TreeHugger will be at
Greenbuild in Phoenix, Arizona tomorrow to hear Al Gore give the keynote address. He will have a tough act to follow after last year's
Van Jones' barnburner. The expo is also pretty spectacular, with a lot of green gizmos and gadgets, but also some simple, effective green building products. Some of the highlights of last year's Greenbuild:...
R4 Fashion event in Toronto, featuring Thieves. Image courtesy of R4 Fashion
R4 Fashion and
Sustainable Technology Education Project (STEP) at the University of Waterloo, are bringing top Canadian designers together for a runway show and competition to showcase sustainable design and raise environmental awareness. Canadian designers
Aime by Monica Mei,
CARRIE by Carrie Hayes,
Cherry Blossom,
Thieves by Sonja den Elzen,
Heidi Ackerman, and
Rachel Jasmine Chan, will show pieces from their collections and create a garment from an unexpected material--waste, paper, and whatnot--click through for details and a fashion preview, in photos. ...
Score at Score! Credit: Score
Flavorpill and Bust Magazine are hosting Score! a pop-up swap and fundraiser to benefit
City Harvest. Attendees are invited to bring clothes, accessories, books, DVDs, and more. Everything is free--or as Kanye West would say '"free.99"--and
Nylon Magazine's Senior Editor will be on hand to curate the clothing section. Click through for details.
...
One dress, 365 days. Credit: The Uniform Project
You may remember Jasmin's post on
The Uniform Project: One Dress, 365 Ways to Wear It back in May. Booklynite
Sheena Matheiken's has made it half-way through the year--191 days on Saturday, to be exact--in one dress and with the help of vintage she's perfected the art of accessorizing. This weekend New Yorkers can borrow Sheena's style--she'll be dressed by rising star
Raffaele Ascione-- and dress in black with vintage flare--like the invite suggests--click through for the invite. ...
Yesterday the exhibition
Bits 'n Pieces launched at
Material Connexion in New York,
a dialogue between the analog and the digital technologies within design in a post-digital era. What grabbed our attention in the busy space during the opening, were the insects doing graphic design! A sophisticated machine transformed the movements of a few bugs into beautiful patterns and logos and printed them out as fast as the insects performed. ...
The
Creative Places + Spaces conference was based on the theme of the Collaborative City, to develop "guiding principles on what cities and communities need to do to foster creativity through collaboration."
David Buckland, founder of
Cape Farewell, didn't have a lot to say about cities and communities, but he certainly knows a thing or two about collaboration. He takes artists, writers, scientists, educators and the media, sticks them all into a boat and takes them into the Arctic to see climate change first hand.
...
Photo: courtesy City of Sydney, Live Green house.
The sustainability demonstration showcase house was erected in a single day, when it first appeared as part of Sydney's
Art & About Festival last month. Now it's on the move again, this time as an exhibit for the City of Sydney's participation in Australian
National Recycling Week and other green community engagement events.
Designed by Terry Bail and Martin Urakawa from
Archology, the Live Green House uses a modular, interchangeable arrangement of low embodied energy plywood sheets. The house is prefabricated off-site allowing it to be assembled and disassembled by hand with just screws. The architects reckon their working prototype would perform real world service as a small home, shed, or artist retreat. ...
Vancouver Fashion Week, Fall 2009. Credit: Kris Krug, VFW
Vancouver Fashion Week is upon us (November 3-8) and we are happy to report that eco-fashion brands
Hawks Ave,
Lav & Kush,
Movement, Red Jade, and
Nate Organics will be representing green fashion on the runway. ...
Eco-fashion boutique Kaight hosted Ecouterre.com launch party. Credit: Emma Grady
We celebrated the launch of eco-fashion website
Ecouterre at
Kaight in New York City last night. After perusing racks filled with emerging and independent designers--who use organic, recycled, and sustainable materials-- and catching up with
SDN's Marcus Hicks--who sadly was not wearing his
shoe pants--we chatted with
Jill Fehrenbacher,
Inhabitat editor-in-chief and Ecouterre publisher, about her favorite innovative fabrics--like solar photovoltaic technology embedded in weaves--and her top picks for green fashion designers and eco-fashion news. Click through for our interview with Jill. ...
Ken Robinson is one of the funniest speakers I have ever heard, while also delivering, between his one-liners, an important message about how our education system is designed to educate people out of their creativity. One would think it hard to get at standing ovation for a speech on that topic, but he did. Robinson begins with a startling statistic: test results for creative genius show that 97% of kindergarten kids are creative, down to around 10% by high school. ...
The
Creative Places + Spaces conference was billed as "one of the world's leading forums on creativity," and it has certainly lived up to that. The theme was the Collaborative City, and the outcome is hoped to be "guiding principles on what cities and communities need to do to foster creativity through collaboration."
Richard Florida, author of, most recently,
Who's your City, had a tough act to follow, speaking after the truly mindblowing Sir Ken Robinson. But he rose to the occasion, asking where creativity comes from.
Florida thinks great things are going to come out of the current "Great Reset." ...
Schoolchildren in the Maldives form a giant '350' in the lead up to October 24th. Credit: 350.org
What are
you doing today for the
International Day of Climate Action, this Saturday, October, 24, 2009? Plan an awareness-raising, pollution-reducing event? Organize a climate-discussion with a meal made from locally grown food? Did you host a teach-in at the town library and wear an
organic cotton 350 t-shirt? Prove it! TreeHugger writers will be sending in their photos from around the globe, and we want to see yours for our first Writers/
Readers slideshow in celebration of the
International Day of Climate Action. Click through for details and see the potential for your photo in today's
Readers' Home Improvement Photos . ...
U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman makes a home more energy efficient. Image credit:
U.S. Department of Energy Digital Photo Archive.
You might think next week's major holiday is Halloween, but 'round the Sierra Club offices we're a bit nerdier. You see, we're excited about Friday, October 30th:
National Weatherization Day.
On National Weatherization Day, created by the U.S. Department of Energy, cities will be hosting events to highlight services and organizations that help people to make their homes more energy efficient. Across the country, federal recovery funds are helping people weatherize their homes for winter, creating jobs, and reducing energy waste.
It all relates to Halloween on a number of levels, really. Think about how many energy "vampires" there are in your home or office (devices that still suck energy even when not on), or think about how much less scary your energy bills can be if you weatherize your home. Did you know that the average family can save $350 a year on their utility bills after a retrofit? So it makes sense to us to tie the two holidays together....
If you've been to, or lived in, New York City you are likely familiar with the city's ubiquitous bodegas. They are generally characterized by an ample selection of pork rinds, blaring salsa music and round-the-clock hours. The bodega has never been a bastion for greenness, but a pop-up shop called Boho Bodega wants to change that.
Running in conjunction with the CMJ Music Festival from October 20-25th, the Boho Bodega has had and will have free
events and parties to promote and showcase the shop's organic and
fair trade vendors like Organic India Tea and Green Forest paper products. All of the proceeds of goods sold will go to the Council on the Environment of New York City (CENYC), who runs the
city's farmers markets among other things. According to a press release by MakeMakes, the firm that conceived the project, the point of the shop isn't to turn a profit, but to "instill a new reality by placing green foods, beverages and products in the universal everyday format of the urban corner store, deconstructing the common misconception that green is only available to the white collar hippie."...
Image credit: Photo of mountaintop removal coal mining at Kayford Mine, West Virginia. © 2006 B. Mark Schmerling, courtesy Sierra Club Library
A new award-winning film
premiering on Planet Green on November 14 will change the way you think about coal. It will make you sick -- it might also make you cry -- to see
entire mountaintops blown apart to reach the coal inside. This practice has destroyed folks' lives and sparked a civil war among residents of Appalachia -- all so we can turn our lights on at night....
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.
on 11.22.09
Raffaele Ascione cape worn by Lady Gaga. Credit: 
Images by Tim Mitchell
Image courtesy of Lizz Wasserman
One of our favorite LA eco-designers Lizz Wasserman of 
Frei Designs to show Spring 2010 collection at Chicago Fashion Week. Credit 
Image via: 
