"Since the beginning, we've partnered with Raffles Design Institute for our fashion shows, so every year, we've been fortunate to feature at least one fashion design student from Raffles because their students will often do this as a project with old materials old clothing and refashion them into something new for their fashion show. We usually go and pick some of their students' designs."

In addition, Greening the Beige has set up other activities for like-minded "green" people to mingle.

On Saturday, March 27, Greening the Beige takes "Earth Hour" a step further, proving that you can be social and have fun while caring about the environment.

"It's a campaign worldwide calling on people to turn off their lights for one hour to save energy and also raise awareness about energy conservation and practices. We're focusing on living a low carbon lifestyle and joining together with the Hutong School and also Roots and Shoots to start with an English Chinese exchange event. Basically this is to help people who are studying Chinese and also locals that are learning English to focus on environmental topics. "

Greening the Beige relies on the support of locals and the cooperation of other groups like the China Youth Climate Action Network and Global Villages Beijing.

Global Villages Beijing is the environmental activist group that lobbied and petitioned for the cessation of free plastic bags in stores. The lobbying was successful and in 2008, a law was passed banning free plastic bags in the capital, thus curbing "white pollution."

At Beijing's Modern Sky Music Festival 2009, in coordination with the Green Student Forum, Greening the Beige worked with "The Carbon Cube Project" , in which festival attendees painted on large cubes representing the volume of carbon emissions the average Chinese person produces in 11 hours.

They also teamed up with Acupuncture music label to host this month's "trashion show" at Lantern, the label's own club in Sanlitun's 3.3 Mall to support their "dian huan bao wallets" sold at NLGX.

"Because Acupuncture, of course, is an event production company as well, they have a lot of posters and flyers and what happens after the event with all this stuff, does it just go in the garbage? It's a problem in Beijing, since two out of its thirteen landfills are full. It's hard to recycle this type of flyer paper. So what Acupuncture is doing, is designing wallets to start out with, then there will be adding to the accessory line before the year is up."

Additionally, local clothing store NGLX has launched its own line of purses and bags made from laminated newspapers, proving that reusing items can make "fashionable" sense.

The most important aspect in "Greening the Beige" is that people get involved in the effort and Welton says she has noticed improvements since she first arrived in 2004, but she points out that there is still lots to be done.

"I think this really is a project that could last and serve the community here and it does need more of a home based input so we're still working on that and looking for more involvement."

From the looks of it, however, the future is getting greener.