of water resources and exploitation of precious water areas for commercial use are ongoing. Who owns and has access to water is predicted to be one of the major topics for this century.

How much water is used to produce your T-shirt? The amount of water used to irrigate cotton is greater than that of all the households worldwide.

Some people say “Blue is the new Green”. This might be true, and the water issue is extremely important to ecology, but it can also become just the new toy for marketing gurus to play with. As green has gone mainstream, blue is just the next thing. Therefore I liked the statement of Nick Rosen who recently told Ode Magazine, that the environmental movement should choose brown as their new color, because the color and the word brown are harder to make sexy.

According to Rosen, green was a word that stood for an era of less materialism and zero growth. “It took us a long time to establish the word, but now it has been hijacked by the people we were trying to distinguish ourselves from. Manufacturers, advertisers, marketeers: They pretend we can live on with our lives the way we did, as long as we check the label. They have made ‘green’ into a fashion item. Now everything is green.” So, brown is the new green . Wait a minute, how many colors are there in the rainbow?

I think the answer is different. Look at the earth, what do you see? Blue. Green. White. Black. Brown. We don’t need a simple color to advertise sustainability. We need awareness and action. And we need to build this movement together, manufacturer, marketeer or old school eco hippy, those distinctions are from yesterday. What counts is what responsibility you take and how you live it.

Also see:

Worldwaterday in Berlin

Blue Planet Project

Do You Design “Open” Already?

Over the last years, Open Source Software has developed from a playground for hackers towards something defining for the mainstream market. But as there’s more areas where copyrights play an important role, there’s more work to do…

Nowadays music, culture, science, agriculture are all frontlines for heavy patent and copyright battles, a struggle between corporations interests and those of smaller organizations, farmers, musicians, and consumers. Often here it’s really about life or death, if medicins are available or not, if one single company can own the copyright of a species or of human DNA.

A lot of young people have grown up witha free availability of information, and apply this towards everything non-material. The future lies in open source and free access, because it’s in the mindset of the youth.

Now, here in Berlin there’s an active open source scene of webdevelopers and people from the cultural scene exchanging their vision and work in this field. Their mission is to create platforms for open collaboration.

Next Thursday in the Newthinking Store there’s a workshop on OPEN DESIGN, organized by Creative Commons and Open Everything, and as their aim is creative collaboration, there might follow a lot of interesting projects.

One of the first collaborations form the designer corner was the cooperation of Open Source Fashion Label Pamoyo and the theatre company Gutestun, with the Open Source Theatre Performance Copy Me (video), which had a premiere in Bordeaux and recently showed in Berlin.

I think there’s a lot of potential for this issue and we will hear more of this. But where’s the fashion scene hiding?

See also:

TAZ article on Copy Me

Nike and Creative Commons

Berlin Vista Social Bar

Wertvoll: New Eco Fashion Store in Berlin

Wertvoll is a new eco fashion store opening it’s doors in Berlin. They advertise with “an innovative and consequent fair trade concept”.

The store hosts a fine selection of eco brands for women, with designer fashion and Germany made knitwear but also brands like Kuyichi, Beyond Skin and the underwear label G98.

Wertvoll is founded by the two young Berliner fashion designers Judith Finsterbusch and Monika Lesinski.

For those interested, the opening of Wertvoll is at Friday 27. March from 2pm.

As also Glore is starting activities here in Berlin this summer, and some more surprises are foreseen, Berlin finally takes it’s steps towards the Berlin summer of love, peace & eco fashion.

The Future of Food

Just food for thought. Watch out: might be a bit radical for your mind. The rest of the film on you tube.

I am going out in the sunshine and play with my daugther… and get some earth and seeds…

via Sound of Sirens

Humana - People to Profit

“People to people” is their slogan. And considering the accusation of Humana being a cult, this slogan gets a slightly different sound. While you think you post your old clothes to charity when donating them to the Humana box, you might actually support a fraudulent cult that exploits both volunteers and people in development countries.

According to Tvind Alert, a Humana critical site, “it’s pyramidal structure, strict heirarchy, all-powerful leader, millennial goals, secretive nature and hostility to outsiders all match classic descriptions of a cult. Under the name ‘Tvind’ or ‘Humana’, it is listed as a cult by the French and Belgian governments and many cult watchdog groups around the world.” The organization also operates under the names “Planet Aid” and “Gaia”.

Peterson, founder of the organisation, has been disappeared for 22 years, and catched by the FBI while living in a Humana funded billionaire’s house near Miami. After courts in Denmark, he’s on the run again and since Jaunary 2009 on the list of Interpol.

The clothing collection is a profitable business. While the textiles are collected for free, the best pieces are sold in second hand stores, and the rest shipped to Africa to sell on the local markets. According to some specialists, the dumping of second hand clothing in developing countries has had a crushing effect on local economies. This is not a Humana problem alone, also more credible NGO’s have been involved in this process. Also, specialists don’t have one standing point there and some still state that sending clothing as aid works.

So, what to do with your next clothing dump? I suggest: organize a clothes swapping party. It’s much fun and you know where your clothes go. And with the rest? Also an NGO label on the container doesn’t give you any guarantee that your clothes are not gonna be sold on a profitable base. In Germany, the organization FairWertung informs about credible organizations and which containers to trust. In the future, I hope I can just bring my old clothes to the nearby climateneutral cradle-to-cradle machine and get fresh underwear out on demand. But yeah, until then we have to cradle to cradle with our bare hands…

also see: Kirstin Brodde, Korrekteklamotten, Sebastian Backhaus

Karmakonsum Goes Social Business

Where last years Karmakonsum Konferenz had a primary focus on LOHAS and marketing, this year the program has a stronger focus on social business, with speakers like Hans Reitz (Mohammed Yunus right-hand) and Peter Spiegel from the GENISIS, a Greencamp that also puts the topic of social entrepreneurship more into light.

Also a special “Sartup Awards” for startup green and social entrepreneurs celebrate their first edition with a Gala party. Startups can apply here until the 19th of April. The winner get’s a price worth 30.000 Euro in business coaching, advertising space and green office equipment.

It is interesting to see that the “LOHAS” topic itself is slightly moving out from the spotlights, and that Christoph and Noel have looked for topics that could be an answer to current economic events.

The Greencamp is organized in the tradition of a Barcamp; which is an open conference form where participants decide together over the program and where everyone can offer a workshop. While the conference has it’s price, the Greencamp and Awards Gala are are free of charge. What about really camping somewhere with the visitors of the camp?

Impressions from last years Karmakonsum conference:

Where’s the Plug?

We’re slightly re-branding our perception of reality. I remember a hilarious moment, having trouble with finding an actual spot, because on “google earth” reality looked different.

We accept this as normal. Thereby we often forge how far the technological and virtual realities we have created re-shape our perception of the world we live in.

The more we’re using new technologies and mix virtual and non-virtual reality, the more we will long for moments we can hide from our over-branded and technology-stuffed world, and get “unplugged”.

This will be a major issue, because as recent science fiction predicts: there might soon be no escape. And: is there still a plug?!?

The Google action is created by artist Filippo Minelli, it is really worth checking the whole series of Google images by Minelli

MC Donalds action by Keim & Zjomo;

Images via Rebel:Art;

Berlin Trainbirds: Make the City Your Livingroom

There’s no escape. About a week ago, some people did a little test for an action called “Zugvögel / Trainbirds”, and said not to publish any materials. But after the action, they where so enthusiastic that they published about the action anyway. And there we go in a day: Toolsforactions, Karmakonsum, Alles was gerecht ist, Nachhaltigkeitsguerilla, etc.

The next Berlin Trainbird will soon take place, be larger, and if you want to join, you can leave a comment here and we will get you in touch with the organizers…

The Hess Man

I tried it out! I’ve been involved in the eco fashion movement in Germany for about two years now, but I actually never tried any product of Hessnatur, one of the pioneering clothing companies in organics.

My friend Noel insisted that I should apply for the testpanel of Hessnatur, and so last Wednesday I had a trip to Hamburg to have a free ride at the Hessnatur shop.

Something Hessnatur is really good at is material quality. They have high standards for keeping the textiles natural and chemical free (higher than some of the eco fashion brands around). And they use quite a range of good, organic textiles.

Something Hessnatur has long been criticized for is style. Obviously, Hessnatur is in a period of slightly redefining it’s image and style, and with recently getting designer Miguel Adrover on board they are experimenting in a new direction. But actually I did not find much of this new approach back in the standard lines at the mens department.

While testing I started to appreciate the classical approach and conservative style, and in the end, I had to make though choices on what to bring home. I choose a jacket (100% organic cotton, made in Turkey), a black shirt (100% organic cotton, made in Macedonia) and a blue shawl (cut off the label, sorry!).

I had a lot of fun trying everything on, cheering with the Hess crew and having a late night hitch back to Berlin.

See also:

Grass Routes Blog on Hessnatur

Hessnatur blog

Grass Routes Becomes Official UN-Dekade Project

Last month, Grass Routes recieved the UN-Dekade “Education for Sustainable Development”. As a young organization in the field we are very happy with this support and acknowledgment of our activities and our organization. The Dekade is given to a large spectre of organizations.

In Germany, the Dekade is implemented by the German UNESCO-Comussion based on the support of the German parliament and coordinated on behalf of the Ministry of Education and Science. This week Grass Routes is project of the week of the German UN-Dekade.

Howdy, we will educate the world till it glows green!

Nike and Creative Commons Launch Open Knowledge Sharing Project on Sustainability

The world is turning upside down. Nike and Creative Commons recently launched GreenXchange, “an open innovation platform that promotes the creation and adoption of technologies that have the potential to solve important global or industry-wide challenges”.

For the movement of open knowledge sharing this is a great step. Nike is one of the first large corporations working with creative commons, an NGO providing licenses and tools for free information sharing. But is this the start of a new era of collaboration in the industry or greenwashing 2.0? Or both? What do you think?

My email to creative commons:

Hi John,

I just read about the GreenXchange project. (…) For the open sharing of sustainability knowledge, this is a great step forward. What is the practical implication of the project, who are you inviting to join this mission? Who’s going to manage the information available?

Personally, I think it would be much better to have more brands on board than just Nike, because for an exchange you need more partners, and because now the action looks too much like a cheap greenwashing trick for Nike, something that could actually damage the image of the project and keep some possible serious supporters out. Even if it is not greenwashing. But generally, I think this cooperation is exiting and I hope other brands and corporations (music industry? medics?) will follow…
Best regards, Frans

BioFach 2009 Revisited

You own a blog? You’re VIP. The BioFach is a very blogger friendly fair. All the privileges of press, our won press centre with high speed wlan, unlimited internet access on the fair, and a Blogger-Gala to keep the community alive. The bloggers meeting had a lot of new faces and some old ones missing; and somehow an overload of men. But the launch of Ökoschlampen.de and the presence of blogger promi Kirstin Brodde made that be durable. I was still missing the BioFach Facebook Lounge and the Green Twitter Zone. But well, even bloggers can be a bit conservative …

I’m back in Berlin and still enjoying the days there. Thanks to Bernd for the amazing Biofach payama party location.

Also check:

- The blogger meeting website including visitors list

- Extensive reports and photos form the Biofach by Sebastian Backhaus

- Möbelmacher Herwig Danzer’s blogged around the clock

- Roland Dunzenforfer’s encounter with Vandana Shiva

- Karmakonsum was a bit lazy this time

(Those where the days…photo by Sebastian)

The Green Movement is a Spiritual Avant-Garde

The BioFach changed. Less people from other regions of the world, a bit more suits and ties, a bit less woolen socks, and a growing scene of young, bright people. Walking around on the fair, it is incredible to see what an auro some people have here. It brings together a worldwide avant-garde, where the organic is more than just green products, but connected to dedication, social grounding, and spirituality.

This is a power hub, bringing together the worldwide front runners in the organic movement, from Renate Kunast to Vandana Shiva. Despite the financial crisis, this movement will grow. And it is vibrant, because it’s an interconnection of production level, marketing, politics, and a spiritual level. It is about community. Some say, it’s a new religion. That sounds scary. But there might be truth in it. And it is good to keep humor, style and party spirit in. That’s what this young generation has to offer. The challenges are big enough.

Photo by Christoph

Blogging from the BioFach organic Fair 2009

What is it like to be on the largest organic fair in the world?

Thursday at BioFach:

13.00 Thanks to Ozan from Foodorama for the hitch to the Biofach!

14.00 Bloggers get a special treatment here and are considered press. New York Times fell down. If all conventional media collapses, all is left is the bloggosphere.

15.00 Christoph from KarmaKonsum makes you go eco 2.0

16.00 Where is the direct connection to nature? The Fair area is large, stands are professional, but while one of the main topics behind the issue is the ecological issue, the topic slides behind.

17.00 Seeing old people is cool, and hey, don’t we know each other from… the internet?

18.00 Found some German green fashion pioneers at 4 square meters. Kirstin wants action. Bernd wants to go.

19.00 Arrived at Utopia. There is free alcohol but no vegetarian food. Protest culture in 2009 looks different then in 1968 and has more corporate sponsors.

00.00 Mantras of Social Fashion. What will be the style when money runs out? Oooohm

Image by Christoph

GLOBERLIN: the Green Lab Office Berlin

Some cool creatives from the sustainability szene are starting a cooperative green office together in Berlin Kreuzberg.

GLOBERLIN is the new work & think space/tank/network for the creative sustainability szene in Berlin. The Green Lab Office Berlin. I am one of the founders and Grass Routes will also have it’s new office there. There’s still some green space to join…

Beta location: Betahaus

Starting date: 1st of March 2009

check the GLOBERLIN Facebook group

Global Twestival for Charity:Water

Today there’s a global “Twestival“, bringing together Twitter communities in over 175 cities around the world for “an evening of fun and to raise money and awareness for Charity: Water“. Charity:water is a project raising money for water wells in developing countries. Pretty smart and forward campaign.

The Twestival in Berlin is taking place at St Oberholz. Maybe see you tonight..

The Yes Men in Berlin

This weekend, the Yes Men are in Berlin to launch their film “The Yes Men Fix the World” at the Berlinale Film Festival. The first screening is on Friday February 6.

The Yes Men also organize a One-Day-Exhibition on the Crash at the Betahaus, a new creative hot spot located in Kreuzberg. The Party there featuring the Yes Men is on Saturday night and it might be worth having a look…

The Yes Men are known for their hilarious political actions , artistic hijacking of international economical meetings and broadcast media. Pretending that they are representatives of large corporates, their work is a sublime play and their off the ground vision on the financial crisis might be as forward and tickling as their political tactics.