First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the organic baby in the baby carriage. Today we would like to welcome, the guest post of Avi Yacove who has just helped give life to Baby Organic, a new online baby’s clothing store based in Israel.
Writes Avi: Baby Organic came to mind as an idea of mine at the beginning of 2007. During that time, my father, who was ill for a for over two years, entered what seemed to be the final stage of his life. At the same time, one of my sisters was pregnant with her first child – who is also my parent’s first grandchild.
During my father’s long period of being sick, I researched and read more articles and text than I ever have before, in Hebrew and in English. As I was looking everywhere for a way to help my dad, at first to stay alive, and later on to maintain a quality of life and suffer as little as possible.
During that period I learned about the differences between organic to conventional farming, of the countless dangers we all face everyday on this earth and the huge gap between what we think we know and the meaning of the things that are actually happening around us. All of this new information that I became aware of, changed who I was, and I started to “reconstruct” myself. I changed my diet, my interests, my beliefs and my goals.
My father passed away during March 2007, and my sister gave birth two months later, in May of 2007. Throughout her pregnancy we purchased clothing and various products from online shops that were willing to ship to Israel, from the UK, Australia and the US, paying a substantial premium for shipping and Israeli VAT and customs.
My sister maintained a strict organic diet all through her pregnancy, and made sure to do everything as “naturally” as possible (while fighting and arguing at times with her doctors). She and her husband are a source of inspiration and pride to me, as they were both willing to open-up to new things, and to make serious changes in the way they think and act in this world as a result.
I started working on promoting what was at the time just “ideas” around June of 2007, and it took almost a whole year for this work to take shape. BabyOrganic.co.il which was one of those ideas, came to life just a few days ago, after countless days and nights of work, by me and a few devoted friends who joined in on this project.
We are very proud of the result.
The clothes are made using 100% organic cotton, wrapped in biodegradable bags made from Potato Starch (non-GMO). The cotton is grown, processed, cut & sewed in India, by employees receiving fair-trade living wages.
We did not want to compromise on the values that led us to this work, that’s why we do not sell any stuffed animals filled with anything other than organic cotton (many companies are now making organic cotton toys, wrapped in organic cotton but filled with conventional grown cotton). We also choose not to sell bamboo clothing, as we researched into this and found that a lot of chemicals are used in order to turn bamboo into fabric, enough for it to be “unsustainable” by our standards – though there are better techniques currently being tested.
My personal favorites, are the Dinky dungies & the Tangle Twine Dungarees – which are adorable, and very comfy (as proven by my niece who just recently had her first birthday).
We hope to have a compatible English version for the website, for anyone living in Israel who has yet to master Hebrew well enough to place an order online 🙂
Author: Karin Kloosterman
Karin Kloosterman is an award-winning journalist and publisher that founded Green Prophet to unite a prosperous Middle East. She shows through her work that positive, inspiring dialogue creates action that impacts people, business and planet. She has published in thought-leading newspapers and magazines globally, owns an IoT tech chip patent, and is part of teams that build world-changing products to make agriculture and our planet more sustainable. Reach out directly to [email protected]
Where can I find these clothes while in Israel
I live in the US but how would I send gifts to my grandsons in Jerusalem? Is that possible? Also do you ship to the US? I have grandchildren here as well.