Cultivate Kids organic kids Tees remind us that growing organic isn’t just about reducing pesticides and preventing the spread of GMOs – it is about cultivating a healthy future for our earth and for our children. When we give our kids toxic messages instead of nurturing their natural qualities like curiosity and creativity, we end up short-changing both the children and ourselves.
Dutch designer Frans Prins and Swedish designer Cecilia Palmer have joined forces to create Pamoyo, an ethical fashion label with a creative edge. Pamoyo is an open source label. Pamoyo invites designers to join their mission and enrich the offerings with their creations. Pamoyo, in return, will take responsibility to ensure consumers of the "high quality and sustainable production of every product made under the label".
Pamoyo will post patterns under the Creative Commons license. According to their blog, the Creative Commons office has confirmed that Pamoyo is the first fashion label under Creative Commons license.
All Sarah and Rose from Greenknickers are waiting for these days is sunny weather as there is no more sore bottom excuses not to get on your bike! The girls have designed special padded boxers and knickers that look as sexy as the rest of their collection (see here, here and here) to encourage their customers to cycle more. (more about these and lucky wedding lingerie after the jump)
The Finnish family business Lasistudio reclaims glass bottles and jars without crushing them in order to create new objects. All the products are hand-made in an old barn in Finland. By taking advantage of the original shapes of the waste packages, only 1/4 of the energy needed to shape new objects from melted glass is used, says Jan Torstensson Oy, glassworks specialized in manufacturing items from recycled packaging glass.
Swedish design company Hetta’s favourite materials are cork, leather and wool. We particularly like the corky underlays for pots; one has the shape of a Ladder, and another one is Long and flexible for you to decorate the table in countless ways.
We featured The Home Project’s cork speakers on TreeHugger before but have a look at these curious egg cups, perfect to display and eat this year's Easter eggs.
Today's the big day--a full 24-hours dedicated to wearing your heart on your sleeve, and eating chocolate with friends, S.O.'s, and even colleagues. But if you haven't put enough thought into what you should be doing for that one special person in your life, it's not too late. Our Valentine's Day Gift Guide is a green cheat sheet to the perfect last-minute memento or bouquet, and we also give you hour-by-hour ideas for keeping it sexy all day long. ::Valentine's Day Gift Guide: Giving Greener Love
Images by H&M, Photographer: Daniel Jackson
H&M, the Swedish high street store, has yet again made it into the TreeHugger news, just on time to spread some love for Valentine's day (check out Green Valentine for other great gifts). After applying the EU eco-label and the launch of their organic cotton collection last spring, H&M has launched Fashion Against Aids to spread awareness about HIV this month. Well-known artists such as Rihanna, Chicks on Speed, Good Charlotte, Henrik Vibskov, Jade Jagger, Justice, Katharine Hamnett, My Chemical Romance, Rufus Wainwright, Scissor Sisters, The Cardigans, Tiga, Timbaland and Ziggy Marley have each designed a 100% organic cotton T-shirts, tank tops or hooded sweater. Judging by the sold out racks of clothing the first days of the launch (at least here in Barcelona), the campaign is a great success.
Credit: Abbey Goes Design Scouting
Valentine's Day is almost here. What's that? You haven't picked out something perfect your sweetheart just yet? Never fear! Our Valentine's Day Gift Guide will save the day. Whether you're looking for something sexy (eco-lingerie, anyone?), standard (organic chocolate and flowers always do the trick), or dematerialized (giving to charity comes from the heart), we've got something for everyone for a full day of good green lovin'. ::Valentine's Day Gift Guide: Giving Greener Love...
Credit: ulterior epicure
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...
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....
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
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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.
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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. ...
So, we are 2 days into the new year, time to put up a new calendar if you haven’t already. Here’s an eco one that doesn’t show you shocking pictures in order to get you to save the world but still tells you everything you need to know and can do against the biggest issue of out time. Environmental publisher Flipside Vision’s Calendar of Climate Change 2007 has beautiful photos (the cute polar bear is definitely not missing) for each month and is full of energy saving tips, climate facts and web links. It’s carbon neutral and printed on 80% recycled paper with vegetable-based ink. It’s available for €17,27 in the UK from Flipside Vision. ::via o2balance ::Flipside Vision
more 2007 calendars on TreeHugger: Gary Larson Whale Nation...
A Family in China (copyright Peter Menzel Photography)
We really enjoyed Peter Menzel's Material World, which uses artistic photographic images to vividly demonstrate the consumer overdrive in some societies in contrast to the material simplicity with which it is possible to live on this planet. Now Menzel is back with another fascinating peek into the lives of our neighbors around the globe. In Hungry Planet, Menzel documents the foods families eat each week in 24 countries. ...
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...
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!
Here are a few recommended websites.
