It’s great that eco-design is on the rise, and green business, too. But I think it quite important to recognize those companies long dedicated to socially and environmentally responsible practices-as opposed to the trendy ventures.

Roots Canada Ltd. is in it for the long haul. Co-founded in 1973 by Michael Budman and Don Green, Roots emerged just a little more than a decade after the publishing of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring-a book that heralded a new ecological awareness. Thus, the company was age mate with the environmental movement, and it held priorities accordingly.

A leading retailer of apparel and accessories (from athletic to fun casual dress), Roots has grown with the times and our changing concerns. For example, in 1989 they began to incorporate organic cotton into their Nowadays product line, and their new Roots Green collection features sustainable fibers such as bamboo, hemp, and soy.

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Airport shopping has never really floated my boat, if you’ll excuse the metaphor. For one, I’m never sure how I’d take anything back. To return to the airside retailer where I bought that faulty camera, would I really have to book another flight? Or would one of the security people or passport checkers run the errand for me? So, apart from loading up on duty-free booze and confectionery-which I can buy on auto-pilot and know I’ll never need to return-airport shops are normally no-go zones for me. All of which means I’m missing out, as reports say those at Heathrow’s new £4.3 Terminal 5 are so splendid, I’ll want to leave the UK more often.

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The recently elected Spanish cabinet boasts nine women out of seventeen ministers. And it already has one icon who’s done the rounds of each newspaper, TV station, and magazine of the land: Defence Minister Ms. Carmen Blanchón-blonde, petite, and seven months pregnant, reviewing the troops at a recent meeting with top Army generals.

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Buenos Aires, home of sleek design and fashionable people, has a less salubrious alter ego: cartoneros, slum dwellers who travel into the city centre each evening, uncomfortably squeezed into the backs of rusty, barely roadworthy trucks. On downtown street corners, in close proximity to the wealthy upper classes and tourists parading in and out of smart restaurants, impoverished families spend the night ripping open malodorous rubbish bags, in search of cardboard and paper they hope to sell for a miserly 30 centavos (roughly nine cents) per kilogram. It’s hard to imagine salvaging anything positive -let alone aesthetically pleasing-from these disgusting heaps, but that’s just what Eloisa Cartonera, a publishing house with a social conscience, has done. Their novels and poetry collections are printed on recycled paper, purchased from the cartoneros at six times the going rate. The pages are manually photocopied and the corrugated cardboard covers designed and hand-painted by the cartoneros themselves. It’s a labour of love, with no two volumes alike. The community project’s lofty aims are multiple: to assist the cartoneros financially, help them acquire new skills, offer a possible route out of their penurious existence, and, perhaps most importantly, give them the opportunity to dispel prejudices by proving themselves as artists.

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For me, the destination is only ever a premise, a context for the real discovery. Wherever, whenever I travel with my beloved, it’s she I come to explore and better understand. A weekend away from the job, the kids, the parents, the phone, the car, the family, and the bills means a chance to monopolise each other as when we first met. An opportunity to marvel at my chosen one in new environs—to replenish the reasons we’re together and affirm myself into the bargain.

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