eco-tour: abc home & planet

every saturday at 1 pm on 3
lead by shop specialist marisa guber

As part of our transition to being a mission-driven business, we have been developing the ABC Home & Planet retail brand to offer choice at the cutting edge of design and beauty that is, in its essence, healthy and pure for you, your home, and our collective home. The product has been integrated throughout the store - in our Grounded selection on 2, our bedding on 3, and our gifts and accessories on 1. This fall, we launched the ABC Home & Planet space on 3.

The space includes the most comprehensive selection of organic mattresses available to try in New York City. Conventional foam mattresses use a high concentration of chemicals (fertilizers, pesticides and flame retardant chemicals called PBDEs) that are known to cause cancer and otherwise risk health. One third of our lives are spent sleeping, and breathing in the elements of our bed. Organic mattresses made from organic cotton, tropical tapped rubber and pure wool protect our bodies and the planet.

Home and planet also presents sheets and towels made of organic cotton or bamboo fiber; a critical edit of air purifiers; an apothecary of biodynamic balms and mists for your body and your home; tabletop elements handcrafted from found and fallen reclaimed wood and bamboo and recycled and salvaged glass; and details by indigenous artisan cooperatives from around the world.

The museum-inspired platform and destination presents our research into the purest materials, to inform choices about creating the personal refuge of home to be healthy and toxin-free.

Toxic Mattresses WCBS 2 News at 5 December 20, 2007

With AIDS still in epidemic proportions and rampant in Asia and Africa, we felt compelled to use the holiday season to harness our collective creativity and resources in supporting and encouraging the front lines of the work being done in the world by donating 2% of sales on gift items to amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research, through Gift for Life. Gift for Life was founded by a group of gift industry professionals in response to the tragic loss of talented friends and colleagues to AIDS. Since 1992, they have raised over $4 million for the life-saving AIDS research and education programs of amfAR. amfAR is one of the world’s leading nonprofit organizations dedicated to the cutting edge support of AIDS research, HIV prevention, treatment education, and the advocacy of sound AIDS-related public policy in regions including North America, Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. Paulette Cole, CEO and Creative Director of ABC Home is being honored by Gift for Life for Outstanding Industry Contribution.

help darfur now | charms for change

“We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.” ~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

During holiday weekends high school students from Help Darfur Now appeared in-store to raise awareness about the genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan. During an international rescue rally at the U.N. Paulette Cole met the non-profit’s founders – three high school students selling necklaces with the mission of raising awareness of and funds for the victims of the genocide in Darfur. She invited the students to use ABC as a platform for raising awareness about the crisis and to sell these Charms for Change.

An estimated 500 people are dying each day in Darfur and three million have been displaced since 2003. Through the ABC Home & Planet Foundation, 100% of the profits directly support relief work being done in Darfur through Help Darfur Now. HDN has inspired over 250 high school chapters across the U.S. and has raised almost $4 million for relief efforts, showing how the actions of ordinary people can lead to extraordinary results

Last Minute Gift Ideas WCBS 2 News This Morning December 24, 2007

Grounded in the purpose of using our influential platform to manifest change, we continue to apply our trusted edit of vision, passion and beauty to expanding our selection of visionary organizations and gifts of compassion through a rigorous process of research, development and commitment. This year we added 13 new gifts, including supporting an architect to design a new home for a family devastated by Hurricane Katrina; offering a healthy cow to an organic cotton farmer in poverty-stricken tribal India; and providing emergency HIV/AIDS testing and medication to a pregnant woman in rural Zimbabwe, where an estimated one in three adults is HIV-positive, to help reduce the risk of transmission to her baby. These gifts truly transcend the box, honoring the recipient while being of service to humanity and the planet.

Mission Gifts from ABC Home WNBC Saturday Today In NY December 22, 2007