Laura in Venice, Italy 2004
In his post
Fight For Your Right... to Dry, Sean challenged readers to
"take artistic photos of outdoor clotheslines that show both beauty and vitality." On
National Hanging Out Day we upped the ante by adding a coveted copy of Jim Kunstler's
World Made By Hand as a prize.
Our esteemed judges, Graham Hill and Meaghan O'Neill, have chosen
Photo Unrest's shot of a clothesline in Venice, Italy as the winner. Send us an email and we will send you the book!
...
Tim Ferriss, author of The Four Hour Workweek, has a really cool idea and TreeHugger is helping to spread the word; it's a contest to help enable more effective electronics recycling, with the help of the big-time companies who design and manufacture the phones, provide cell service, or help both ship these phones around the world. Stay tuned for more; for now, take it away, Tim!
Boba Fett was always my favorite Star Wars character. Here’s your chance to emulate him and become a bounty hunter. Prizes go to the bold.
According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), more than 125 million cell phones are thrown away each year, which amounts to about 65,000 tons of waste. That’s just in the U.S....
We tour the booths at the Green Living Show. Image credits: Emma Alter
The Hästens $ 60,000 sleep
It is, of course, all natural horsehair and cotton and flax and pine and down.
"Horsehair comes with its own, extremely effective, built-in ventilation system. Moisture passes through the hollow strands so quickly that if you wet horsehair with water and give it a shake, it dries straight away." This particular mattress also costs $ 60,000. Did it feel it? VP Sandy McDermid had to pry me off it. Unfortunately my credit card limit kicked in and I had to take a pass.
::Hastens...
The Lower East Side Ecology Center and Tekserve Team Up For Electronic Recycling of iPods, Computers, Batteries and More
New York City area residents can properly recycle their electronic waste free of charge on Saturday and Sunday, April 26th & 27th from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Monday, April 28th from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. The collection point will be at 119 West 23rd Street in front the Tekserve store. To celebrate the event, anyone bringing electronics to be recycled can register at Tekserve for a raffle to win a MacBook Air or one of three 16GB iPod touches. All participants in the event will also receive a $25 discount on a new computer purchased within 30 days after the event....
Last year I found the first Green Living Show in Toronto a bit overwhelming; this year it is twice as big. I asked for a list of who is in it and it goes on for ages. Just the categories go on forever- eco-tourism, energy, environmental groups, food and drink, (80 companies in that category alone! if they all give out samples I won't be able to bike home) green building, green business, health and wellness, home and garden, and transportation. Over 300 exhibitors; I may not get out of there until Sunday.
I can't make
Bill Clinton talking about "Embracing our Common Humanity" Friday night, but will try to catch
Ed Begley Jr,. and Robert Kennedy Jr. on Saturday
. :Green Living Show...
It was a surprise to see that so many cartoonists would all do special Earth Day cartoons (
Jasmin predicted 45), more of a surprise that so many of them were so unfunny and less than inspiring, but the biggest surprise of all was how many comic strips there still are in print. I mean,
Mary Worth was almost dead when I was a kid, and
Mandrake the Magician? No wonder nobody under 30 reads papers anymore,
Joy of Tech was much more to the point about Earth Day than any of these.
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Yesterday Collin, TH's resident design guru, reported that there's been proof at the Salone del Mobile of some high profile design studios taking a greener approach to some of their products. The theme started by the 'One day paper waste' table
at Droog,was continued over at another design giant's stand with Stephen Burks' recycled paper tables. While designboom noted ''a lack of seriously minded sustainable products'' we're glad to see that they still managed to find a few gems like the new
'Cappellini Love' collection by Burks....
Earth Day 1970
Perhaps we are a bit blasé about Earth Day; certainly most of the Earth Day stuff in the mainstream media is old hat to TreeHugger readers. Other
green sites are making a point of ignoring it completely, which is perhaps better than their
crapping all over it last year. Perhaps Jasmin is right, that
Earth Day is the New Christmas, and that Corporate America has co-opted and monetized it.
On the other hand, perhaps it is a useful marker on the calendar for those of us not in a green bubble, for the media, businesses, and citizens to think about things other than flag pins and mortgages. Perhaps it is useful that for this one day that everyone is a bit greener. Maybe for some it will stick.
In the mood to celebrate? Click through to check out some Earth Day activities that are actually cool.
...
Droog Design may have unleashed the
most un-TreeHugger design we've ever seen on the world, but they're turning over a new leaf, starting with their contribution to this year's Salone del Mobile in Milan. "A Touch of Green" is an interesting collection that recognizes that there isn't one absolute answer to sustainability, and provides examples from all kinds of angles.
Above is "One day paper waste," a table that shows one days' paper waste in a more static form. They note, "Does it help the environment to recycle a one day gathering of paper waste from the office into a resin treated piece of furniture? Maybe not literally, but the intention to limit waste is at least one step in the right direction."...
Image: Dave BergeronIt’s that time of year again in Montréal when even the deepest and coldest snow drifts yield to the warm, melting power of the sun: the cyclists are out in full force, outdoor cafés make a comeback and people start smiling at each other on the street again. It’s also the time when the butterflies go free at the Montréal Botanical Garden during the 11th annual edition of the
Butterflies Go Free (
Papillons en liberté) event, which began in February 21 and will run until April 27th, this year featuring for the first time rare and exotic butterflies from fair-trade butterfly farms in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda....
Forget about Earth Day; a much bigger deal is
National Hanging Out Day, celebrating the humble clothesline, this Saturday April 19th. Why dry your clothing with coal, using six percent of the nation's electricity, when you can tell your friends that you have installed solar and wind power in your home, for the price of a clothesline? In celebration of this great day we present the party line on lines.
Decorative Clotheslines
For the price of an electric dryer that sucks up dollars forever, you can get
Nature's Dryer built out of steel to look like a sculptural, abstract looking tree.“While so many people in the world’s developed countries have grown far too comfortable wasting energy, almost overnight, issues surrounding global warming and increasing greenhouse gas emissions are now at the forefront of the agenda,” said Debra Jones, inventor of Nature’s Dryer. “What’s especially exciting is at the individual level, more consumers are recognizing the important role they play and want to change their behaviour to reduce energy consumption.”
::Nature's Dryer
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Photograph courtesy of Peter O'Brien at Edenbee.com
Anyone who has heard
Jeremy Leggett speak before will know that he has just the right combination of anger and passion to hold an audience's rapt attention on the subject of the looming energy crisis. His fiery rhetoric combined with Guardian journalist
Ashley Seager's incisive questions and witty repartee made for a dynamic discussion last week about what is inherently a very depressing subject. What is the UK Government doing to prepare itself for the reality of the peak oil? The answer, according to Leggett, is worryingly and frustratingly little. This second event in
The Glasshouse's Green Shoots series showed how educational and motivating these networking events can be....
In her 2001 book
Couture and Commerce: Transatlantic Fashion Trade in the 1950s , Alexandra Palmer wrote about her surprise at the condition of the Chanels and Givenchys.
"As I looked at garments that repeatedly revealed evidence of wear- worn hemlines in ball gowns, shortened hemlines, and numerous alteration and careful mends to many delicate and elaborate evening dresses as well as to day wear- I found myself with many unanswered questions."
Now, she is the Fashion Costume Curator at the
Royal Ontario Museum and is opening the Patricia Harris Gallery of Textiles and Costume in the Daniel Libeskind- designed "crystal", where many of those questions are answered. ...
On Thursday night, April 10th, the warmest New York has yet seen in April, a well-heeled crowd outfitted in suits and festive party dresses crowded into Astor Center on 4th street for A Night of Eco-Chic Entertaining, presented by the online magazine about entertaining,
Notesonaparty.com. The party was intended to show how it is possible to be both sustainable and chic in the party-hosting realm, and featured a number of participating green brands, from
Frutzzo, the "first company in America to market antioxidant-rich pomegranate juice blends" in recyclable bottles, to
Organic Bouquet, which creates flower arrangements with only flowers grown using sustainable practices....
The first
Green Living Show in Toronto last year had Al Gore as the headliner. How do you top that? You bring in the big guns, lots of them, starting with Bill Clinton and then a flying squad of Ed Begley Jr., Jean-Michel Cousteau, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Simon Jackson. We can't imagine what they might do next year, the Pope is booked already. Toss in 400 green exhibitors, an organic marketplace and a bike track and it is almost green overload.
It is all carbon offset and Bullfrog Powered, and last year they banned bottled water. Unfortunately, this year they are falling for the
corn-based compostable "socially responsible" bottled water story.
::Green Living Show
...
The following opinion piece was submitted by Jonathan F. P. Rose, co-founder of the Garrison Institute and president of Jonathan Rose Companies, a network of multidisciplinary planning and development firms. He is a well known proponent of smart growth and sustainable building techniques.
In recent days we commemorated the legacy of
Martin Luther King, Jr., who died 40 years ago this month. And some have also recalled that King was influenced by Gandhi, learning from
Gandhi's Satyagraha or "truth force" movement the nonviolent tactics that ultimately made the civil rights movement a success.
Philip Glass's opera Satyagraha, which thematizes this, is being revived now at the
New York Metropolitan Opera. It's a good time to remember Gandhi and King now, not just in celebration of what they achieved, but because we need them again today. We need them not only to inspire social change in the today's world, but also to inspire a movement to save it from global warming. ...
I must have spent half of my visit to the
National Home Show talking to Jup Bhasin, a former straw bale builder who moved to the big city and now works with Village Energy. It is one of the many companies springing up in Canada to provide inspections and services to homeowners who want to reduce their energy consumption and get rebates from programs like
ecoENERGY. Their little 10x10 booth was packed with interesting products....
As further indication that Earth Day may not inspire anymore, the big global architectural firm
HOK has rebranded it "Go Barefoot Day." They have challenged all of their 2500 employees to "go barefoot" by taking a tangible step toward reducing their carbon footprint by altering their transportation, travel and work habits on April 22."
They invite others to join them, and have created a PDF with a number of suggestions for getting to work and what you can do when you get there, showing the impact of each, with links to more information.
"We hope "Go Barefoot Day" builds momentum beyond the walls of HOK and inspires our clients and communities to walk alongside us" says Sustainable Design Director Mary Ann Lazarus.
They have a link at the bottom of the PDF to a spreadsheet that shows all of the assumptions and sources for their data, which will prove to be a very useful resource.
::HOK Go Barefoot
See also
Cameron Sinclair Wows HOK Canada ,
HOK Guidebook to Sustainable Design and
HOK's Bill Valentine on Using Less Stuff....
From April 8 to 13, Buenos Aires hosts its biggest annual design fair, Puro Diseno. For the first time, this event presents a green section with responsible designers as one of its main attractions.
The space, called Verde (Spanish for ‘green’) will have six Argentine brands that are working with different approaches to responsible design. Our previously featured
Minima Huella,
Vacavaliente and
Neumatica, and three new labels: Indarra DTX, Gruba, and Aluminium....
We'll be working on better category archives soon. In the meantime, take a look at the
if you really want to dig around, or use the search box at the top of the page.
“Go easy on me,” Tommy Lee said in a whisper. “You know I’m a green virgin.”
TreeHuggers in Vancouver, mark your calendars: this weekend is 
