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Blue Canoe Fall 2007
Blue Canoe is ready for brisk weather with new fall additions to its already expansive collection. And the California-based organic apparel company doesn't disappoint. We get the same clean yet bold aestheticone that works both on and off the yoga matand mix-and-match versatility that Blue Canoe built its rep on. Also, that toggle jacket totally had us at hello. More photos below the cut. ::Blue Canoe...

New Cars to Check Tire Pressure Automatically
We have said it before, and we will say it again - checking your tire pressure is one of the easiest ways that you can green your driving. However, even the most prudent of us forgets to pull out the tire gauge every 30 days. That can, of course, lead not only to decreased fuel efficiency, but to some serious safety concerns as well. You would think that by now, your tire pressure would be checked by your car just as your car gauges gas and oil. Well, finally, it will. Starting in all 2008 models, autos sold in the U.S. will be ...

More Grilling on the Go: Flat-Folding BBQ
Perhaps it's that summer is in its final throes, or a longing for bygone salad days of grilling and chilling, but this TreeHugger seems to have barbeque on the brain. Yesterday, it was the Grilliput, today it's the lean, mean, flat-packing Fold Flat BBQ. This sleek little number looks perfect for balcony barbeque enthusiasts and tailgaters alike, folding down to next to nothing -- approaching that of a wafer-thin mint -- to both save space and make it easily portable...

More from Molo: Paper Softlight
The Vancouver-based designers at Molo are at it again. After rocking our world earlier this year, they've returned to the "soft" aesthetic that brought the world softwall and softseating to add some lighting to the mix. "softlight" follows a similar pattern to the other soft elements, utilizing the flexible paper honeycomb pattern to maximize strength and efficiency while minimizing materials. The honeycomb works particularly well for this design, creating a really neat...

Green Your Drive Without a Hybrid
Photo credit: ieatstarsEven if you don't have a Hybrid, a few simple tips are all you need to give your vehicle's fuel economy the boost it deserves, which isn't a bad idea considering that gas prices are spiraling upward again this summer.Here are some of the top money- and planet-saving tricks, according to KBB.com:1. Reduce your air conditioning2. Change your filters at scheduled intervals3. Check your tire pressure regularly4. Use a fuel additive in each fill-up to increase engine performance5. Get fuel injectors cleaned...

SkyTrekking: Do We Need This In Wilderness Areas?
The snowmobiles that spread virus-like into Yellowstone each winter might be viewed as the working-mans version of the recently designed AeroTrekking vehicle pictured here. Because this is a rich mans toy, the usual arguments for allowing snowmobiles in roadless areas andpublic lands in general can't yet be made for the Aerotrekker: e.g. let regular folks, the elderly, or the unfit have some enjoyment of remote places. No doubt the search and rescue rationale will come along, followed by some military variation. Cost will come down and the cry of the loon will be merged with the roar of not-so distant engines."McAfee, the man behind McAfee anti-virus software, is helping to bring ...

The Best of TreeHugger Radio In-Depth Interivews
At TreeHugger we are so fortunate to speak with some of the most lucid minds of the modern green movement. TreeHugger Radio is not even yet a year old, but we've already had the pleasure of spending time with remarkable thinkers, sharing these radical viewpoints on sustainability and human culture. Here is a look at some of the in-depth interviews we've had the honor to offer on TreeHugger Radio. Simran Sethi speaks with Paul Hawken about the birth of Blessed Unrest and the spawning of the grass roots.Mathis Wackernagel, an...

Bitchin', Green Dudes: Body Glove's Eco Wetsuit
Using materials like "Bio Stretch" rubber and "Eco Flex" exterior, Body Glove has created the "first environmentally friendly wetsuit." While the folks at Patagonia might have something to say about that, Body Glove's "Eco Wetsuit" can boast 100% petroleum-free materials which consume "1/10th the amount of energy normally used in the manufacturing of standard petroleum based wetsuits." As we've noted before, surfing and TreeHugging go together like fair trade chocolate and organic peanut butter; it's good to see more wa...

Make a Solar Thermal Water Heater for Less Than $5
All you need is legal access to a junkyard (or dump) to plunder parts such as the grill on the back of a refrigerator, some wood for the frame, a pane of glass, and a discarded rubber door mat. Yeah, eat your heart out, MacGyver.This first-prize winner of our TreeHugger/Popular Science/Instructables Go Green contest also used duct tape to seal cracks, rather than the more-expensive caulk. The only thing he purchased new was a $3.76 air-pump hose from an aquarium store, because he already had the screws he needed on han...

TH Forums Highlights: Marketing Global Warming, Is Hunting Green? + More...
Life at TreeHugger Forums is a highway, we want to ride it all night long...1) Forums user ArcheoTerra has a beef with using global warming as a scare tactic/behavior-changer: "Please don't get me wrong, I think efforts made to 'save' the earth are all very important and good ideas, I am obvious...

Annals of More Useless Crap We Don't Need: Neosporin Travel Tote
Most Americans are familiar with Neosporin, that antibiotic salve that keeps sliced-up body parts from rotting off and cluttering the living-room floor. The brain trust at Johnson & Johnson, to spread the gospel of this magical ointment, decided to market a promotional version that comes in a little Bandaid-storing red plastic tote. With a dainty handle. "Presumably," writes Chris Colin, TreeHugger reader and San Francisco Chronicle writer, "so you can swing the thing to and fro between your thumb and forefinger en route to a miniature picnic."Or wave it about like a bell as if to signal "looook what Iiiii've gotttt," because to a person with a bloodied hand jammed up the paper-to...

New Feature Pairs Farmers, Chefs for Earth-Friendly Recipes
Chefs all around the country are committed to using local, organic ingredients in their dishes. In the first installment of Green Cuisine, the Union of Concerned Scientists profiles Nora Pouillon, owner of Restaurant Nora and Asia Nora in the nation's capital and local grower Jim Crawford of New Morning Farm and the Tuscarora Organic Growers Cooperative.Check out Noras recipe for local and organic 10 tomato pasta. And see a ...

yes Yes YES Organic Lube: For Your Pleasure
TreeHugger tries to remain vigilant in our efforts to turn our readers on to greener sex tips, and we've found more than a few ways to get down without dirtying the planet (and yourself, for that matter), from buying green sex toys to recycling them when the good vibe has gone bad. As any good car mechanic will tell you, keeping the moving parts well lubricated is a key to continued smooth operation; with that in mind, we present the products from

Shopping is Costing the Earth
A new study shows that the environmental impact of shopping for stuff, from from food and clothing to CDs and electrical appliances - far outweighs any efforts to save water and power in the home. The Australian Conservation Foundation and the University of Sydney note that shopping habits represent such a large part of greenhouse gas emissions that even if every household switched to renewable energy and stopped driving cars tomorrow, total household emissions would fall by less than 20 per cent. The more you shop, the worse it is; The study, Consuming Australia, reports that on average, every additional dollar of consumption is responsible for 720...

Foaming Ocean Whips Beachgoers into a Frenzy
Beach-side foam party gone out of control? Not quite. A shoreline north of Sydney, Australia was transformed into the "Cappuccino Coast," as one journalist put it, with foam swallowing up an entire beach and half the nearby buildings, including the lifeguard HQ.A phenomenon not seen on the beach for more than 30 years, the frothy mix stretched for 30 miles out into the Pacific. Unnamed scientists say that the foam was caused by impurities in the ocea, such as salts, chemicals, dead plants, decomposed fish, andewwsecretions from seaweed....

Americans Care More About Gay Marriage Than Global Warming
Pollster American Environics studied American attitudes toward energy and the environment and found depressing results:1) Americans overwhelmingly believe that global warming is occurring.2) They don't care. "dealing with global warming" came 20th out of 23 policy priorities.3) They won't give anything up. The cost of energy is more important than global warming.As the graph shows, 69 percent of the public is prepared to overlook disagreement about the environment and there are six issues that rate ahead of the environment in terms of the number of people who consider them dealbreakers. ...

Go Ahead, Have Another 6-Pack
We all know how bad it can be if you don't cut the rings out of your six-pack holders: sea life and other animals get stuck in them, can't move, can't eat and die, and nobody wants that. Rather than cutting them out and throwing them away, though, we like what design student Adam Johnston has done with them instead. His slick, spacey chair, built with hundreds of the holders, keeps them out of the waste stream altogether -- at least for a little while -- and gives them a second life rather than going straight from fridge to trash. So go ahead, have another six pack, as long as you can use the rings for something as functional as the chair. Recycling has never been so tasty. Get...

City Destroys 10 Year Old Natural Garden
Toronto paints itself green, but the truth will out. Deborah Dale is a biologist who gives seminars at the City about growing natural gardens filled with native species. She is past president of the North American Native Plant Society. Her own garden included 150 species including two eight-year-old fragrant sumacs, some giant purple hyssops, and four varieties of milkweed plants, in which monarch butterflies had already laid eggs.Until last week, when The Clean and Beautiful City cut it down. I called the police because my garden had been vandalized. Its not the first time Iv...

The Buckminster Fuller Challenge
Got an idea that can save the world? Enter the Buckminster Fuller Challenge and win a hundred thousand bucks. Come up with a "design science solution" (effective application of the principles of science to the conscious design of our total environment in order to help make the Earth's finite resources meet the needs of all humanity without disrupting the ecological processes of the planet.") between September 4 and October 30....

Educators in Japan Have Wild, Eco-Friendly Idea: Use Cukes to Cool Schools
I must admit that educators in Japan have demonstrated to me that theres simply no limit to their imagination while coming up with some fascinating material recently. Using Miso soup to educate their students about a sustainable diet in a relatively small, crowded, island nation; and using play with wood blocks to teach them the same about forestry practices in that country But the latest and greatest craze seems to be the creation of Green Curtains around school buildings to help them turn down the a/c to save energy, and ...

Make Your Own Ball Toss-and-Catchers
It's still summer, at least in this here parts, so enjoy the fresh outdoors as much as you can before Old Man Winter comes a-knockin'. The artist formerly known as Tiffany Tomato (her site is now known as RePlayGround) shows us how to make a pair of toss-and-catchers for practically nothing. All you need are two used milk cartons, dual toilet-paper tubes, some tape, markers, and decorative paper scraps you probably already have lying around the house. If you already have a ball to throw around, great; if you don't, some wadded up aluminum foilused would be betterwould do th...

Northwest Passage All But Ice-Free
Once an impregnable forest of huge ice blocks, the Northwest Passage has for the first time in recorded history become almost completely ice-free and open to navigation. Researchers at the US National Snow and Ice Data Center recently announced that: "Analysts confirm that the passage is almost completely clear and that the region is more open than it has ever been since the advent of routine monitoring in 1972." While it had long been expected that the Northwest Passage would gradually open up as a result of rising global temperatures, scientists were taken aback at the speed with which it happened.The Northwest Passage which runs along...

Searching for Alternative Energy Beneath the Ocean Floor
With multiple projects underway already focusing on finding the next big renewable energy source above water and below the surface (and even on other planets), it was only a matter of time before researchers turned their attention to one of the few remaining untapped areas the vast expanse beneath the ocean floor. Now a team of scientists from the University of Haifa and Stanford University are getting ready to embark on a research expedition with the aim of investigating the use of a gas lying beneath the floor, most likely methane, as an alternative to oil. According to a recent article in

Slow Home: Annie House from Bercy Chen Studio
"Suburban sprawl is like fast food; cheap and easy but also unsatisfying and boring." says the intro Slow Home, which says "takes its name from the slow food movement which arose as a reaction to the processed food industry. In the same ways that slow food helps people learn how to become more familiar and involved with the food they eat, Slow Home provides design focused information to empower individuals to step beyond the too fast world of cookie cutter housing. " The ten steps to better housing (listed below the fold) are an excellent guide to sustainable living. Th...

TreeStations: A Bioregional Solution to Urban Forestry Waste
This week weve been looking at the dizzying array of sustainability initiatives that the London-based Bioregional Development Group are involved in. Yesterday we posted on the Bioregional Charcoal Company, and on Monday we wrote about The Laundry - a localized paper recycling scheme that the founders claim cuts emissions involved in paper production by as much as 93%. Today we thought wed look at the groups work creating viable markets for urban forestry products. Many urb...

Mexican Police Confiscate Turtle Eggs
The Mexican Attorney General for Environmental Protection's office announced (Spanish link) Tuesday that it had confiscated some 57,684 oliver ridley turtle eggs in the state of Oaxaca.The eggs were bound for markets in Mexico City, where they are hawked for their supposed aphrodisiac qualities. Mexican green groups have launched various campaigns over the years to convince Mexican consumers otherwise.The oliver ridley

Sit and Sup: Instant Picnic Wear
Here's a wee bit of Hump Day absurdity, just for the heck of itThe Spontaneous Picnic Dress, sewn together for a "weird Japanese" competition (of course) and made out of a plastic lobster bib, a kitchen towel, and a festive gingham tablecloth. We suppose you're expected to tote around a bottle of wine and a baguette until you launch upon a suitable patch of grass for an instant picnic lunch. (And then pray there are no creepy crawlies underskirt.)It might get kinda messy, but at least you won't be stalked by any upright-walking bears hoping to steal your pic-a-nic basket.

Quote of the Day: Michael Pollan on Eating
Daily, our eating turns nature into culture, transforming the body of the world into our bodies and minds. Agriculture has done more to reshape the natural world than anything else we humans do, both its landscapes and the composition of its flora and fauna. Our eating also constitutes a relationship with dozens of other speciesplants, animals, and fungiwith which we have coevolved to the point where our fates are deeply entwined. Many of these species have evolved expressly to gratify our desires, in the intricate dance of domestication that has allowed us and them to prosper together as we could never have prospered apa...

A Use For Every Building Dept: Martello Tower
We do go on about how almost any building can be adapted to almost any use; Justin points us to this conversion of a Martello tower into a weekend retreat. Martello towers were built by the British in the early 1800's around the world; there are three in Kingston, Ontario built to ward off American invaders. They had thick stone walls below, a single big gun on a pivot, and a light wood roof that would get blown away instantly. There is not a lot of information about this conversion by Piercy Conner Architects on the Suffolk Coast of England, ot...

Garbage Bag Art Work
In Japan, garbage is colour coded: Green is for recyclable trash, blue is for non-burnable and red is for burnable. Design agency MAQ thought the streets would be prettier if they turned the garbage bags into disposable art, in three patters- trees, fish and flowers. Of course it is better not to have bags at all; we posted previously that Japanese separated their garbage into ten categories. ::Pink Tentacle...

Tevas Curbside Collection
Its a cute name, and a wonder no-one hasn't used it before. The company that grew from a pair of rafters sandals over twenty years ago, is now looking after its namesake (Teva being Hebrew for Nature). The Curbside collection, which recently became available, is a line of casual footwear constructed with recycled content materials, up to 40% in certain models, and by some accounts the percentage is set to doubt next year. There is the post-consumer recycled PET canvas lining, the recycled PET sockliner cover and the post-consumer recycled rubber outsole. These materials find themselves in four models of womens and two mens casual shoes. Teva are also involved in the campaign kn...

Outdoor Retailers Get the Eco Fitout Bug
The Piton (an outdoor punditry blog) had a story the other day where they proclaimed Someone Call TreeHugger. So figured we might as well oblige and reference the articles theyd found. The first is a tad thin of detail. But, as best we can make out, The North Face have opened their twelve US retail store which utilises pressed bamboo in the fixtures. Plus they use Brazilian cherry wood, which we can only hope they sourced through someone like Eco-Timber, given that it...

Recycle This Chair
It may not look like the most exciting chair, but the concept behind it is just what we love at treehugger. It is made out of 100% recycled plastic, recovered from recycled electronic products such as games consoles. Then it is collected and reprocessed under the EU's strict directives. Not only that, it is stackable, designed for disassembly and easy recycling. And the slats can be repaired piece by piece. The other chair made by this design company is created from recycled plastic waste, with beech. They also make a sturdy side table from recycled paper core with organic eggshell lacquer finish and bamboo surfaces. A...