These days, there are a lot of eco gift ideas, so that you can give your friends and family gifts that you feel good about from a social and environmental perspective. There are also now a plethora of sites promoting “green” gift ideas. I thought I’d share my favorite ones with you to help make your sustainable holiday shopping stress free.

Skincare products – Saffron Rouge offers only organic products

Fine jewelry – Sulusso has the best selection of sustainable jewelry

Baby and kids – Elegant Roots offers a great selection of assorted gift items

Clothing - Green with Glamour has hip, stylish clothing

Happy shopping!

In his opinion piece that recently appeared on Luxury Society, Jeffrey Hutchison joins a growing list of luxury experts calling for sustainability in the luxury sector.

“We must look for significant ways to minimize the industry’s impact on the world’s resources, and it takes more than simply installing a bamboo floor to satisfy this objective. Looking at the organization’s construction and operational practices can facilitate a real green strategy,” said Hutchison.

He concluded by saying that “embracing sustainability and crafting a new face of luxury need not be at odds; indeed by exploring ways to achieve both simultaneously an exciting new era of of design can be borne.”

Jeffrey Hutchison is the founder of Jeffrey Hutchison & Associates, a luxury retail design firm. He has consulted Barney’s New York, Theory, Nautica and Ralph Lauren among other international brands.

As part of NBCs “Green is Universal” campaign the crown placed on the winner of the Miss USA pageant, which aired on NBC earlier this week, was made by Diamond Nexus Labs.

NBC seems to be very proud of its new relationship with a jewelry company they can claim is “eco-friendly,” but it appears that NBC did nothing to determine if that is actually true. Is NBC color blind?

The thing we don’t understand is how the crown can be considered “green.” Our research uncovered nothing about the metals used, the environmental practices of Diamond Nexus Labs or about the diamonds themselves. In fact, the information on the DNL website about their diamonds makes it clear that they are just simulants…not lab-grown diamonds.

As we have stated in previous posts, lab-grown diamonds are indeed genuine diamonds that have been created in a lab, rather than in nature. Simulants are plain fake.

Diamond Nexus labs employs grossly unethical marketing practices. They lead people into believing that they are purchasing real, lab-grown diamonds. They do produce genuine, lab-grown rubies, emeralds and sapphires, but according to their website, Diamond Nexus Labs does not produce lab-grown diamonds.

Read about lab-grown diamonds here.

Visit www.C5company.com for more information about sustainable fine jewelry.

We try not to overwhelm by posting too often, but this is just too timely. We just learned that the Beijing Olympic medals are made of Jade and given that we wrote about Burmese Jade and Rubies this morning, thought we share this article from Merinews.com. It is too long to post in its entirety, but here is an excerpt:

“The growing demand for jade from Myanmar is a worrying factor and the Olympic promotion of jade will only heighten the demand from Myanmarese mines. Activists fear that the junta will use the money from jade to purchase weapons and continue to suppress dissent unless people around the world take a stand and boycott it.”

Read the full article here.