While Pride Month is already behind us, it’s important to remember that LGBTQ+ communities deserve support year-round, beyond June – and right here in St. Louis, there are tons of amazing queer-owned businesses that stress the green in the rainbow and take extra steps to love the Earth as well. Whether you’re looking for unique crafts and gifts, sustainable fashion, or just quality everyday items, you can shop at any of these local 12 businesses knowing you’re supporting multiple great causes.

Flowers to the People sells a variety of beautiful customized bouquets for delivery, pick-up, and events. Even though their products are already natural, they commit to reducing their carbon footprint every step of the way, prioritizing local and USA-grown flowers and avoiding floral foams which contain lots of plastic, as well as saying no chemical dyes and bleached products. On top of this, they loyally follow the 3 R’s by composting their floral waste, recycling, and upcycling. Truly flowers to the people!

The go-to Etsy shop for paper activism and self-care-themed stationary is Just Human Studio. Available for local pick-up, their handmade collection offers minimalistic yet bold bookmarks, posters, and compostable stickers. All products are either recycled, recyclable, compostable, or a combination of those, and also made on demand to prevent waste.

 

Need a reliable salad spot? Upcoming Neon Greens at 4176 Manchester Rd. is proud to be a creator of carefully crafted, delicious, and fresh salads. Their greens are grown in-house with the help of their hydroponic plot next door, and for ingredients not harvested on their own, they source from local farms. Neon Greens uses only 10% of the resources used in traditional land-based farming.

 

One of this year’s St. Louis Earth Day Festival vendors, Green Rock Sewing, has a lot to offer. From home goods, to reusable makeup wipes, to custom embroidery and clothing repair, owner Rachel Floro is ready to help you strive for a waste-free life one adjustment at a time. She uses pre-owned and compostable packaging, and as a small business, tries her best to source sustainable materials whenever possible. Like the rest of this list, the more support she receives, the more she can do!

Relish is a herbal care shop selling self-care products like body oils, lip balms, eye serums, teas, lotion bars, beeswax candles, succulents, you name it. Most of the herbs and botanical ingredients are grown at the owner’s small farm, while others are foraged locally or from other local farms, prioritizing “…fair trade, ethical workplaces, organic, (and) sustainably + ethically harvested plants.” Sounds healing for you and the planet!

Another queer-owned and also Black-woman owned care shop we recommend is Gingersnapped Candles, which believes “just as we all need a break sometimes, Mother Earth needs one too.” They’re transparent with what they put in each and every product, using only a few ingredients in each, including herbs, fruits, soy, flowers, tree woods, and nuts. All packaging used is 100% recyclable, compostable, or both. On top of this, their Pride 2023 collection features pride-themed care items of which a portion of the proceeds goes to the Marsha P. Johnson Institute which defends the rights of Black transgender people.

Sustainable Fashion

Woman-owned Needlie Upcyclery curates funky and adorable vintage garments and accessories, often upcycling them to add her own special touch, as well as artwork made from upcycled materials. She was a vendor at this year’s Earth Day Festival and even upcycled a piece live at her booth. Her “Landfill Dodger” coat, hand-fixed and made from leftover yarn, was even strutted on the runway at the Sustainable Fashion Show – the beauty is still up for grabs!

Another woman-owned small business, Shop Local Foreign, repurposes scrap and vintage yarn to create colorful and youthful crochet pieces, including handmade Pride-themed tops, perfect for wearing to festivals and local events. Like many of the others in this list, they can be regularly found vending at local market pop-ups as well.

Love by Cookie specializes in unique handcrafted accessories made out of materials either directly from the earth, like wood, repeatedly recyclable ones, like brass and copper, or scraps/preowned materials. They use paper packaging and also support racial justice nonprofits as well. 100% recommended for earth ladies.

If your style is under the alternative umbrella, finding sustainable clothing that suits you can sometimes be hard. Local brand Ghost Soda Clothing could be one of your solutions; the owner Hannah combines care for the planet with gothic, punk, and retro aesthetics to give thrifted clothing her spooky flare and ultimately a loving home. Her screen printed pieces are made on her own, with the patches from patchwork pieces either secondhand or from ethical, fair wage, USA sources.

Another sustainable and queer-owned alternative fashion option if you’re more on the punk side is CbJeebees. They create upcycled and hand-painted punk patches and outerwear with preowned fabric and clothing, featuring statements that express strong support for great causes, like “EQUALITY,” “NO MEANS NO,” and “PRONOUNS MATTER.” If you have something specific you want to scream on your jacket, you can also order a custom one-of-a-kind piece!

Are you into punk and also a pop culture nerd? It’s a likely combo, meaning you’re likely to love woman-owned Sew it All Creations. The shop offers preowned jackets repurposed by hand with added punk hardware, embroidery, and the star of the show: painted pop culture characters on the back. She also recently began selling upcycled punk bracelets and cuffs!

 

We hope this list inspired you to support a local, sustainable, queer-owned businesses. Even if you don’t make a purchase, interacting with them on social media or simply viewing their website does more than you know. Just like Earth Day, Pride should be celebrated year-round!