Kick Your Leather Habit For Good With These Awesome Alternatives

Womens' vegan leather jacket

Mens' vegan leather jacket

Many people see leather as fashionable, timeless and think it lasts forever. But if people knew how it affects our planet, people's feelings about leather may change.

As we know, leather is the skin of a slaughtered animal. In many cases, these skins come from cows, but skin from goats, sheep, pigs, and even cats and dogs are used to make leather. Some of the most luxurious and softest leather comes from the skin of newborn calves; so if you have decided to stop eating veal because you just can’t stomach the thought of eating a baby cow, but you’re buying leather, you are likely still contributing to the cruel exploitation of these babies.

Also, the leather industry is wreaking havoc on the planet. The leather tanning process, which turns raw skins into usable leather, fills the environment with such nasties as formaldehyde, cyanide, lead, and other known carcinogens. Tannery workers, as well as people who live in close proximity to tanning facilities, are riddled with a host of health problems which have been linked to the chemicals used in the leather making process.

Manufacturers are taking notice and are offering up products made from materials that are cruelty-free and kinder to the environment, which is better for us all. Here are five terrific alternatives that won’t even have you missing the leather:

Kick Your Leather Habit For Good With These Awesome Alternatives

10 Frozen Vegan Recipes to Cool Down This Summer

Above photo: Tofutti Cuties

The temperatures are rising and the sun is shining--summer is here! Plant-based and vegan eaters don't eat dairy ice cream, but that does not mean ice cream and other frozen treats are off limits. Thanks to non-dairy milk and fruit, it’s much easier to make a dairy-free ice cream or frozen treat than you may think. 

Non-vegans--you'll love them too!

Check out these 10 frozen recipes to cool down this summer.

Destroying Our Environment, Losing Our Languages

As we continue to cut down forests and lose biodiversity, there’s something else that we’re also losing: languages.

Since the 1970s, linguistic diversity has been declining as fast as biodiversity--at about a 30 percent decline. There are fantastic comparisons between linguistic diversity and biodiversity; both are products of evolution and have evolved in tremendously similar ways, but both are facing an extinction crisis.

It’s not the first time biodiversity and languages have been linked. Another study showed that 70 % of the world's languages are found in biodiversity hotspots. Which means that as those hotspots are threatened, so are the languages. One in four of the world’s remaining languages are threatened--the exact same ratio as mammals that are endangered.

Today there are 7,000 languages spoken worldwide. Half of those have fewer than 10,000 speakers, making them spoken by only 0.1 percent of the global population. The rest of us have a much smaller diversity in the languages that we speak. 95 percent of the world’s population speaks one of just 400 languages, and 40 percent of us converse in just one of eight languages: Mandarin, Spanish, English, Hindi, Portuguese, Bengali, Russian and Japanese.

That loss in diversity of language is leading to a kind of cultural homogenization. We are losing the richness of human diversity, becoming more and more similar. And as we become more globalized, and our consumption and use of natural resources increases, we lose both languages and our environment. 

As we lose languages, we lose local know-how of how to function within a certain environment. New Guinea for example, is a hotbed of biodiversity and culture. It has one of the greatest varieties of life in the world. As deforestation continues, all of those are threatened, and as cultures and languages are destroyed in the process, we lose the knowledge that has been developed over tens of thousands of years. How to use traditional plants for medicine, how to live a symbiotic relationship with the natural world, these are all things that we lose in the process.

(source: care2.com)

Inexpensive Cruelty-Free Foods That Brighten Your Skin

There are some delicious, inexpensive cruelty-free foods you can eat to brighten your skin that anyone can take advantage of and that are easy to find. At the website below, most all of the foods can be found at your local supermarket or even at a farmer’s market. 

Eating to protect your skin is incredibly important, especially during the summer months when the sun’s harsh rays can cause everything from wrinkles to skin cancer, not to mention acne and dryness. Avoid buying all those pricey products none of us really need anyway and just eat your way to beautiful skin instead:

Inexpensive Vegan Food That Can Brighten Your Skin

10 Childhood Favorites Made Cruelty-Free, Part II

I already mentioned 10 childhood favorites made cruelty-free. If you’d like to take a walk down food memory lane in a healthier, vegan way again, then check out 5 more some simple ways to remake your favorite childhood snacks vegan-style and get started!

How to Remake Your Favorite Childhood Snacks, Vegan-Style

"I am 'all in.'  It is a singular devotion to moving forward with all you have with confidence knowing that you not only have the cards on your side, but in the case of this conscious lifestyle, the answer for so many of the challenges we face in the world today and what is absolutely necessary for justice for animals, for our personal health, well-being, and to preserve the precious resources of our planet.  This is what living a conscious, vegan lifestyle brings to this  world. It is my contention that in order to move this great movement forward, we are going to need to move beyond just a casual allegiance to eating a particular way.  Being vegan is not a hobby, it is a lifestyle that should have a profound impact on not only how we live, but also impact all living creatures and the planet that we all inhabit."

Read more of what Paul Graham has to say about veganism at this article:

BEING VEGAN – It’s Time to Go All In

How to Speak Dog: Mastering the Art of Dog-Human Communication

This PHENOMENAL book should have been on the best seller list when it came out in 2000!!

If you, like me, are tired of dog books simply telling people how to house train dogs, and not telling people how dog's REALLY feel and how to REALLY communicate with them in a respectful way then PLEASE READ THIS BOOK! I promise you, you will not regret it!

It not only talks about dog's relationship to humans, but also in how dogs relate to other dogs and cats as well. It discusses dogs historically and compares dog behaviors to human and cat behaviors. It's a MUST READ! An especially terrific chapter is on how to stop a dog from barking; this was my biggest mistake in I would say "No!" But the word "no" sounds like a bark to a dog; the word "quiet" and importantly HOW the word quiet is used, is the most effective and respectful way of silencing a dog in the way a dog would understand. Please read the book to find out more on this subject.

You can get this book probably almost anywhere books are sold, like here at Amazon.

If you have any dogs, it is indeed a must-read!

From Amazon:

"At long last, dogs will know just how smart their owners can be. By unlocking the secrets of the hidden language of dogs, psychologist Stanley Coren allows us into the doggy dialogue, or "Doggish," and makes effective communication a reality. Drawing on substantial research in animal behavior, evolutionary biology, and years of personal experience, Coren demonstrates that the average house dog can understand language at about the level of a two-year-old human. While actual conversation of the sort Lassie seemed capable of in Hollywood mythmaking remains forever out of reach, Coren shows us that a great deal of real communication is possible beyond the giving and obeying of commands. How to Speak Dog not only provides the sounds, words, actions, and move-ments with which we can effectively communicate with our dogs, but also deciphers the signs that our dogs give to us. With easy-to-follow tips on how humans can mimic the language dogs use to talk with one another, original drawings illustrating the subtleties of their body language, and a handy visual glossary and "Doggish" phrasebook, How to Speak Dog gives dog lovers the skills they need to improve their relationships with their pets."