Ways to Wine: From Bottle to Box, Back to Bottle

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:16:46 GMT

Photo via Yealand's Estate. When a winery says it is striving to become the world's most sustainable, and then says it plans to ship its organic sauvignon blanc in PET plastic, well, it definitely needs more explanation. Are we going to have that wine bottle versus box debate all over again, with a plastic bottle added to the life cycle analysis? The answer, at least at Yealand's Estate, seems to be yes, we are.... Read the full story on TreeHugger

$100 For a Toxic Head of Hair

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 07:41:25 GMT

I haven't cut my hair in fourteen months. It hangs unevenly down my back when I do yoga, and even in braids, the little tufts at the ends are all jagged, the result of my completely inexpert trimming. It's not the hair cut I have avoided, it's the "products." Here's the common ingredients I don't want along with my haircut: parabens or methyl parabens, sodium laureth sulphate or its cousins, chemical fragrances. Since alternatives to these possibly toxic chemicals in shampoo do exist, I don't understand why more hair salons (and green-hued personal care companies) don't make a swifter switch. ... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Florida: Fairly Fatal for Peds and Cyclists

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 09:21:04 GMT

Evel Knievel (here in the 1970s in Fort Lauderdale) wore a special suit and helmet for his Florida biking. According to Transportation for America's (ToA's) new report Dangerous by Design, 43,000 pedestrians have been killed this decade (3,906 children under 16) due in part to roads and streets that are poorly designed, that is, mainly with cars instead of pedestrians in mind. And the deadliest of all metro areas is none other than Orlando, Florida, known as "O Town" and home to that mecca for kids known as DisneyWorld. But Florida's other main towns and metro areas don't fare much better in ToA's report.... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Peepoo Bags Promise to Clean Up a Lot of Global Crap

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 07:00:38 GMT

Sometimes we get so concentrated on the small (yet important) details of green we forget about the big picture. Or the news seems like nothing but bad. But there's good news, too. To combat the problem of lack of sanitation and clean water -- 2.6 billion people don't have access to toilet facilities -- the smart folks at Pee Poople will soon start distributing in Kenya and Bangladesh a "biodegradable" bag called Peepoo that has an inner lining that disinfects the poo so that bag can be help fertilize soil instead of polluting precious water supplies.... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Five Fabric Skins Help Buildings Beautifully Harvest the Weather

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 07:00:19 GMT

1. Harvesting water. Part of the prototype cloth is designed like a lotus leaf with microscopic spikes and depressions to make water bead, though letters absorb water so they appear. Photo via Filiz Klassen. Architecture, says designer Filiz Klassen, is infatuated with "super materials" and gimmicks. Instead of building for the gee-whiz factor, however, Klassen wants to build with new incarnations of existing materials that, as she says, "make visible the effects of the weather," and in addition also use the weather's energy for practical, but also beautiful, effects.

"I was fascinated with all the material innovation taking place, but what made sense to me is that that's a tool to show the effects of the environment on a building...I was looking into materials that can harvest, transfer and release energy...that would change our perception of the buildings."

... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Negawatts From the Men's Room

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 05:26:29 GMT

See the bee? Aim the pee. Photo Sfegette via flickr. Chasing negawatts, the energy that you don't use, is a popular pursuit these days for cash-strapped states, and California is turning out to be excellent at it. Negawatts (a term Amory Lovins came up with) can offer a lot more bang for the buck, so to speak, then building new power. And asSteve Fleischli at HuffingtonPost reports, when faced with choosing a $550 million salination plant that would require lots of water and lots of power but produce fresh water, or a Coastal Restoration $187 million project to swap out 455,000 existing urinals for waterless alternatives and save water and generate negawatts, California's choice would seem to be, well, clear. ... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Cycle Chic on the Cheap

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 10:21:17 GMT

Yes, it's over the top. You won't be missed on a dark street, however. Photo of a Rotterdam bike via joancg @ flickr. When the design world discovered that bike commuting is growing in leaps and bounds, city-style cyclists had to take the good with the bad. The good being better-designed solutions to our biking needs, the bad being that better-designed solutions to our biking needs obviously cost more than many of us frugal cyclists want to pay. So, here we comb the web and the TreeHugger archives for a few examples of bike commuting style-plus-affordability. Sometimes solutions don't entail much purchasing, just a bit of bike DIY.... Read the full story on TreeHugger

200 Secure, LEED Certified Pay-to-Park Bike Stations Coming Soon

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 07:48:41 GMT

Covina, California, has the third busiest commuter train station in Southern California, according to its mayor, thus the town is investing in a nifty, digitally-accessed bike parking structure called the Mobis Secure Bike Module. While on the other side of the globe Copenhagen is trying out quite minimalistic parking by painting white lines on the sidewalk and hoping people put their bikes there, Mobis, the angel-backed start-up that designed Covina's LEED 3.0 bike facility, is hoping cash-strapped cities will see the utility in safe, user paid parking -- and predicted in its press materials that there would be 200 of these pay-to-park stations in the U.S. within the next five years! Is paid bike parking an idea whose time has come? ... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Volvo Makes A Car That Stops For Pedestrians (and Next, For Bikes)

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 06:00:26 GMT

We talk a lot about cycling at TreeHugger, and cyclist safety. But the truth of the matter is we're all vulnerable pedestrians at one point or another, and speed still kills. But as Copenhagenize reports, Volvo, those Swedish safety experts, have been working on a system that recognizes pedestrians as they walk in front of a car's front end, and if the car's speed is under 25 kilometers per hour, automatically puts on full brakes.... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Time to Trim Your Pet's Eco Paw Print Says New Book

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 10:14:16 GMT

St. Bernard by The Consumerist at flickr. At TreeHugger, instead of being prescriptive, we like to generally offer an abundance of great green options. Yet sometimes, there are some hard truths that make modern green and modern living clash spectacularly. Air travel is one of them -- try any carbon calculator you want, do all the green good you can at home, and then add one trip to Grandma by plane and your numbers are screwed. Well, two New Zealand authors have dragged another hard truth out into the open -- Fido and Fluffy, our favorite household pets, generate as much or more carbon as some cars.... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Five Newfangled Locks To Help Thwart Bike Theft

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 10:40:44 GMT

Hidden below the front carrier bag of this bike is a u-lock that magically integrates into the bike frame, from j. dunn on Vimeo.

Bike theft is on the rise, at least in the U.K. where a 22% uptick was registered this year - in the U.S. nationwide statistics are harder to come by. If you are one of the people that has already suffered the terrible sinking feeling of stepping out onto the street and doing a double-take as your brain frantically tries to compute where your beloved bike is, statistics don't even matter. The idea of a theft-proof bike keeps cropping up again and again in fancy futuristic concept bike. In the hear and now, U-locks are still the top of the security heap, but trying new forms and combining a u-lock with some of these other solutions may keep your bike from being an easy mark.... Read the full story on TreeHugger

From a Green Car Subsidy to a Green Diaper Rebate in Sweden

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 07:39:28 GMT

Swedes say cloth is more friendly - image via Imse Vimse. In Sweden a motion has been submitted to Parliament to give families that choose cloth diapers for their newborns a $75 subsidy for their green efforts. A group of Swedish moms say the Swedish green car program was a huge motivator for people to purchase "ekobilar," and thus a green diaper program is a natural follow up. According to Marie Walleberg of the Imse Vimse cloth diaper company, in Sweden a switch to cloth could reduce the country's trash mound by 63,000 tons and take scores of trash trucks off the roads. ... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Yes Men Launch Survivaball Climate Suits

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 04:33:38 GMT

Photo via Yes Men @ SurvivaNet. The Yes Men (Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno) have been dreaming up pranks to foible corporate types for many years - their latest was a completely fake climate warning edition of the New York Post. Now The Yes Men's best tricks are brought together in a hilarious documentary that debuted in New York this week and will go around the country this fall. In addition to the movie, the Yes Men are reviving one of their other hilarious fakes, the Halliburton >Survivaball.

"The Survivaball is designed to protect the corporate manager no matter what Mother Nature throws his or her way," said Fred Wolf, aka Nick Bonanno. "This technology is the only rational response to abrupt climate change."

... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Your Swine Flu Vaccine Neither Vegan Nor Green

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 09:50:37 GMT

This hilarious send-up shows some of the 'extras' you get with your vaccine. Flu season has officially begun, and this is the week that the H1N1 vaccine starts to pour into clinics and doctors' offices across the county. The U.S. has upped the number of swine flu vaccine shots it has purchased to 250 million, meaning there's a jab available for nearly 5/6th of the population. But in a recent poll, two thirds of parents were holding off or deciding not to vaccinate their children with the H1N1 vaccine because of concerns about the safety of the shot. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Disease, told NPR:

"The H1N1 pandemic flu vaccine is made exactly the same way by the same manufacturers with the same processing, the same materials, as we make seasonal flu vaccine, which has an extraordinarily good safety record."

Let's take a closer look at some of the less savory of those 'same materials' in the H1N1 vaccine.... Read the full story on TreeHugger

5 States Where Women Barely Dare to Bike Commute

Sun, 04 Oct 2009 08:44:15 GMT

Photo anyjazz65 via flickr. The American Community Survey by the U.S. Census Bureau has been out for about two weeks, and if you can figure out how to look at the tables, it tells an interesting story about bike commuting. The Census doesn't collect bike use data per se, but it does periodically survey which type of vehicle or method people use to get to their jobs, and as biking is one of those methods, we can get a snapshot of how many dedicated bike commuters there are in the U.S. The good news? Dedicated bike commuting is grew about 38% in the last eight years. But if women are truly the indicator species for a successful bike infrastructure, lots of states aren't getting it right.... Read the full story on TreeHugger

NOx-Sucking Sidewalks Could Save Lives (or at Least, Lungs)

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 09:15:25 GMT

One of Malmo's busiest streets will get a stretch of NOx-sucking sidewalk (via Wikimedia Commons). Cement has not had an easy time trying to profile itself as a green building material - it's energy intensive and has high carbon dioxide emissions, and cement kilns are a source of mercury emissions. But it has continued to try to do so. That's why the story of cement product concrete's abilities to both suck nitrogen dioxide (NO2) from the air and be self-cleaning have been almost magic for the cement industry, or at least for Italcementi, the company that has patented this process. Now after lots of pre-press, the additive is making its way into building panels as well as stretches of sidewalk.... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Lowly German Clunker Goes Electric, and Sports a Solar Roof

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 10:11:44 GMT

Trabi photo Rick Dikeman via Wikicommons. Ask almost any German what comes to mind when you mention the word 'Trabant' and they'll probably respond something like "East," "East German," and "clunker." But Trabants, with their smelly two-stroke engines, squat piggy bodies formed from plastic and cotton waste fiberglass, and tiny gas tanks that required lifting the hood and mixing both gas and oil together at each fill up, have gotten a 21st century electric makeover. Photo of the updated model after the jump. ... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Mercury in Mascara May Make You Want to Put Down That Wand

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 07:05:36 GMT

Photo .Baz via flickr. You may not want to do what I did. In a spare moment of organizational fervor, I decided to clean out my makeup bag. The result wasn't pretty -- a pile of tubes, sticks, and cases that didn't exactly look their best after months of jostling in the messy makeup bag. But what was much, much uglier was the shock I got when I started to check my motley pile of eyeliners, shadows, blush and mascara against the Environmental Working Group's Skin Deep Cosmetic Safety database. ... Read the full story on TreeHugger

5 Places Riding Your Bike is Banned or Illegal (You'll Be Surprised)

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 10:06:41 GMT

Photo by ascendeddaniel via flickr. Because the bike is one of the most efficient forms of transportation ever devised by man, it is sometimes hard for us hard-riding bicycle proponents to remember that not everybody loves bicycles. In fact, escalating road rage shows just how much some people can't abide bikes. What's amazing is that so many places exist in the world where it is actually illegal to ride a bike. Perhaps the funniest example is Baldwin Park, California, where it is prohibited to ride a bike in a swimming pool, while the saddest is the injunction against Saudi Arabian women bikers. Read on for wild and crazy rules keeping bikers from their bikes.... Read the full story on TreeHugger

An Irish Velib and More Spanish Bicis

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 03:24:09 GMT

Just as fall falls and not a moment too soon, Dubliners finally have their incredibly long-awaited bike sharing program from JCDecaux, mastermind outdoor board company behind Paris' successful Velib program. One would excuse the citizens for not getting too excited about the modest program, which has taken three years to get rolling, been delayed at least once, and which bestows millions of Euros of outdoor advertising space on JCDecaux in exchange for a program many times smaller than the Paris plan. However, the smart new Dublinbikes are also a boon to the rain-soaked capital.... Read the full story on TreeHugger

A Wind-Up Sex Toy Worthy of Jane Fonda's Daughter

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 07:07:41 GMT

Though she was billed as 'the most beautiful creature of the future', Barbarella's toys weren't too green. Photo via YouTube Barbarella trailer. Vanessa Vadim, Jane Fonda's 40-year-old daughter with Roger Vadim, is a documentary filmmaker, organic farmer, and now eco-columnist living in Atlanta. And, according to The Daily Beast, she's a fan of glass dildos or (even better) organic cucumbers for those in search of a greener orgasm. As we've documented in TreeHugger, green sex aids are proliferating, though still in no way standard. Here's a new wind-up vibrator that even Vanessa might consider eco-friendly.... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Green Fashion: Six Fall Fashion Disasters To Avoid

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 07:15:01 GMT

Best and the worst of the Eighties, all rolled up together. Photo via Top Shop. The onslaught of fall fashion is underway--on the runway, in store windows, and slathered across an abundance of media outlets. It's inescapable. If adding a few pieces to your wardrobe is unavoidable, try to give these 'hot new trends' a big pass. Here's a behind-the-scenes look at six fashion disasters and their devastating environmental consequences.... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Sweet Cyclist Success - Burgerville Tells Bikers To Ride On Through

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 08:17:41 GMT

While we don't know if super-cycling mom Sarah Gilbert has tried cruising her Xtracycle through the Burgerville drive-thru for a quick Oregon raspberry milkshake yet, we do know that as of September 8, Burgerville manager Mike Hart is ready for her and other cyclists. After the ruckus caused when one of Hart's employees refused to serve Gilbert when she rode up on her bike with children in tow last month, Burgerville (which prides itself on sustainability efforts) made a pledge to come up with a bike-friendly policy (which it did) and some signage, which it now has. While not perfect, the Northwest fast-food chain certainly moved far ahead of its peers in accommodating bikes (and other two- and three-wheel conveyances). More businesses should follow suit. (Additional pic below).... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Should E-Bikes Be Banned? 4 Lessons From Asia's E-Bike Craze

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 10:33:37 GMT

People-powered versus electric powered - it all goes in the same lane in China. Photo avlxyz via flickr. The Dutch bought more e-bikes during the first part of 2009 than they did regular bicycles. In Asia, e-bikes have enjoyed run-away sales for some time. But the downside to an e-bike (aside from the askance glances of the pedal-pushing bikers in the bike lane) is that the extra speed, power, and amazingly varied form factor in e-bikes seems to be exacerbating some concerns - pollution as well as safety issues. What's there to learn from the Asian experience? Read on.... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Yikes! Electric YikeBike Like a Barstool on Wheels

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 09:58:59 GMT

Well, it's an improvement on the dorky-looking Segway, which has never taken off as its inventor hoped. This U.K.-designed electric, motorized - can we call it a bike? - will surely turn heads when it gets onto the streets next year (pre-ordering has begun). But the YikeBike, though it is foldable - a big plus - and sleek, and zippy, suffers some of the same pitfalls as other street-ready motorized stuff such as Segway and GM/Segway Puma.... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Fashionable Bike Bags With Some Welcome Surprises

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 07:00:49 GMT

Bagonia bags attach with 'bracelets' - photos via Her Niche. We at TreeHugger advocate for city bike style, if not urban biking fashion. And of course, we love it when designers combine a city aesthetic with solid sustainability cred. And that is exactly what newcomer company Her Niche aims to do with their Bagonia eARTh bike bags - trying to find that slim edge between needed bike utility and fashion. Perhaps finding the sweet spot necessarily entails a hefty price - the latest honey-colored Rose bag about has a $349 price tag. However, according to its designers, eARTh has more than one incredibly smart feature that will make the bag worth the price.... Read the full story on TreeHugger

High-Speed Rail's Sky-High Cost Makes It a Lousy Way to Get Carbon Cuts

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 06:12:23 GMT

Taiwan's pretty high-speed rail via sanbeiji @ flickr. We've touted Obama's vision of high-speed trains in the U.S. and given the other high-speed leaders France and China tons of kudos for their high-speed dreams. Now here come the Swedes (who we generally look to for inspiration on the path to sustainability) raining all over the high-speed parade. The report's authors (the lofty-sounding Expert Group on Environmental Studies) say the money invested just in a high-speed train network in southern Sweden would yield 40 times more eco-benefit if put in...the global emissions trading system!... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Royally Stupid? Brits Dump Bicycle Mail Delivery, While London Says Yes to Bixi

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 08:04:56 GMT

Photos via healthier, and lose fewer work days than their counterparts that don't bike. So why, you would wonder, has Royal Mail decided to phase out 25,000 bikes (and thus the automatic exercise of 25,000 workers), and switch to motorized vans and four-wheeled trolleys (hand-pulled as well as battery-driven) to deliver the mail? Faster mail delivery is the only reason given. Ever heard of electric-motor retrofitting? One up side - all of those sturdy, lovely Pashley postal bikes with the wonderful mail bags and front bins will end up flooding the marketplace. ... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Looks Like a Crashed UFO, But It's Really a Solar Water Cleanup System

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 10:13:48 GMT
Photos NTT Facilities and Manichi Daily News. This funky-looking disc looks like a satellite crashed to earth, or a prop from 70's TV show 'Lost in Space' but it is actually a solar-powered water cleaning system just installed in two of the grungier canals in the Japanese city of Osaka, according to the Manichi Daily. To make it stranger (or smarter) a system of LED lights make the disc light up like an amusement park ride at night. And for the ultimate in scare-the-kids hilariousness, the solar-powered water-cleaning disc shoots a fine spray of (filtered) water into the air periodically, in part to keep the panels nice and cool.... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Touchy Feely, Feel-Good Recycling: Get Paid, or Give it to Charity

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 10:45:25 GMT
Recycling is one of those feel-good first steps in the path to green living. The latest wave is get-paid recycling - in a half dozen states, consumers are racking up points for discounts or prizes. Now GreenOps (copying Sweden's idea?) is the latest to set up 'reverse vending' recycling boxes - at retailers like Whole Foods, and offering 'redeemable points'. There are currently at least 2 dozen of the automated recycling boxes in Arizona and California, and once you've saved some points, you can, according to Waste Management, redeem them for 'dinner out' or a 'big discount on family fun.' But there's another way to go in the recycling path - instead of making recycling a way to get more stuff, how 'bout using it to generate more charitable giving?... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Recent Posts by TreeHugger's April Streeter, Gothenburg, Sweden