Ela in Fuerteventura's desert (photo: Timo Jarvinen)

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I tend to judge people for their lack of awareness for Mother Nature. Especially our North American fellows. Why? Because until just recently, they simply were pretty easy victims to judge having an administration in their back that within eight years smashed everything that was built up to sensitize people for our environment so far. Well, after I came home from my February time-out in the United States filled with criticising each and everyone for their ignorant treatment of planet Earth (some of my friends even started calling me ‘Miss Negative’), I thought it was about time to mind my own business for once again and see how good or bad I was doing as far as environmental protection was concerned.
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So I went into the worldwide web cheerfully (as I was a 100% sure my childhood in the middle of Switzerland’s beauty was a free ticket to lifelong environmental consciousness) searching for one of these websites on which you could calculate your carbon footprint. A move I happened to regret some good five minutes later when the website spat out the result of my test… What it said there on my screen made the little prestige I had left for myself go down the drain in one flush. I had hardly ever in my life felt equally embarrassed. I could feel the blush of shame creeping up my face when I slowly looked over my shoulder to make sure non of those oh so stupid Americans that I had just blamed for their ignorance, had sneaked into my room to accumulate evidence for my carbon footprint that was – big surprise – bigger than the US average…
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Dammed! All the convictions I ever vouched for had just become a big fat burden grassing me as the ugly liar, the concept of an enemy of all environmentalists, the show-off that couldn’t even fulfil what she blamed others for. Trying to find the reason for my footprint that had turned from a baby’s into a giant’s shoe within half a year, my thoughts wandered back to a moment I had on a photo shooting with Quiksilver on Fuerteventura. A trip on which I got in touch with the Eco-friendly line of 2009’s summer collection for the first time. I was standing in the dry and waterless nature that is characteristic for the Canary Islands, wearing the Serengeti dress (100% organic cotton) and thinking to myself how ironic it was to pose out in the desert in a dress that had exactly been produced in an effort to prevent the world from turning into the type of drinking-water abandoned wasteland I was finding myself in at that very moment…
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Not that I necessarily would have needed to fly to Fuerteventura to get reminded of how important conscious handling of our resources at least is to me, but sometimes it obviously takes a little more to wake us up. For me, if ever I see the Serengeti dress now hanging in my wardrobe though, I get reminded of how easy I can actually shrink my environmental shoe back to a little size if only I lived conscious and reminded myself every once in a while that…
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→    I could bike instead of drive a car
→    there was no need to fly short distance if there are trains
→    I didn’t need to have my heating on in summer
→    it wasn’t worth being too lazy to separate waste
→    I didn’t need to have the lights on during daytime

→    electronic items had to be connected to the power point only while charging
→    I could turn off the water while soaping

→    I didn’t need Brazilian mangos if there were Swiss apples
→    organic fabrics could be just as trendy as synthetic ones
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…and so on and so forth. The list of possibilities to support a sustainable development in the environmental discussion seems endless. But don’t worry, I’m not into missionary work and I don’t think I can change the world with my drivel, but a look on the Eco-friendly products of the Quiksilver Women’s summer line maybe shows you that you no longer need to dress like a hippie to live less wasteful but more conscious of our environment. Every little bit counts!
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Or with Quiksilver’s words: Don’t destroy what you came to enjoy!
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Ela (who would feel honoured to see the list from above continuing with your comments…)
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Eco-friendly line's Serengeti Dress in hot coral

Eco-friendly line's Kimberley Dress in blood red