John Taylor said:
"I have no problem with some people getting rich, but when they use their money destructively to hurt our future viability as a species and as a li..." [read]
Susan Hurrell said:
"One recent addition to the green booze market up here in Canada is the award winning T.O. Bevys (Totally Organic) - non-carbonated fruitbased coole..." [read]
James said:
"This is excellent news. Large retailers should continue to set a great example for everyone. There is so much free space among the rooftops across ..." [read]
ralph kimball said:
"compare.
my 2006 scion xb with about $2,000 in add on mods to the intake, exhaust & suspention gets about 36 mpg in town & 32 on interstat..." [read]
john said:
"How about using the better traffic lights like they have in some other countries? I saw one in china that was 2 square lights LEDs. Not only were..." [read]
blake said:
"One of the main issues I found with NAU was their inability to ship out of the USA. Being in Canada and someone who has no issue dropping $110 for ..." [read]
President Sanzo Okada of Hida Sangyo at Enzo Mori's Giulie table
For a thousand years, the craftsmen in the Hida-Takayama region of Japan have been working with Sugi, building temples and shrines of this soft, light wood. Most of the Sugi forests were destroyed in World War II, and it took 50 years for the replanted forests to reach maturity. Now 13% of Japan is covered in Sugi forests, and it has to be managed.
Sanzo Okada, President of Hida Sangyo, a 90 year old furniture maker, looked at this supply of Sugi and tried to put this local resource to use. They figured out a way to compress the wood, which made it harder and increased its durability. To eliminate waste they started using knotted wood instead of throwing it away.
TreeHugger loves to see green student design (and we want to see more!); since they'll be designing the next generation of products we use, the greener they can be, the better. These examples are from a project called "Re-Furnished" from the University of Idaho; students were challenged to create functional furniture out of found or used cardboard, and they came up with some pretty compelling final products.
Cardboard, especially when its recycled, can be a very green--and surprisingly versatile and durable--material. Above are two of the student designs from the class; hit the jump for five more student designs and for more of our previous cardboard coverage.
Forget about Formula 1, Nascar and monster trucks... Here comes chair racing!
Okay, we admit it's a bit silly. But we're pretty sure that it provides a lot more entertainment per kilojoule than anything else (anything that you do with clothes, anyway). It shows you don't have to burn fossil fuels to get a lot of people to gather and have fun. Our favorites are the contestant in the pink bunny suit and the one spinning uncontrollably... ::Chair racing in Germany. If you're looking for a chair (to race or just to sit), see our BuyGreen guide for green office & desk chairs.
TreeHugger loves the idea of mass customization and downloadable designs, but, until there's a manufacturer with a computer numerically controlled (CNC) machine in every town, it won't quite be ready for prime time. Until then, a Norwegian product development company called MELD have come up with what they think is the answer: platform design.
Here's their thinking: "the world is not ready for mass customization on a grand scale. Presented with the choice of 'anything', most people will be overwhelmed and simple draw a blank. To both educate and react to this reality, platform design gives a basic starting point, a first step in moving to a mass customized world."
Designer Hongtao Zhou just wants to know one thing: "How do you like to rock?" Thanks to the efficiency of his chosen manufacturing method -- a computer numerically-controlled (CNC) router, which creates (theoretically -- unless you feed it fuzzy facts) perfect cuts every time -- and his smart design, this slick rocking prototype quickly and easily adjusts seat height and "angle of rock" to your rocking preference.
A Ph.D Candidate in Furniture Design and Manufacturing in the Department of Forestry and Natural Resources at Purdue University, Zhou has done his homework on this prototype; it consists of just six pieces that slide together without adhesives, so you can easily match your rocking style to your mood. Hit the jump to see a handful of rocking adjustments, and cross your fingers that this smart chair will hit mass production soon. ::Hongtao Zhou @ Coroflot via ::Yanko Design
Martino Gamper was the man who designed and built a 100 chairs in a hundred days, all from recycled and found bits and pieces from the streets. Amazingly all one hundred have now been sold to a Milanese art gallery. The show was also nominated for a Brit Insurance Design of the Year Award.
Now he has a new idea for a chair exercise: he has created 25 chairs using a combination of the same components for each one. There are 12 different components in three different kinds of timber. He didn't pre-draw any of them; the design and construction were improvised during the making. Each chair is a natural evolution of the one before and has its own character.
The table is also a design exercise: made of 13 off-cuts from a mixture of teak reclaimed from English school laboratory desks, oak from Scottish church benches and poplar from the London Patent Office. It is put together in a horseshoe shape which is intimate yet grand. It is all part of Total Trattoria, an event where every item, from silverware to coasters, is designed by Gamper and friends. Glass water jugs look like plastic water bottles and carafes look like candleholders, the lamp shades were made of flatbreads. Some of the show is for sale, others part of the installation. :: The Aram Gallery
TreeHugger loves folding and flat-packing chairs for their ability to fold up (or even hang up) to get out of the way, so we like the space-saving designs from Philippe Malouin. The Hanger Chair, (pictured above) an elegant combination of coat hanger and folding chair, makes a lot of sense: not only is it good for hanging your jacket on when sitting in the chair, it can help keep your coats wrinkle-free and hanging in the closet when you aren't sitting on. Smart.
And what kind of space-saving table do you sit at in such a sleek chair? Why, an inflatable table that seats 10 and is strong enough to stand of, of course. Hit the jump to see what we mean.
Hugo França was an employee at a computer company in Sao Paulo until he resigned his job and moved to northeast Brazil, where he spent 15 years learning the mysteries of working with wood.
From then on, França designs these impressive pieces of furniture from logs that have been burned out of left behind by lodgers or natural weather phenomena. How does he find them? Every 45 days, he goes back to his studio in Bahia and walks the jungle with local farmers and indigenous people, who guide him to abandoned trunks or sell him old canoes.
Read and see more pictures in the extended.
::Via The New York Times. All pictures by Paulo Fridman for the NYT, unless noted. ...
Some designers just get that there is a greener way to do things. Greener materials, smarter manufacturing, and designing for efficiency longevity are a few of these hallmarks; they're all embraced by Oakville, Ontario (near Toronto)-based designer and furniture maker Pablo Pineda Willis. Take the Caitlina chair (pictured above), for example: the wood -- white oak -- is sourced locally from sustainable forests; the chair is constructed with non-toxic glues and finished with water-based lacquer.
He has an interesting take on sustainability: "We increasingly make objects that are worth less than ever before. In a one way conveyor belt, natural resources are being depleted to make objects that drift into landfill sites, piling up and often polluting...Instead of a conveyor belt system we must model our production methods on natural systems...". We like the conveyor belt metaphor, and are glad to see he's producing objects that won't be hopping off the end of the belt any time soon. Hit the jump to see more examples of his work. ::Pablo Pineda Willis via ::Design Spotter
See also: ::How to Green Your Furniture, ::BuyGreen: Dining Chairs and ::BuyGreen: Dining Tables...
The idea of combining a chair and a bookshelf makes a lot of sense to us; since we spend most (if not all) of our reading time seated, it follows that we should have ready access to our reading material. We've seen a few of these ideas before -- check out the geometric Bibliochaise and multi-functional Bookinist, which includes a reading lamp, cup holder, and even a wheel for easy moving -- and now add Bookseat, from Toronto-based Fishbol Design Atelier, to the growing list.
Noted as one of the "Ten Must-Sees" at the recent Toronto Interior Design Show 2008, Bookseat combines suavely-bent plywood with smart use of space to create an elegant, useful piece. It'll be available with a felt cushion in customizable colors sometime this spring. Hit the jump to see the chair in various stages of production and at the show. ::Fishbol Design Atelier via ::Design Spotter...
After our initial launch, we were thrilled to find Crate & Barrel's Kona rug. And over the past few years we’ve covered the company's various eco-products, such as their glass food storage containers, their Bamboo Bento collection and, in the past year, their “green sofa.” Nowadays, we’re amazed at what they’ve come up with.
At first, we were skeptical of Crate & Barrel’s most recent e-newsletters, touting their commitment to sustainability, but we’re beginning to see that this might not be a case of your average green washing. “The best place to start making the world a better place is right at home,” reads the introduction to the environmental part of their website. “At Crate & Barrel, green is not a trend. It’s an ongoing mission.”
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So, it's time for new dining room furniture. Your old dining chairs are barely hanging in there, and you don't want Uncle Tony to come crashing down when he sits down for dinner the next time he visits. You need to find something sturdy that will not only stand the test of time, but look going doing it.
In this guide, we will give you the low down on some of the most eco-friendly dining chairs out there. From FSC-certified wood to organic cotton to recycled materials, these chairs feature the best elements from some of our favorite sustainable designers. And, they are sure to please your hungry guests as much as your cooking (OK, for some of you, more than your cooking). Whether your style is elegant and formal or sleek and modern, you'll find something here to suit your taste.
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Designer Philippe Peyridieu certainly has a sense of humor, but his Hand Truck Chair is more than just a silly piece designed for design's sake (though it is, admittedly, a little silly). Aside from answering the question "What would it look like if a chair and hand truck had a lovechild?", it shows how similar these two seemingly disparate objects really are. And the more we recognize how two random objects can be combined into one, the closer we come to embracing multi-functional objects as a great way to get more utility from less stuff.
It might not super-practical, but it makes you think: what else in your home is a pair of wheels and a handle away from adding a totally new function? ::Banal Extra via ::Dwell Daily...
New parents will tell you that the rate at which their youngsters grow is both a blessing and a curse: great that there aren't more diapers to change (unless they've gone diaper-free); not so great that they outgrow all their stuff, faster than flipping the desk calendar, it seems. Designers Frank & Stanimira Rafaschieri have a solution for the latter: design that grows with your child.
We've seen this kind of thing before, with the Stokke Tripp Trapp chair and Nest high chair; the "Evolutionary Chair and Low Table" adds the extra bonus of a chair to the mix. The pieces stack to create any number of seating needs, including four chair heights and two tables, providing a place for kids aged 6 months to 5 or 6 years to put their feet up. The one-two punch of versatile growth and multi-tasking make this a pretty sleek, ultra-useful design. About the only thing it can't do is change all those diapers. Hit the jump to see all the possible iterations of the slick setup. ::Frank & Stanimira Rafaschieri via ::Yanko Design...
The (organic?) bubbly has been popped, the champagne drunk, and designs of all shapes inspired. And after 500 entries came in from all over the planet -- in digital form, thankfully, to save on shipping and packaging -- the winners of the DWR Champagne Chair Contest have been announced (we announced it late last year). Grand Prize goes to Miwa Kleyla's Block B Chair (above, left); Staff Favorite goes to Matthew Glaysher's Weekend Bender (love the name -- above, center) and the Popular Vote goes to Akai Yang's 2-Player (above, right). Congrats to all!
The fifth annual contest asked cork and chair design fans around the globe to create an original miniature chair from nothing more than the wire, cork, cage and foil of no more than two champagne bottles (though glue was permitted, as an adhesive). The top 50 designs are hitting the road, embarking on a national tour that'll go from New York to Oregon from now until mid-May; hit the jump to see locations and dates for each of the stops. ::Design Within Reach 2008 Champagne Chair Contest...
This is some serious Cradle to Cradle design; a chewing gum bin that collects used gums to then turn this raw material into more bins. British designer Anna Bullus (we previously featured her disposable sugar mug) has invented this new material she calls Gumnetic, made from used chewing gums and bio resin. The first object created from Gumnetic is the Bubble Gum Bin. This sweet little object is upcycling bubble gum and turning it into a valuable raw material, potentially saving, in the UK alone, three and a half billion pieces of gum a year from going into landfill or worst, being stuck on the pavement. Nine out of ten city paving stones in Britain have had gum stuck to them, the removal of which takes expensive jet sprays or chemical treatments (Via I&DeA). Let’s hope these attractive bins will collect the gums in the future and give them a second life. ...
If you love skiing and want to think about it in every season, here is just the chair for your home or garden. A variation on the much beloved Muskoka (Adirondack) chair but made of recycled skis, or snowboards, these chairs will give you a lift any time. Hand crafted and set into certified cedar, you could also have a coat rack made out of snowboards, tables with inlaid skis, benches with snowboard backs and even loveseats with ski backs.
If you have a pair of skis that you want to remember forever, Green Mountain will custom design a chair or table around them. If you have old skis taking up space in the basement, they will take donated warped, cracked, out of date snowboards or skis and make them into something new and original. This small Vermont company is serious about its recycling; they offset their energy usage, purchase locally, reuse bindings and ship items in recycled bike boxes. :: Green Mountain Ski Chair Via :: Hippyshopper...
Combining crafty geometry with smart utility, Talus Furniture's "Meander" ottoman/chair/whatever is designed to do just that: meander about your living space. Want to put your feet up? No problem. Need an extra seat? Gotcha covered. How about a bench? It can do that, too. Let your imagination (and recollection of high school geometry) run wild.
Meander's slick system combines polygonal shapes with a series of carefully-placed zippers, allowing for quick transformations between uses; the version above has casters for mobility, while a slightly different version (pics below the fold) leaves them out. This addition-by-subtraction design decision inspires a whole new set of uses, allowing for flipping and turning that expand its utility into some really cool seating and lounging possibilities. Hit the jump for more pics and info about Talus....
How smart is this? Yep, that's a whole chair, from a single flat piece of wood, without any left over. It's the work of the France-based Studio Lo, who have a thing for the suave simplicity of flat-pack designs. Wood isn't their only medium either, as they've applied their slim ethic to fabric and paper as well. Hit the jump to see their take on a birdhouse and a purse. ::Studio Lo (en Français) via ::NotCot...
"At Gomi style, it is better to reuse and keep material out of the waste stream altogether" So Marque Cornblatt says as his Gomi-style makeover team knock off Frank Gehry with a cardboard chair design. (Gomi, as William Gibson coined it, "is a Japanese word meaning dust or garbage but is has become a popular slang word for anything that we throw away"). However their chair design is incredibly inefficient and wastes about three quarters of the cardboard that they started with, which all has to go back to the recycling bin.
Now if they had spent a little time to figure out how to optimise the cutting of the cardboard to get more out of a sheet this might be much better. ::Gomi Style via ::Apartment Therapy...
It's our first winter living in Jerusalem and we thought that the frosty days we've been having is because we are high in the mountains. Not so. Israel is passing through an unbelievably cold, cold-spell. Pipes are bursting in people's homes all over Jerusalem, and millions of shekels of crops have been lost in greenhouses in the desert.
It was good timing coming across Yael Mer's slipper rocking chair. While there is no mention on her site whether she uses sustainable wood resources, or anything enviro-friendly for that matter in its construction, we love how the chair offers a 2-in-1 solution that can keep your toes cozy and your energy flowing, as you rock back and forth.
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We have always loved the humor and art from Castor Canadensis, whether it was the prefab sauna , the recycled tube light, their ultimate flatpack, and my favourite, their demonstration of the power of the compact flourescent.
Now they have a new tongue in cheek look at northern classics, the blind stool....
TreeHugger loves stackable chairs -- and we've seen some good ones, from stackable versions of classic designs, to one made from recycled car parts, to a couple inspired by a tree trunk -- since they help us get stuff up and out of the way when not in use. Stackers make for good use of space and allow us to do more with less room; all good things. Designer Jun Murakoshi has found one caveat to this sensibility, though: "Almost all stacking chairs will lose a reason for their existence if they are stacked; they will become something that we want to put away."
As a response to that, Shelving Chair was born; as its name suggests, it is shelving and storage first, and a chair second. Use it to stack books or albums or whatever you want shelved; when it's dinner party-time and you need more seating, the shelves come down and you've got extra chairs. Smart. Hit the jump for another pic. ::Jun Murakoshi Design via ::pan-dan
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Often, we see poor examples of packaging design that lead to more junk for us to deal with and more waste in the landfill. In the spirit of taking your own bags to the grocery store, here are some picks for packaging that does a more than just wrap up your stuff.
1) The television packaging designed by Tom Ballhatchet actually becomes the television stand. Putting wheels on it for easy transport home, Ballhatchet designed the areas that the screen occupied inside the package to be used as shelves for the TV stand (the wheels come off and go underneath), and the result is the first large appliance packaging we've seen that won't end up in the recycle bin or landfill when you get it unpacked.
2) The San Francisco-based designers at knoend have devised a functional lighting system that uses the packaging as the product, practically eliminating any waste that would ordinarily come with unwrapping or opening the packaging. The outer shell of the package becomes the shade for the lamp, leaving just a cardboard band and some hemp twine, both of which are either easily recycled or composted.
3) Dutch designer David Graas came up with a variety of cardboard furniture that uses its packaging as structure; he says, "You not only assemble this stool yourself, but, because product and packaging are both made from cardboard, also finish it yourself. Two parts of the stool are simply cut loose from the box where the remaining six parts are packaged in." Two more picks, beneath the fold...
TreeHugger loves when design just makes good sense. Take "Olivia," this folding chair from reestore, for example: folding chairs, as the name suggests, fold up and flatten to save space when not in use; to get them out of the way, why not make it easy to hang them on the wall or in a closet? And if you're going to hang it up, why not add a nice touch so that you can hang your coat on it, too? We could see a row of these keeping a few jackets from getting wrinkled, just waiting for your next dinner party. Clevr.
This isn't the first time we've seen good stuff from UK-based reestore; check out the couch that used to be a tub and other fun, recycled designs including repurposed shopping carts, washing machine drums and wheelbarrows. More clever designs at ::reestore via ::Better Living Through Design...
If you've ever been to Israel and visited Tel Aviv, you might have noticed our country's "national sport," known by the locals as matcot. It's a high-pace game, played-fast-and-furious-like, usually by middle-aged men in their underwear. On weekends the pok-pok-pok sound of the back and forth of the ball, drown out the surf, and frighten passers-by trying to dodge getting hit.
Making matcot a little more modern, is Groovy - a pair of Tel Aviv industrial designers, who like to rethink and repurpose everyday objects and designs. Take the above chair, its sawed out matcot paddles, and tiny ball holder in the top left-hand corner.
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With one big holiday squarely in our rear view (no, not that kind of rear view), we can turn our attention to recycling (or re-planting. Or, heck, just folding up) our Christmas trees and preparing to close the book on 2007. And you know what that means: almost time to break out the (organic) bubbly and celebrate with some green panache.
With that in mind, Design Within Reach has announced the call for entries for its 5th annual Champagne Chair Contest, challenging participants to create an original miniature chair from nothing more than the wire, cork, cage and foil of no more than two champagne bottles, glue being the only permitted adhesive. Pictured above (right) is last year's winner, entitled “Cantilever Block,” crafted by one Adam Weisgerber, from Seattle, Washington, from just two corks.
We already know that cork does it all, so the question that remains is: What can you create from your party leftovers? Hit the jump for all the details. ::DWR's Champagne Chair Contest...
We'll be working on better category archives soon. In the meantime, take a look at the weekly archive if you really want to dig around, or use the search box at the top of the page.
TreeHugger breaks it down for you in a series of in depth how-to articles that will help you green your life. No time like the present!
Seat belts save lives and recycling saves the planet: Now the two create the perfect union with the 
Martino Gamper was the man who 
Hugo França was an employee at a computer company in Sao Paulo until he resigned his job and moved to northeast Brazil, where he spent 15 years learning the mysteries of working with wood.
From then on, França designs these impressive pieces of furniture from logs that have been burned out of left behind by lodgers or natural weather phenomena. How does he find them? Every 45 days, he goes back to his studio in Bahia and walks the jungle with local farmers and indigenous people, who guide him to abandoned trunks or sell him old canoes.
Read and see more pictures in the extended.
::Via 
Some designers just get that there is a greener way to do things. Greener materials, smarter manufacturing, and designing for efficiency longevity are a few of these hallmarks; they're all embraced by Oakville, Ontario (near Toronto)-based designer and furniture maker 
The idea of combining a chair and a bookshelf makes a lot of sense to us; since we spend most (if not all) of our reading time seated, it follows that we should have ready access to our reading material. We've seen a few of these ideas before -- check out the 
After our initial launch, we were thrilled to find Crate & Barrel's 
So, it's time for new dining room furniture. Your old dining chairs are barely hanging in there, and you don't want Uncle Tony to come crashing down when he sits down for dinner the next time he visits. You need to find something sturdy that will not only stand the test of time, but look going doing it.
In this guide, we will give you the low down on some of the most eco-friendly dining chairs out there. From FSC-certified wood to organic cotton to recycled materials, these chairs feature the best elements from some of our favorite sustainable designers. And, they are sure to please your hungry guests as much as your cooking (OK, for some of you, more than your cooking). Whether your style is elegant and formal or sleek and modern, you'll find something here to suit your taste.
...
Designer Philippe Peyridieu certainly has a sense of humor, but his Hand Truck Chair is more than just a silly piece designed for design's sake (though it is, admittedly, a little silly). Aside from answering the question "What would it look like if a chair and hand truck had a lovechild?", it shows how similar these two seemingly disparate objects really are. And the more we recognize how two random objects can be combined into one, the closer we come to embracing multi-functional objects as a great way to get more utility from less stuff.
It might not super-practical, but it makes you think: what else in your home is a pair of wheels and a handle away from adding a totally new function? 
New parents will tell you that the rate at which their youngsters grow is both a blessing and a curse: great that there aren't more 
The (
This is some serious 
If you love skiing and want to think about it in every season, here is just the chair for your home or garden. A variation on the much beloved Muskoka (Adirondack) chair but made of recycled skis, or snowboards, these chairs will give you a lift any time. Hand crafted and set into certified cedar, you could also have a coat rack made out of snowboards, tables with inlaid skis, benches with snowboard backs and even loveseats with ski backs.
If you have a pair of skis that you want to remember forever, Green Mountain will custom design a chair or table around them. If you have old skis taking up space in the basement, they will take donated warped, cracked, out of date snowboards or skis and make them into something new and original. This small Vermont company is serious about its recycling; they offset their energy usage, purchase locally, reuse bindings and ship items in recycled bike boxes. :: 
Combining crafty geometry with smart utility, 
How smart is this? Yep, that's a whole chair, from a single flat piece of wood, without any left over. It's the work of the France-based 
It's our first winter living in Jerusalem and we thought that the frosty days we've been having is because we are high in the mountains. Not so. Israel is passing through an unbelievably cold, cold-spell. Pipes are bursting in people's homes all over Jerusalem, and millions of shekels of crops have been lost in greenhouses in the desert.
It was good timing coming across Yael Mer's slipper rocking chair. While there is no mention on her site whether she uses sustainable wood resources, or anything enviro-friendly for that matter in its construction, we love how the chair offers a 2-in-1 solution that can keep your toes cozy and your energy flowing, as you rock back and forth.
...
We have always loved the humor and art from Castor Canadensis, whether it was the 
TreeHugger loves stackable chairs -- and we've seen some good ones, from 
TreeHugger loves when design just makes good sense. Take "Olivia," this folding chair from 
If you've ever been to Israel and visited Tel Aviv, you might have noticed our country's "national sport," known by the locals as matcot. It's a high-pace game, played-fast-and-furious-like, usually by middle-aged men in their underwear. On weekends the pok-pok-pok sound of the back and forth of the ball, drown out the surf, and frighten passers-by trying to dodge getting hit.
Making matcot a little more modern, is Groovy - a pair of Tel Aviv industrial designers, who like to rethink and repurpose everyday objects and designs. Take the above chair, its sawed out matcot paddles, and tiny ball holder in the top left-hand corner.
...
With one big holiday squarely in our rear view (no, not 
