Ready to elevate your sustainable lifestyle? We’re teaming up with some of our favorite eco-friendly brands to bring you the ultimate sustainable giveaway. Entering gives you the chance to win a variety of luxurious low-impact essentials, worth nearly $2000!
Enter the Ultimate Sustainable Giveaway
Important: By entering this giveaway you are adhering to the terms and conditions applicable, including participants’ information (provided in your submission) being shared amongst participating brands. Full conditions of the giveaway can be found here.
A $200 Visa Gift Card from LIVEKINDLY
A Veganologie laptop bag and Willa Phoenix shoes courtesy of Vegan Fashion Week (a $933 value)
A $200 Credit to meal delivery subscription service, Thistle
A Signature Bedding Bundle including a duvet cover, fitted and flat sheet, and 2 pillowcases made with silky-soft, sustainable CleanBamboo™ from ettitude ($490 value)
A set of 12 single origin spices, a cooking with spices technique book, spice apron, and woven kitchen towel set from Burlap & Barrel ($160 value)
Did you know that in the US alone we spend $15.2 billion every year on unwanted gifts, and 4% of them end up in the trash? You can save money and cut down on waste by shopping mindfully this holiday season. Though Black Friday is typically associated with overconsumption, it can also be a great (and hugely impactful!) opportunity to vote with your dollar by supporting ethical and sustainable brands.
To help you be a more conscious consumer, we’ve curated a list of 100+ fashion, beauty, home, and food brands that are offering Black Friday/Cyber Week sales.
P.S. There are no sponsored links here, just a roundup of our favorite brands and products that our team is actually buying and gifting this year.
For months, LIVEKINDLY’s editors, on a never-ending quest towards zero waste, have looked for ways to give up wasteful paper towels, with one wee caveat. As much as we care about the environment, we want a practical solution that doesn’t involve us, like, living off the grid or washing a dozen dish towels each day.
Then we discovered Papaya Reusable Paper Towels. (Hear that? That’s the sound of angels sighing.) They’re compostable, washable, not to mention simple to use—and easy to organize, as each set comes with drying hooks you can hang anywhere. We were floored to learn that one Papaya towel replaces 17 rolls of disposable paper towels —which means this game-changing environmental move is also saving us a ton of money.
Let’s face it: We’re addicted to paper towels
The first-ever paper towel, according to business legend, was a happy accident that sought to avoid waste. In 1907, Arthur Scott, president of Philadelphia’s Scott Paper Company, had a dilemma on his hands: an entire railroad car of toilet tissue was rolled too thick for its intended usage. Unwilling to let the paper go to waste, he decided to cut it into larger pieces and sell them as disposable paper towels. Easy to use, multipurpose, and eliminating the need for laundering, they were nothing short of revolutionary.
But Scott’s good intentions led to a whole heap of trouble for the environment. Americans alone use 13 billion pounds of paper towels each year, which adds up to about 80 rolls per person. That’s a lot of trash going into landfills, which emit large amounts of methane, a greenhouse gas 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
But all the trash that creates isn’t our only problem. Paper towels are made by using significant water and tree-pulp resources. (In order to get certain paper towels pristinely white, chlorine and formaldehyde are added to the wood pulp, putting chemicals directly into contact with our skin and the surfaces we use.) The paper-making process likewise requires gas, to make these products and move them across the country. This is why the paper and pulp industry has become the fourth largest energy-consuming industry in the world. So reducing paper-towel dependence, even incrementally, could have a significant, positive impact on the environment.
The solution is a godsend
First, the superficial stuff: Papaya’s Reusable Paper Towels are utterly Instagrammable. No, really, their designs are so chic we don’t have to hide them when friends swing by, like we do with our stained dish towels.
Aesthetics aside, we were admittedly skeptical at first. Could these little sheets really work for cleaning, drying, washing, or even smudging off our makeup? The proof is in the paper, because these did work when it came to all of the above. (For more ideas on maxing them out, check out our pointers below.)
The versatility is great, but we’re most excited about their smell—inasmuch as, they don’t have one! That means no more stinky kitchen sponges or cleaning rags to contend with; Papaya easily replaces them. The cotton and cellulose they’re made from is quick-drying, which means odor-causing bacteria doesn’t get a chance to set up shop. After using them a few times, you can give them a simple wash-and-wring with dish soap. And when they’re ready for a deeper clean (Papaya suggests once a week), you can toss them in the dishwasher or washing machine—then hang to dry.
One Papaya Reusable Paper Towel can last us up to nine months. They’re also zero waste: at the end of their life-cycle, unlike a dishrag, these paper towels can go right into the compost bin. Or you can even throw them in the trash and rest easy knowing they’ll soon return to the earth.
Our fave thing about Papaya paper towels is how customizable they are. You can snag ’em in packs of two, four, or six—or like us, build out a subscription box for freshies whenever you need them, or want to gift them (and you will!). The hooks are a key differentiator, making it easy to station them like little soldiers fighting messes: one for the sink, one on the backsplash, and one on the kiddo’s highchair to wipe his often messy mouth (good for pet paws, too). We’ve got even more ways below. To grab our exclusive 20% discount, use code LIVEKINDLY20 on Papaya’s site.
Unique ways to use your Papaya Reusable Paper Towels
Win the war on dust
We’re constantly confronted with the fact that we routinely forget to dust (why is it everywhere, all the time?). Well, not anymore. Just run a damp Papaya Reusable Paper Towel wherever dust collects and watch it disappear, lint-free. Rinse and repeat.
Learn to love doing dishes (hear us out)
A sink full of dirty dishes used to fill us with dread—but not anymore. Papaya paper towels make this chore, dare we say, fun? We use two: One to clean every inch of our utensils, measuring cups, and kitchen tools. The other we keep on hand to mop up excess water on washed dishes to cut down on drying time.
Pimp your ride
Our cars collect a lot of gunk—from coffee spills and dusty dashboards, to muddy boots and kid messes (So. Many. Cheerios.). Nothing gets into nooks and crannies like a Papaya paper towel. Just wet it, wring it, and wipe the day away. If only it could do something about this traffic…
Glow-up your beauty routine
We love to keep a clean Papaya towel handy to take the day off our face, but our favorite beauty secret is using one to clean all those makeup tools. Brushes, sponges, and rollers (even that jade gua sha massager) work better when they’re free from product buildup. It’s official: clean is the new glam.
Pet pampering
We used to constantly launder smelly rags after wiping our pups’ paws and eyes, but now they’ve got their own designated Papaya paper towels (should we get them monogrammed?).
Streak-free your mirrors
Disposable paper towels were our best mirror cleaners, but Papayas are our new leave-no-trace answer to streaks and mirror-glomming fibers. Morning affirmations, here we come.
As the co-creator, host, and executive producer of the Travel Channel’s Bizarre Foods, Andrew Zimmern has tried it all—fermented shark meat, tarantulas… even cane toads. So the celebrity chef’s latest job role may come as a surprise. Zimmern has signed on as Next Gen Foods’ business and culinary advisor for its flagship vegan chicken brand, Tindle.
The startup’s vegan chicken debuted globally back in March 2021. It features a blend of soy, wheat, and gluten, and the distinctive taste of traditional chicken is made possible by Tindle’s proprietary plant-based fat, Lipi.
“Tindle is a fantastic example of how the food choices we make can create positive change for our planet—without sacrificing amazing flavor or any of the memories created around the dinner table,” said Zimmern. “Tindle’s ability to mirror the flavor, aroma and texture of chicken and take center stage in any dish is remarkable and makes it a true stand out among plant-based companies.”
In addition to Zimmern, Tindle’s plant-based chicken has received praise from a slew of chefs, including Rocco DiSpirito and Chad Rosenthal.
According to the company, its plant-based chicken is the first to be “created specifically by chefs and for chefs.” The company now works with nearly 110 chefs and its vegan chicken is on the menus of more than 400 restaurants around the world.
Zimmern is embracing plant-based meat in his personal life too. | Tindle
Andrew Zimmern embraces vegan meat
In addition to his new role as Tindle’s culinary advisor, Zimmern is embracing plant-based meat in his personal life as well.
In an interview with Fast Company, the television personality revealed he was cutting back on his meat intake in order to reduce his environmental footprint. “We can’t take the horse and buggy back, we can’t take fossil fuels back, but we’re smart enough to make a difference,” he said.
A 2021 study published in Nature Food found that factory farming accounts for 60 percent of the food sector’s greenhouse gas emissions. Moreover, meat production causes twice the amount of pollution than that of plant-based foods.
Zimmern’s joining of Tindle’s advisory board is a sign of its burgeoning success. The company has been steadily gaining momentum in the world of vegan meat. Since its debut, it’s become popular in a number of countries, including Singapore, Hong Kong, Dubai, and Amsterdam.
It recently raked in $100 million in Series A funding, bringing the startup’s total funding to more than $130 million. And in February, the company expanded into the US, launching its plant-based chicken in restaurants across the country.
Even in the 21st century, there’s an ancient agricultural practice detailed in both the Old Testament and the Koran that could hold the keys to feeding hungry people and saving the planet at the same time.
Gleaning, the simple process of gathering surplus produce from farm fields and even residential backyards, puts food on plates and keeps it out of landfills. It seems like the perfect solution to food shortages, and the people who run gleaning programs across the United States are universally agreed on one point: We have plenty of food in this country to feed everybody, if only we can stop wasting it.
“There will always be excess in the fields,” says Shawn Peterson, director of the Association of Gleaning Organizations. “We could do a far better job of managing it.”
How gleaning can help address food insecurity
In 2021, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration identified that over 38 million Americans were food insecure, meaning they did not have an adequate amount of food on a daily basis to meet their basic nutritional needs. At the same time, 21 percent of food ends up in landfills, where that rotting food generates harmful methane gases that accelerate climate change. And as the Covid-19 pandemic fed unemployment in 2020, some 60 million Americans turned to food assistance programs for help, twice as many as in the previous year, but inequitable distribution meant that many communities—particularly in rural areas and among communities of color—still went without.
“There are plenty of fruits and vegetables to go around,” says Nkemdilim Nwosu, director of communications at Food Forward, a Southern California nonprofit that addresses food insecurity and food waste in multiple ways, including gleaning surplus fruit, such as citrus and avocados, from private properties, public parks, and orchards. “The issue is about providing equal access to healthy foods.”
Gleaning allows organizations like Food Forward to address hunger by focusing on sustainability, building connections between farmers, distributors, and local communities, and directly impacting hungry people in senior centers, veterans’ homes, day care facilities, assisted living, and homeless shelters.
Gleaning can happen on farms, or in urban settings. | Lee Davenport/Getty
Those connections are invaluable, notes Lisa Ousley, executive director of After The Harvest in Kansas City, Missouri. The nonprofit had already been operating since 2014 when the pandemic hit, primarily focused on working with large commercial growers around the country to get donations of truckloads of already-harvested B-grade fruits and vegetables—millions of pounds of completely edible produce that doesn’t meet USDA standards, such as cucumbers that are more than seven inches long, misshapen bell peppers, or limes that are the wrong shade of green. Gleaning was a much smaller part of their efforts, but it all added up to keeping perfectly good food out of the waste stream and into the hands of those who needed it most.
But with the onset of Covid-19, Ousley saw a surprising problem as a result of the USDA’s Farmers To Families Food Box program, which was created in the spring of 2020 to address disruptions to the food supply chain by purchasing fresh food directly from producers and delivering it to food banks. “Kansas City was suddenly flooded with free produce,” Ousley says, “but it wasn’t being distributed equitably. That food box program ended up driving our gleaning expansion so that we could focus on our local community and get food to those who desperately needed it.”
There are plenty of fruits and vegetables to go around. The issue providing equal access to healthy foods.
Nkemdilim Nwosu, director of communications at Food Forward
Gleaning programs like the one at After The Harvest tend to be volunteer-heavy. People in the community, from retirees to college students, head out to the fields when a farmer has excess produce that needs to be harvested, such as a crop of zucchini that has been pock-marked by a hail storm and can’t be sold at market; in a few hours, those volunteers harvest hundreds of pounds of produce for distribution to food banks and other local agencies. One specialized group of volunteers at After The Harvest is known as the VEG (Vegetable Emergency Gleaning) Squad, responds to farmers on short notice when, for instance, a forecast for a sudden hard frost threatens a tomato crop. The recent acquisition of a refrigerated truck has made it easier for Ousley’s gleaners to get even more produce out into the local community while it’s still fresh—another important step in keeping gleaned fruits and vegetables out of landfills.
In Montgomery County, Maryland, just outside Washington, DC, gleaning is one of many strategies being implemented toward “zero waste” goals, including at Community Food Rescue, where they now have six to eight gleans at local farms each year. Program director Cheryl Kollin says, “Food rescue is not the solution to establishing food security or rectifying the waste stream issue, but it is a great solution to the reality that a farmer’s life is hard. They have to hedge their bets against weather conditions, crop failure, and labor shortages—and, in a good year, they might have more than they can sell.”
If that leftover produce isn’t gleaned, then many farmers simply till it over to fertilize the field for the next planting season. However, there can also be crops, often overlooked, that are valuable to immigrant and indigenous communities and worth gathering, says Kollin. One such crop was recently identified by the nonprofit Red Wiggler Community Farm, which called Kollin to ask for gleaning volunteers to harvest the leaves from sweet potatoes—a prized ingredient in recipes across Asia, Africa, and the South Pacific.
“It’s a very labor-intensive process,” say Kollin, “because you have to separate the leaves from the stems, but harvesting them means that we are providing an ingredient that members of the local community value while keeping that crop out of the landfill at the same time.”
Organized gleaning groups are helping to bring a wider variety of crops that aren’t typically found in the emergency food system to the community. | Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Hunger is not a production problem, it’s a distribution problem.
Shawn Peterson, director of the Association of Gleaning Organizations
Gleaning is typically referred to as very reactive, because it is often necessitated by a sudden need to gather produce before it rots. However, more organizations are understanding that being intentional can benefit the populations they serve and reduce food waste at the same time, meaning that some gleaners are getting into farming the land themselves. Boston Area Gleaners, which distributed over eight million pounds of food in 2020 alone, is one such group: they recently purchased farmland in Acton, Massachusetts, allowing them to be more proactive in the planning of their food distribution and how they impact the waste stream.
Paul Franceschi, outreach coordinator for Boston Area Gleaners, is excited about how this venture allows them to provide greater food options beyond typical regional staples to their community. “We have feedback from our partners already in some of the crops they’d like to see more of,” says Franceschi, “including a bigger variety of cultural crops that aren’t always available in the emergency food system. We’re getting set to plant okra and collards in the fields soon, among other crops.”
In an ideal world, everyone would have access to nutritious food and far less of it would be wasted. Gleaning advocates know these are big, complex issues to solve.
The Association of Gleaning Organizations noted in its 2020 annual report that it is estimated by the World Wildlife Fund that 10 billion pounds of produce grown globally is never harvested, while one in seven people is experiencing food insecurity at the same time. That wasted food represents 10 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, almost quadruple that created by the airline industry.
“Hunger is not a production problem,” says director Peterson, “it’s a distribution problem. We have far too much food and a pressing issue of climate change. Gleaning offers a way to empower local communities to use that excess and have a real impact on people and the environment.”
The views expressed in opinion pieces are those of the author(s) and do not represent the policy or position of LIVEKINDLY.
