SAYA DESIGNS RECYCLED WOOD HAIR PINS

Looking for a beautiful eco stocking stuffer? These recycled wood hairpins from SAYA designs are pretty sweet. The How-To Tutorials they come with offer lots of styling tips so you can take full advantage of the pin. Plus, they’re the perfect size for a holiday stocking stuffer. Just sayin’!

SAYA sponsored this post so we could tell you all about them.

What’s So Special About SAYA?

SAYA Designs was created by Victoria, who was motivated by her “deep love of nature, a growing awareness of environmental issues, and a desire to create things with a real story to tell.”

She got the idea while working on the Indonesian island of Bali. As she began looking for a more purposeful career, she visited multiple forestry projects, attended sustainability conferences with local artisans and came to understand the bigger picture around deforestation.

She decided to start her own business after her boyfriend inspired her with a gift of a beautiful Chinese hairpin. She used her graphic design skills as well as her passion for Nature to take Bali’s waste forest material – in this case, the roots from wonderful tropical trees that had been cut down – and turn it into something beautiful and purposeful, while giving back to those dedicated to protecting our planet.

Benefits of SAYA Recycled Wood Hairpins

For each hairpin purchased, SAYA plants up to 10 endangered trees.

“Planting trees is one of the best ways to fight climate change,” Victoria says. “Trees not only absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. They also provide a habitat for a diverse range of species in the rainforest.”

Plus, harvesting the roots to convert into hairpins helps restore forest health. Tropical hardwoods grow very slowly and regenerate poorly after logging. They’re often taken from forests in non-sustainable numbers and illegally. The roots can take hundreds of years to decompose. Recovering the roots helps prepare the soil for new trees.

SAYA’s beautiful stick designs are made from rosewood, teak, or tamarind. Because they’re individually handcrafted, no piece is exactly like any other. Each is also unique based on the grain in the wood. The item arrives in recycled packaging with a protective fabric sleeve to keep it safe while traveling.

Sticks work for hair of all lengths: short, medium, and long. Tutorials show you how to work with each design to achieve beautiful hair fashion, like how to use the Banana Leaf hairpin (pictured below) to make a beautiful high plait, what you might also call a French braid.

The Barrette hair fork (below) is able to hold large amounts of hair in place. It works wonders for long, thick hair.

The Moonflower (below) is an eco alternative to a synthetic scrunchy. It also suits longer, thicker hair.

You can get more information about SAYA Designs and their exquisite recycled wood hairpins right here! (When you get yours, please send us a picture!)

The post Recycled Wood Hairpins Make Beautiful Stocking Stuffers appeared first on Big Green Purse.

But what if sources for the medicines that haven’t been developed yet are destroyed before they have a chance to be discovered?

The notion isn’t farfetched. Rainforests are losing an area about half the size of Florida each year. Temperate groves, like the kind we’re more likely to find in our national forests, are also under siege. So are the wetlands, streams, rivers, lakes, meadows, and plains that harbor thousands of untested but potentially medicinal plants.

A new study (you can find it in our Latest News column) by the National Cancer Institute reports that at least 70 percent of all new drugs introduced in the U.S. in the past 25 years came from Nature.

In fact, David Newman and Gordon Cragg, the study’s authors, found that about half of all anti-cancer drugs introduced since the 1940s are either natural products or medicines derived directly from natural products.

What does this have to do with your big green purse?

You can help protect Nature and her life-saving plants by spending your money on products that make a difference. Buying shade grown coffee keeps rainforests intact. Choosing recycled paper products reduces the need to clearcut temperate forests. Not purchasing chemical-intensive fertilizer so you can garden organically will protect wetlands and waterways.

When you use your money to keep Nature alive, ultimately you may be keeping yourself alive, too.

The post Are We Bulldozing Medicines Before We Discover Them? appeared first on Big Green Purse.