Save the planet in style with these socially responsible Kickstarters

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It's always embarrassing when you realize your friend is wearing the exact same no-dye, eco-safe, yak-wool hoodie as you.Photo: Citizen Cashmere
It's always embarrassing when you realize your friend is wearing the exact same no-dye, eco-safe, yak-wool hoodie as you. Photo: Citizen Cashmere
Photo: Citizen Cashmere

We all like wearing cool clothes and accessories, and some prudish police officers actually insist that we do. And if you’re conscious of your duds’ impact on the environment or history, you want to make sure that the stuff that makes you look good will also make you feel good about where it came from.

Here are three neat Kickstarter projects from companies with that in mind. This is where I was going to make a joke about “wearing your eco-friendliness on your sleeve,” but one of these projects is for shoes.

The Macana Bag

Allegory Handcrafteed Goods’ sleek and stylish Macana laptop bag is as full of history as it is loaded with pockets for your various gadgets. The hand-woven and naturally dyed lining comes courtesy of Ecuadorean artisans and serves as a way to preserve the craft in these times of new-fangled machines.

It comes in two sizes, and you have your choice of three colors and five interior patterns, so that’s like 30 bags right there. You can score yourself one of these beauties for $195 on the Kickstarter page ($275 for the larger version), which is definitely a lot, but they’re also handmade and guaranteed for life. So at least you know where your money is going.

Chébran Eco-Friendly Footwear

Do you know what’s in the leather in your shoes right now? Chemicals, that’s what. It turns out working with leather is a rough business because if nature wanted cows to be shoes, they would definitely be shaped differently. Hence all the deadly fluids and metals.

Chébran shoes, however, are constructed out of leather and lambskin sourced from tanneries that don’t use the nasty stuff. They still use cows and lambs because eco-friendly does not necessarily mean animal-friendly, but hey. One moral quandary at a time, please.

The Lhasa Hoodie

Have you ever seen a yak that you didn’t want to hug? If not, how does it feel to be a monster? Those things look crazy-soft. And durable. They’re actually both, which is why Citizen Cashmere thinks its Lhasa Hoodie is so great. And if they’re going to sell them for $125, they should probably have some science on their side.

The fashionable, soft and warm hoodie uses wool from free-range animals tended by Tibetan families. It’s hypoallergenic, dye-free and renewable because these hoodies basically grow on yaks.

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