Inside Soleil Moon Frye’s Sustainable Holiday
Soleil Moon Frye and Rachel Lincoln Sarnoff talk the talk at Weleda. Photos: Meeno. Part Four of Five.
Last week, Soleil Moon Frye talked about how parenthood inspired her light bulb moment. This week, she shared her secrets for creating a sustainable holiday.
Rachel Lincoln Sarnoff: What are you doing to create a sustainable holiday?
Soleil Moon Frye: We always make projects every holiday. We take shoeboxes and turn them into treasure boxes. We take glass milk bottles and turn them into vases. So we do a lot of reusing and doing crafts—that’s the best, we love doing that. And then of course the little seed collection has awesome goodies for the holidays!
Lately I’m really into my friend Lisa makes these burlap grain sack bags. I’m going to fill them with organic fruits and vegetables so that can be a really cool gift. One of the best gifts I’ve ever gotten was someone at the holidays had brought grapefruits in a basket form their tree. Things like that are so classy and beautiful. Going and picking the fruit, going to the farmer’s market, getting a wicker basket—it’s something that you’re going to actually use.
RLS: That’s like Harry & David, now you buy it. Fifty years ago you’d pick what you’d grown, what was in season, put it in a big basket, and give it as a gift.
SMF: Totally! I think going back to that. And also to be on a budget. You don’t need to spend $100 on a gift. How do you spend $20 and make it awesome. I’m all into that this year.
RLS: What about favorite recipes for the holidays?
SMF: I love holiday recipes. I do a turkey sausage and raisins—
RLS: Are you using organic and free range?
SMF: Oh, yes. That’s what I do. Turkey, stuffing. I’m not a vegan. I’m a meat eater.
RLS: So will The Little Seed be in stores for Christmas?
SMF: We’ll see what happens. 2011 possibly.
RLS: Have you thought of doing anything for women? Having Little Seed grow up?
SMF: No, but I have a book coming out, it’s called Happy Chaos and it will come out summer 2012.
RLS: I love that! That’s so great! Will that include elements of sustainable living in it?
SMF: Yes, there are a lot of earth mama messages. It includes the whole thing about Little Seed and about finding the balance.
RLS: How do you vet Little Seed products to make sure they’re up to your standards?
SMF: Paige and I literally searched the globe to find everything that we loved and everything is tested on our kids first. So basically our testing process is that if we feel comfortable putting it on our children and ourselves, then we feel comfortable sharing it. And now we’re 80% private label. So all of our stuff at the Little Seed is manufactured locally, at every step.
RLS: Wait, so you’re getting the cotton in California from an organic farmer?
SMF: Yes. And everything in our store and on The Little Seed.com is made in the USA, organic and sustainable.
RLS: That’s awesome! Did you ever think that you would be such a sustainable entrepreneur?
SMF: It’s amazing. But again it comes back to the idea that it should be the norm. And what’s so exciting to me is that I’ve always had these entrepreneurial dreams. It’s funny, about 10 years ago, right after I got married, I had this idea for a website. And the concept was streaming video on the web. So we went in and I remember sitting with this team of investors in New York and they were like, “Why would anybody watch videos on the web when there’s television?”
RLS: You’re so ahead of your time!
SMF: But with the Little Seed, it came out of this necessity and desire to help my kids and to create a safe haven. Within a month of opening, all these recalls happened. When people had questions, they turned to us.
RLS: The lead in toys recall.
SMF: Yes. It was about how do we raise awareness, how do we make this information accessible to everyone? We’re not all going to be Ed Begley, but making it accessible, making it affordable, making it stylish—that’s so important.
Want more? Check out photos of Soleil with friends Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore, read up on how Soleil became an eco-activist, and her work for Weleda on behalf of the Safe Cosmetics Act. Then check back here next week!
