Simple Shoes, who we met
at Bread & Butter recently, have just partnered up with
StopGlobalWarming.org, a movement that has so far excited over 993,000 individuals to join the Stop Global Warming Virtual March, just
like TreeHugger did (click here to join via the
TreeHugger partner page).
Simple Shoes donates $5 from every pair of StopGlobalWarming edition products they sell. These include the
Toepeeka flip-flop in two colors (launched in 2007) and the StopGlobalWarming ecoSNEAKS collection launched recently. Like all Simple Shoes, the ecoSNEAKS are made from sustainable materials: hemp uppers, recycled car tires bottoms, organic cotton linings, recycled plastic bottles (PET) shoe laces and foot beds, and water-based glues, and on top of that, they look great! ...
It may be the thought that counts, but let's face it, if your intention doesn't come wrapped up with a big pink bow on Valentine's Day, you could be sleeping alone. Luckily, we've put on our thinking caps and come up with a plan so you won't get a figurative dagger through the heart (ouch!). From standards like chocolate and flowers to totally kissable coffee breath, we've got you covered morning, noon, and night. ::
Valentine's Day Gift Guide: Giving Greener Love...
Here’s a new shop paradigm for you: Shop according to the revealed ingredients of every object. Because those ingredients sure look yummy with a range of products made from sustainable wood, cork, bamboo, organic and recycled materials. Monica Potvin in Barcelona and Anu Suominen in Finland have joined forces and created ‘a new version shop presenting a collection of objects for living made as sustainable as possible’.
Matteriashop is finally a shop that guarantees eco-smartness as well as fabulous design.
Through close collaboration with designers all over the globe, the Matteriashop offers a unique transparency and behind-the-scene information on each carefully selected product, taking into account its entire lifecycle. Monica Potvin explains:...
F*&king Recycle is the latest poster collection by graphic designer
Becky Redman. Designed to increase awareness and promote action, the 50 colourful and provoking posters do exactly that. With encouraging messages to get people to recycle everything that can possibly be recycled (glass, aluminium, paper, cans, etc.) and notes such as ‘
one recycled aluminium can will save enough energy to power a television for three hours’, '
every eight months the UK produces enough waste to fill Lake Windermere’ or ‘
plastic can take up to 500 years to decompose’, this is a great collection of typographic exploration, using intense colours to spread alarming facts and get people to recycle. All posters have been screen printed on 100% recycled paper and posted in public.
Click here to see the full collection.
(more posters after the jump)...
How about planting some wildflowers every month of this New Year? Canadian based
Botanical Paperworks’
Plantable Eco Calendar guides you through 2008 with its handmade monthly desk calendar that “creates beauty and leaves nothing behind but flowers”. Simply place the seed embedded paper into soil, add water and wait for Bird's Eye, Clarkia, Coreopsis, Poppy, Catchfly and Snap Dragon to come to life.
The handmade paper is acid and tree free, made from recycled bond paper, cotton remnants and abaca, a renewable leaf fibre. The plantable calendar is illustrated by Kal Barteski and available for $19.95
::Botanical Paperworks
Also check out
Blissen’s 2008 Hidden Habitats Calendar and our
2008 Diaries. ...
It is the first of January, which means it’s time to leave the worn-out diary behind and open up a new one. If you haven’t found the perfect agenda to start this New Year yet, here are a few fun and practical eco options. From recycled to social and paperless, there’s an even wider range of treehugger-style diaries this year than any of the previous years.
Starting with the recycled options,
Kara suggested Scribesdelight journals that are made from recycled saddle leather. A
recycled saddle leather agenda/address book is available for $79. If you got one last year, just order your re-fill now and reuse the sleeve.
::Scribesdelight
Another recycled option is the diary by
Bandaderodadura, a Spanish company. The sturdy black
sleeves of these diaries are made from recycled car tire inner tubes and are locally made in Barcelona. The sleeves come with a zip pocket for extra storage space and are guaranteed to last you through quite a few years.
::Bandaderodadura
More diaries after the jump....
Not so long ago I had the chance to check out a couple of cool gifts for kids this holiday season, and the Hydrogen Car available
through Discovery was definitely one of them.
Similar to the H-Racer, it combines a cool, futuristic look with fuel cell technology to teach kids of all ages about the benefits of clean technology development.
And while the car automatically avoids obstacles after bumping into them, the one real drawback is that it doesn’t go tremendously fast. So I suspect the eco-geek on your list may well enjoy it more than the kid who’s looking for the fastest machine in existence.
...
This is a sneak preview of a gorgeous jewellery collection and bags named Jova Design. It’s a joined project between the Ducth fair trade organisation
Tilingo Nepra,
Dutch Design in Development (DDiD) and jewellery designer
Joanne Zwart.
Working with local people in Nepal, designer Zwart decided to use natural and local materials like wood, hemp, cotton and bone. She also found inspiration in the symbolic Nepalese jewellery like the Buddhist and Hindu prayer beads, made from the dark rudraksha berries.
This project is one of many others set up by the DDiD, who specialise in linking Dutch designers and companies to businesses in developing countries. They create opportunities for companies in the developing world, to step into the European market under fair trade conditions. Via
::Design.nl
...
Ring the bells! Pop the (organic) champagne! TreeHugger’s 2007 Gift Guide is here!
We've made this guide the most comprehensive yet, with 180+ gift ideas in three shades of green, making it a perfect reference while shopping for everyone on your gift list. In addition, we'll be adding organizations to support and useful tips for making your holidays more efficient.
Go to Part II here and
Part III here.
For more great ideas, don’t forget to visit our past guides from 2006 and 2005.
...
With the holiday season just around the corner, it seems to me that the hydrogen powered rocket my students' and I gave a test run a couple of days ago may just be the perfect thing for that kid on your list who has everything but craves something unique, cool, and fun too...
When I broke out the rocket and introduced it to my room of 7th graders' they couldn't wait to give it a shot. And when you realize that to understand the mind of a middle school student is to recognize on a most visceral level that they certainly don't want to appear to like anything too educational, I think you'll understand that's saying something.... ...
Who says recycling isn’t sexy? Remember
Superuse, the online community interested in inventive recycling, initiated by
Recyclicity in the Netherlands. These guys, together with Ed van Hint, Césare Peeren and Jan Jongert have released their first book:
Superuse, Constructing New Architecture by Shortcutting Material Flow. It’s a great book, practical as well as inspiring and surprising. Superuse have an eye for people who superuse. People who know their existing waste materials and have the skill to construct new buildings from them. This is hopefully just the beginning of what can be done in architecture, to eliminate the vast amount of waste deriving from it.
The book talks about the bigger challenges and opportunities that lie in recycling, and then divides up into chapters dealing with the various techniques and elements. One of the first chapters for example, talks about ‘Stacked Walls’, ‘one age-old principle the Greeks were very good at’, featuring the tornado safe house made from worn out carpet tiles. 'From the Ground Up’ is a chapter about keeping transport energy down by using local and lightweight materials. This also applies to building substrate put on roofs. One of the examples explains that in the case of installing a green roof, the most ‘fruitful prospective soil element that can possibly be found close to houses is inhabitants’ excretions’. So the idea here is to superuse diapers: fertilising (due to the urine they contain), lightweight, and often otherwise non-recyclable. Plenty of architectural uses for old car windows, broken washing machines and car tyres can be found under ‘Machines and Commodities’ and ‘Taking Measures’ superuses the hardly ever considered ‘super useful’ old windows, window frames and doors into building extensions and entire shelters....
If you can’t get enough of your online social networks like Facebook or Linkedin and you’d also like to see more trees on this planet, then it’s time for you to join
Tree-nation. The goal of this ecological project is to plant 8 million trees in the Sahara to fight climate change, desertification and poverty. With their project, they support
UNEP’s Billion Tree Campaign.
8 Million trees in the desert, a unique mapping technique and a growing online community is what makes this project stand out. You can buy your own tree online: choose one of 5 tree species (prices range from 10-75€), personalise it and plant it. A GPS allows you to spot your tree online anytime. ...
Why not shut down your email for an hour or two and write some notecards to catch up with your correspondence? This is what Mike at
ReadyMade suggests while putting the old issues of their bi-monthly magazine to good use. ReadyMade, for people who like to make stuff, have turned their surplus back issues into beautiful funky envelopes they sell in packs of 10, together with 10 cards of recycled paper and white labels for $12. Because of email, snail mail has become even more appreciated but imagine, if on top of writing a real card, someone does it on colourful recycled material- it’d definitely impress me, whatever it said on the card! Find the notecards
here and more great ready ideas on
::ReadyMade...
The
3 Rs of eco design have become an inspiring concept for designers. There’s
3R Living, the
R3project, the
R4House and the Spanish toy company
Imaginarium who have created their latest products around Reduce, Recycle and Reuse.
Imaginarium are the sky blue stores with the little entrance door for little people in Europe as well as South and Central America, and Asia. They have strong social values integrated into their designs such as growing up happily (with love, security, attention, respect and health), switching the telly off and the imagination on, teaching good manners and loving the Earth as ones home.
Biohabitat 3r is a unique book for children between 4 and 8 that tells in a surprisingly fun way how to take care of our planet by following the 3 Rs. Fun illustrations, activities and startling information raise awareness, stimulate creativity and most importantly are fun. The book is fully recyclable, costs €7 and will be available soon.
Apart from the book, the following cool tools have been designed for kids to learn about saving energy and recycling materials. Six different alternative energy toys will be available in their shops and online, each one opting for a different energy source. ...
Our gift guide
provides lots of ways to give back. So does the ABC Home and Planet Foundation. Givers can choose among sixteen specialized gift packages priced from $40 to $1000, supporting efforts ranging from Dr. Wangari Maathai's Green Belt Movement International to Maya Rainforest protection, to Pet Rescue New York City. The recipient gets a sweet, embroidered silk pouch fashioned from a vintage sari along with a “Gift of Compassion” certificate fully describing the offering made on her or his behalf. Gifts of Compassion may be purchased at
ABC Carpet & Home's landmark retail venue in New York on Broadway at 19th Street, or
online. ABC via Erin...
When two of our favourite Barcelona eco design companies do a joined project, it’s only to make your life happier.
Leopoldo and
Vaho Works merged their two products: the City Vegetable Garden and the ‘
trashion’ fabric from Boldo the handbag, into one: the Leoboldo. This limited edition is a colourful version of the XS vegetable garden, with a touch of Vaho by using reused and reclaimed raffia for the grower. The Leoboldo comes in three patterns, includes all assembly tools and instructions as well as ‘eco-coco’ dehydrating soil, organic guano fertilizer, ecological seeds and a growing calendar to insure green thumbs for everyone. Its smaller size makes it ideal for growing aromatic herbs and it fits easily on every window sill or kitchen. Price: €68. It’s available at the Vaho Gallery in Barcelona and via both their web sites.
::Leopoldo ::Vaho Works
...
New for 2007: Be sure to check out TreeHugger's new
2007 Green Gift Guide!
What's All the Talk?
Welcome to TreeHugger's Holiday Gift Guide for 2006! This time around we've included 10 categories with 10 ideas each - all things TreeHugger from this past year. For more ideas, visit our
2005 Gift Guide and be sure to check out
TreeHugger's "How to: Green Your Gifts." Happy Holidays!
...
With the holidays right around the corner, you might be stressed about finding the perfect gift for both your business associates as well as your loved ones.
Saul Good Gift Co., a Vancouver, BC-based business, might be your one-stop-shop this season. The company’s line of gift boxes could fulfill your hopes of giving stylish gifts that also have minimal impact on the Earth. The fully-recyclable boxes are not only fun, but also complete with numerous gourmet and organic products including fair-trade coffee and teas, organic body care products, and yummy chocolates and snacks. Saul Good (get it? … "s’all good") is making sure their sustainable bases are covered with responsible resource usage, support for local BC-based businesses, and involvement in social causes, and they do all this while selling environmentally friendly, low-impact products. These eco-chic gift boxes just might ensure that your giftee’s health, taste buds, and community are s’all feeling good this holiday season.
::Saul Good...
When
Blake Mycoskie went to visit Argentina he discovered the typical soft shoe called
Alpargata (similar to
the Spanish Espadrilles) but also that a lot of children don't have shoes which leads to major health issues. Blake saw an opportunity for a business idea that 'makes life more comfortable' and returned home with exactly that:
TOMS Shoes was born.
It's simple: with each pair of TOMS you buy ($38), a pair of shoes is donated to a child in Argentina on your behalf. And what's also comfortable to know is that the shoes are produced in Argentina under strict 'no sweatshop' criterias, made from local materials such as canvas and leather. Women, men and 'tiny' shoes are available (
online as well as in stores across the US) in all sorts of colours and patterns as well as a limited hand painted graffiti edition by Tyler Ramsen. For the full TOMS Shoe story check out Blake Mycoskie's video clip
here.
::via Springwise ::TOMS Shoes...
Last year we wrote about Sarah Lucy Smith’s
GreenKnickers project and are excited to announce that a limited hand-made edition is now on sale. After graduating, eco fashion designer Sarah got together with fashion merchandiser Rose Cleary-Southwood and brought GreenKnickers to life. Together, they are passionate about underwear, ethics, design and business. They believe ‘that all these values can occupy the same product’.
An example of one such a product are the ‘Global Warming’ Knickers that react to heat to show the effects of global warming. Another are knickers with beautifully embroidered slogans such as ‘eat organic’. Both of these styles are made in the UK from 100% organic cotton and are on sale now for £25 each. How to care for these knickers? –Wash them cold, they say, and save energy! If you don’t agree,
check out their videos!
GreenKnickers are not just cheeky underwear but the two founders also live up to what they preach. For example they are reducing the ‘knicker mile’ drastically by having three styles actually made in the UK. The rest are made in India and certified fair-trade. Plus they use organic fabrics and sustainable crops where possible. Depending on the style, they are made from organic cotton, hemp and/or silk.
::GreenKnickers...
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.
