With the warmer weather (89 degrees for us today) comes the season of the sustainability fair.

Last Fall I went to the national Green Festival with Real Diaper Association and Mothering Magazine. While I can’t deny that it was great to see what the bigger national companies are doing to promote greener living, I find myself more excited about my local sustainability fair, Live Green in Salt Lake City, which is coming up in a couple of weeks.

Rather than a focus on the tightly LoHaS marketed national brands, I get to see and chat with the same people who cook food I like to eat, who grow the plants I put in my yard, who write articles I read, and even people with whom I sit through meetings as we plan local educational programs. These are my people, and they are all gathering together.

Do you have a local sustainability fair? Check local free weekly papers, the Buy-Local council, or farmers market if you don’t already know whether you have a local green fair.

Did you Step It Up over the weekend? Next comes Earth Day. A lot of Earth Day events are focusing on climate action. If you haven’t done so already, how about calculating your carbon footprint or your ecological footprint. I did this recently for a discussion class I took on global warming, and I was surprised what a difference it made to visit Granny and Grandpa in England. Ouch. 75% of our family’s carbon emissions for the year.

One thing I have noticed in the dozen or more calculators I’ve seen is: no diapers. You and I both know that using environmentally sound renewable resources to create reusable diapers makes a difference. Where is this choice in all of the detailed calculators? If you use a calculator and you don’t see diapering choices listed, write a note to mention it to the calculator authors. Maybe they hadn’t considered what an impact reusable diapers have, especially when compared with the massive solid waste problem of throwaway plastic diapers.

Step It Up : http://stepitup2007.org/
Earth Day Network : http://www.earthday.net/
Carbon Calculator (one of many): http://www.safeclimate.net/calculator/

It may not be pretty, but several weeks ago a group of designers unveiled a genuine 100-mile suit with all parts and labor sourced within 100 miles of Philadelphia. The blog following progress of the 100-mile suit includes fascinating details of the sourcing and labor, as well as close-up images of the work in progress and finished.

The 100-mile diaper stash that we suggested last year was only BOUGHT within 100 miles. There are more steps to take after buying local.

• Item bought locally
• Product manufacturered locally
• Materials sourced locally
• Resources grown locally

How far can you go? It’s a great experiment.

Ode Magazine has a beautifully photographed story this month on cotton in India — on conventional, pesticide-laden cotton in India. The farmer suicides continued at a rate of one every eight hours as the photographer was visiting. Expensive pesticides and genetically modified seeds (which mean they can’t save seed for planting next year) have meant soaring costs, leaving the farmers in debt they can’t overcome.

Add to this the rising cost of water, decreasing soil quality, health problems caused by chemical exposure and the absense of other jobs in the rural areas, and it’s easy to see why India’s farmers are desperate.

They don’t see any other way out. The situation is not better in other cotton growing countries.

At London Fashion Week a couple of weeks ago, Kathrine Hamnett (known for many slogan T-shirts in the 1980s) did not show a new collection. She showed a film on the impact of the global cotton industry’s pesticide use. The film is part of the Environmental Justice Foundation’s Pick Your Cotton Carefully campaign. Why whitewash cotton? The true of child labor, slavery, and health and environmental degradation is nasty.

• White Gold: The True Cost of Cotton – short film with Uzbekistan focus. (The You Tube link works better for me.)
• Pick Your Cotton Carefully PSA. Quick wake-up call to middle class.
• The Deadly Chemicals in Cotton. Report.

Cotton is a serious choice, not a pleasant way to make yourself feel good about your environmental choices. When you choose cotton, organic cotton is essential to the well being of other humans.

Pick your cotton carefully. Ode could only manage to list a couple of high-profile celebrity designers using clean cotton. You can find many more organic sources than that. Ask for organic cotton. DEMAND organic cotton.

As Kathrine Hamnet said, “It’s not about choosing something else, it’s about choosing the right cotton.”