Nude Kona Coffee Farmers Make Their Point, Naturally

While they don’t normally farm naked, eleven of Kona’s farmers dared and bared it all to raise awareness about false advertising on coffee labels. The tasteful and fun photos of these mature women grace the pages of a 2009 calendar, reminiscent of the Alternate WI Calendar, the inspiration for the movie Calendar Girls. While the [...]

McDonald’s Lettuce Growing Billboard

A 2007 McDonald’s billboard near Chicago featured growing lettuce plants stating, “Fresh salads”.  Considering the short life span of such a billboard, McDonald’s reputation for rainforest destruction, and the fact their salads are not organic, fresh (they are prepackaged), or healthy, I can’t embrace this campaign. Still, using plants for advertising is definitely a unique [...]

Eco-Chic Beaded Necklaces Make Sustainable Stylish

EverybodyGreen.com expands their celebrity-favorite “go! Green” line of eco-chic accessories with the addition of the highly anticipated new summer style: the SeedBead Necklace. The necklaces are each three strands of beads made from cornstarch-based resin, and feature two 41 inch rows and one 36 inch row of 4mm “GreenBeads.” Each necklace sells for $18.00, and comes [...]

Out of the Box Rubber Sun Dressing

Well if I was to honor a rubber tube design award, the winner would be the Pieces Goddess, Christa De Leeuw Van Weenen for Zuss Fashion Design in The Netherlands. This freaky, fashionable, wearable art is not only cool, it’s fashionable recycling at it’s best! Sorry, this Strapless Adventure sun dress is SOLD. But you get [...]

Reusable Shopping Bags for Kids

My carbon footprint is pretty small, considering I live off-the-grid; however, I have sometimes slacked on the little things I could do to help the environment. I often leave my reusable shopping bags in the car, forgetting to take them into the store. Now, that has changed since my daughter got her own [...]

Eat The Strawberry: Remember to Savor the Moment

few years ago, I was walking through our farm gardens, when all of a sudden I turned around, and there stood a hungry tiger, licking his chomps. “Hmmm, that’s a peculiar non-native species to roam the Wisconsin countryside,” I said to myself, and then ran like hell across the field. All of a sudden, I [...]

How Eco-Friendly Coffee Makes a Difference

Americans drink 400 million cups of coffee each day, which contributes to the coffee bean’s status as the second most globally traded product after petroleum. Now, a recent report from the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid has found that regular coffee intake can actually prevent heart disease in women. Coffee is a much needed cash [...]

Not Rose-Colored Glasses, but Green and Keen

his past weekend signified the very middle of my venture to live 100% environmentally sustainably.  To mark the occasion, I unwittingly placed myself in a situation where every one of my interactions and experiences emphasized my unique new mindset. I spent the weekend on a camping trip with three of my buddies from college. Camping? Yes, it’s [...]

Safer Insect Repellents

It’s bug season in New England. Blackflies, mosquitos, deer flies, no-see-ums, and even the ticks are moving northward to invade us. Being a child playing all day outside can be a feast for these crawly creatures. Right now both my girls have big blackfly bites on their scalps, where it is hard to apply [...]

Worried About The High Cost Of Green Products?

One hurdle that many companies selling green goods face is convincing consumers to pay the difference between conventional and green or organic products. Recent health scares and increased interest in saving the planet aside, a recent article quoting a LOHAS survey states: …many consumers’ purchasing patterns are affected by the phenomenon of trading up: a willingness [...]

Eco Art Supplies

I feel like I just found a unicorn! Trying to find a one stop shop for eco art supplies is like finding a needle in a hay stack. Even if you have some earth friendly crafting supplies here and there in big chain stores, what we all yearn for is that one store that has [...]

HP Goes Green with Affordable, Recycled Printer

Hewlett-Packard has just launched a new line of greener office products. The HP Deskjet D2545 Printer is made from 83% recycled plastic and is Energy Star rated. Even the ink cartridges are made from recycled plastic resins. At a price of $44.99, this is an affordable green office product. HP also offers extensive recycling [...]

Toyota Building Nickel-Metal Hydride and Lithium-Ion Battery Plants for Electric and Hybrid Cars

What will $192 million buy? A nickel-metal hydride battery plant in Shizuoka prefecture, central Japan. Toyota is teaming up with Matsushita Electric Industrial Co, makers of Panasonic, to build a plant to produce the batteries currently used in the Prius. Rumors are also circulating in the Nikkei, Japan’s top business daily, that Toyota [...]

Organic Silk Soymilk Tastes Just Like Milk

I made the switch to soymilk after having to milk a cow with mastitis and seeing the animal suffer, as well as how she would sometimes poo while we were milking. It was really gross, and it made me realize that cutting down on my dairy consumption would be good for the cows and [...]

Eco Pedicure with a Terra Cotta Foot Scrubber

This time of year, I get garden feet which are dirty and crack. My feet need some tender loving care, but I refuse to pay for a pedicure and be exposed to all of the toxic chemicals in nail salons. Gilden Tree’s two-sided Terra Cotta Footscrubber and Callus Remover is the perfect tool [...]

Cool Electric Motorcycle

Gas has reached over $4.50 a gallon here in Northern California, and there is no relief in site. Many people are turning to motorcycles as a more efficient way to travel, and now, electric bikes and motorcycles are leading the trend. Brammo Enertia Electric Motorcycle: This bike runs on six Lithium Phosphate battery modules, [...]

Waterless Washing Machine

With drought occurring on all seven continents, many people are wondering if peak water will replace peak oil. We already have low flush toilets and low flow shower heads, soon we may be using virtually waterless washing machines. Researchers at the University of Leeds have developed a process of cleaning clothes using less than [...]

Green Plug Develops Single Universal Power Adapter for All Electronic Devices

I have a drawer full of cell phone power adapters, camera adapters, and of course, my laptop and modem have different power adapters too! Each time I get a new electronic device, I keep the old adapter thinking I might need it some day, but it never fits the new phone, camera, etc. [...]

Samsung Eco mobile phone made of corn

If you can’t sleep at night thinking about the environmental damage caused by your need to have a new cell phone every six months, you’ll be glad to know that eco-friendly cell phones made of corn flour are about to be launched in Korea by Samsung Electronics. The Samsung SCH-W510 has a battery cover and [...]

Bio Infectious laptop sleeves

If the idea behind this bag design is to deter thieves, I think they’ve done a pretty good job. Whether you want to walk around looking like radioactive waste is up to you. That would be neoprene radioactive waste actually, since the sleeves are made of neoprene rubber. The 13″ sleeve goes for $34.95, the 14.1″ for [...]

Beer made from melting ice caps

We all know Greenland’s ice cap is melting and, as it covers an area of about 1,6-million square kilometres and is about 3,000 metres thick, if it all melted, the world’s sea levels could rise by as much as six metres.

LED Bulbs Could Light Homes In Less Than Three Years

LEDs lights are very efficient, but because of their structure, much of the light in standard LEDs becomes trapped, reducing the brightness of the light.

Ranking the greenest cars of 2008

GreenerCars.org has just released its list of the best buys for 2008. The Honda Civic GX gets top marks for satisfying the Partial Zero-Emission Vehicle (PZEV) standard and getting 36 MPG on the highway.

GRAVIA: Gravity Based Kinetic Energy Lamp

Gravia, a gravity based kinetic energy lamp concept, wowed our panel judges and the crowd at the Greener Gadgets Conference, earning a second place accolade in the design competition.

Solar Notebook: Go Anywhere…Sustainably

Solar-powered laptops sure would be a great thing to have in mass production to (1) cut down on energy consumption and (2) not have to worry as much about the battery dying. One concept design which looks interesting is by Nikola Knezevic of Nikoladesign.