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Sierra Nevada Brewery: Beer Powered by the Sun
By the end of this month, the Sierra Nevada Brewery will be almost entirely off the grid. Already, the brewery has four fuel cells operating 70 to 75 percent of the facility's power, according to Cheri Chastain, the company's sustainability coordinator.In a few short weeks, the solar panels they've been installing all summer will be ready to capture some rays, enabling the brewery to approach 100 percent self-sufficiency when the sun is at its peak. (Chastain expects the brewery to be around 80 percent efficient during off-peak hours, at night, or on cloudy days.)Already a model of sustainability, the brewery also focuses efforts in recycling, heat recovery, carbon-dioxide recovery...

Arm & Hammer Dye and Fragrance-Free Detergent
Arm & Hammer has developed a dye- and fragrance-free version of its Essentials Liquid Laundry detergent for people with sensitive skin. Made from naturally derived surfactants and biodegradable plant-based soaps, the dermatologist-tested detergent also contains no phosphates, bleaches, or petroleum-based cleaners.This new formulation is more concentrated, which means more value for money and less packaging for the same amount of product. You can also get Arm & Hammer's Essentials Fabric Softener Sheets that are made from 100 percent plant-based soaps, although we recommend skipping the disposables and making your own. Simply mist a moist washcloth with a dab of liquid fabric soften...

Green Basics: Organic Food
Though known colloquially as food that is grown more healthily (and is more expensive), in order for organic food to be certified as such, it must be produced under specific, legally-regulated standards and be subject to testing in order to retain certification. In agriculture, this means that crops were grown without the use of conventional pesticides, artificial fertilizers or sewage sludge, and that they were processed without food additives (like chemical preservatives). When it comes to animals, they must be reared without the routine use of antibiotics and growth hormones and fed a diet of organic foods. In most countries, organic produce must not ...

Fall Fashion 07: Positivitee
Wear your favorite cause on your chest (or hip, as it may be) with Positivitee's line of sweatshop-free activist shirts and tees. "My daughters and I wish to walk softly on the Earth," says Heidi Matonis, the company's president and founder. "But we also wish to be heard."Coming this fall are six new designs, printed on 100 percent organic cotton Henley and thermal shirts, with a show of support Retired Thoroughbred Foundation (above), Oceana, Save the Children, Heifer International, the

BuyGreen: Women's Jeans
[Ed. note: This is the second in our series of BuyGreen Guides, TreeHugger's helping hand for a quick, easy, hip way to shift your life in a greener direction today. Check out the Men's Jeans guide and stay tuned for more.]TreeHugger loves denim for its versatility: dress up your jeans with a blazer and heels for an impressive first impression; dress 'em down with a t-shirt and sneakers for running errands; or sex 'em up with a blouse or button-down for a night on the town. With so many choices out there (and more being added every day), it can be hard to find the right combination ...

Watch FarmAid 2007 Online
Photo credit: Paul Natkin/Photo Reserve Inc. 2007Didn't make it to FarmAid this year? You can catch all 21 sets of the entire Randall's Island show online, including The Counting Crows (above), until Thursday, Sept. 19. (After that, it will be accessible to FarmAid members only.)Watch it for a small donation or, if you're feeling cheap, for free. ::FarmAid...

In the Shadow of the Moon
In the Shadow of the Moon, producer Ron Howard's breathtaking latest film, chronicles the history of the Apollo program by bringing together the surviving crew members of every manned Moon mission. With the help of digitally restored, rarely before-seen archival footage, the former astronauts describe, in their own words, a time when humans walked on the face of the Moon.The Apollo program was forged in the middle of the Cold War; In 1961 President John F. Kennedy delivered a speech to Congress challenging the United States to put a man on the Moon and return him safely back to Earth before the decade was up. ...

RideAmigos: Car-Sharing in NYC
Ride-sharing gets up close and local for New Yorkers with RideAmigos, a new money- and planet-saving service that launched earlier this month. The site, which allows you to create cab-shares online, hooks you up with other New Yorkers who are embarking from the same place or headed to the same destination....

Three Million Trees Planted in Mexico City This Summer
Earlier this summer Mexican President Felipe Caldern unveiled his government's National Climate Change Strategy, a plan with specific targets for reducing as much as 25 billion tons of CO2. The plan isn't pegged to any particular year's levels, but lists opportunities for emissions reduction and carbon capture by 2014.The comprehensive carbon-sequestration section features a call to plant 250 million trees in 2007, the development of wood-based biofuels in forest communities and restoration of agricultural lands. While the tree-planting goal is obviously quite ambitious, the Distrito Federal, or Federal District, which encompasses much of Mexico City, has made a solid contribution to the goa...

German Town Scraps Road Signs to Increase Safety
Drachten roundaboutIt started in the Dutch city of Drachten: Anarchy on the roads, no signs, no lights. Now they are trying in in the German town of Bohmte: no signs or lights, ripping up the sidewalks and asphalt and replacing it all with cobblestones. It's called "shared space," a concept developed by Dutch traffic engineer Hans Monderman. Speigel notes: According to the concept, road users have to negotiate their behavior with each other, rather than have it prescribed by rules -- the idea being that people will pay more attention to what other road users are doing and hence cause fewer accidents. They report ...

India's PM: No Subsidies, More Local Water Conservation Strategies
In the face of a mounting water crisis, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh outlined his plan for water conservation at a national groundwater conference in Delhi on Tuesday, stating that instead of economic and commercial subsidies, a price should be put on water usage. At the same time, he urged all local governments to come up with effective strategies to popularize rain-harvesting and to engage in maintaining traditional reservoirs through more sustainable means.Water conservation and management can be done better through a package of incentives and penalties, he said. However, he noted that for the plan to be effective, other changes across the board have to be made,...

Oaxaca Boosts Eco-Tourism Sector
The southern Mexican state of Oaxaca recently launched its first annual eco-tourism fair to promote the state's burgeoning array of eco-tourism options. Fourteen communities participated in the fair, showcasing projects that include eco-tourism, adventure tourism and rural tourism.To date the state boasts 19 collectives, 30 private companies, seven sustainable agriculture farms and five coffee farms involved in eco-tourism. The state's tourism secretary, Beatriz Rodrguez Casasnovas, noted that the sector has thus far generated $1.7 million (19 million pesos), much of it benefiting small communities in need of economic opportunities. Eco-tourism, according to the

Clean Up the Beach & Have Fun Doing It with the Bottle-Legged Octopus
One of the ideas behind creating meaningful, impactful educational experiences is, "You gotta make it fun." Here's a brilliant concept designed to do just that when it comes to learning to clean up the beach. This cute little octopus (although, technically, it's just got six legs, so...sextopus?) is missing his legs; collecting discarded plastic bottles will both restore its limbs and make it buoyant enough to float. Trash = toy, just like that. It might be so much fun that us big kids would help collect new legs, too. Hit the jump to see what happens when the little guy has all six legs. via

EcoGeek of the Week: Karl Schroeder
Karl Schroeder is the second science fiction writer to come out of the southern Manitoba Mennonite community (after A.E. van Vogt). Born in 1962, Karl grew up in a household full of books. He moved to Toronto in 1986 to pursue a dream of being a novelist, and now lives there with his wife and daughter.Karl has been a fixture in the Canadian SF writing community since the late 1980s, establishing a growing reputation with acclaimed and award-winning short stories. Since his first appearance in the American market, he has enjoyed continued and increasing success. His previous novels

Honda's FCX Fuel Cell: Production in 2008?
Ever since we first saw Honda's FCX fuel cell concept, we've been dreaming of the day that it would finally enter production and hit the streets. They've told the world to wait a few years for production and have been teasing us by intermittently showing it off; now the latest word on the street is: limited production in Japan and the US in 2008. Hey, that's next year!Wallpaper*

Mazda Shows Off Car Interiors from Biofabric
In what could be the next frontier of the green car race, the car company Mazda has developed an interior automotive fabric made from plants. It could be that Mazda saw Honda's biofabric development last year and wanted to jump on board with one of their own. What can we say - good ideas travel fast.This paragraph is dedicated to the engineering geeks: The biofabric is made of 100% polylactic acida plastic created by combining large numbers of lactic acid molecules that are made from fermented carbohydrates such as plant sugars. ...

Tuvalu to World: Help!
The tiny Pacific nation of Tuvalu is urging the rest of the world to do more to combat global warming, before the island-state sinks beneath the ocean's lapping waves.Home to some 10,000 people, the group of atolls and reefs is barely two meters above sea level. A 1989 U.N. report predicted that, at the current rate the ocean is rising, Tuvalu could vanish in the next 30 to 50 years. "We keep thinking that the time will never come. The alternative is to turn ourselves into fish and live under water," Tuvalu Deputy Prime Tavau Teii told Reuters....

Attack Of The Vital-Juice-Sucking Chinese Stinkbugs
The Japanese beetles are bad enough, having been around my home in the hundreds of thousands for the last two growing seasons. Nothing eats them. No amount of bag trapping can control them. The good news is that all the Japanese beetles have eaten this year is my 40 foot river birch tree (3/4 denuded at end of August), all roses, all new growth on my three elephant plums, an entire climbing hydrangea, all new growth on three mature grape vines, and entire pole bean plants. The rest of the garden, however, is untouched. ...

Parking Spaces Outnumber Cars 3 to 1, Cause Environmental Problems
Photo credit: sunshinecityNo doubt about it, Americans like their carsso it shouldn't come as a shock that a ton of space is being devoted to parking spaces, whether they're suburban driveways or sprawling lots around big retailers. But a recent study by Purdue University in Indiana indicates that this growing land-use trend plays a role in heating up urban areas and trapping water pollution.The researchers surveyed the total area dedicated to parking in a midsize Midwestern county; they found that parking spaces o...

Green (Re)Building: Restoration Resources
Part of TreeHugger credo reads "'Tis better to recycle, reuse, renovate and restore than to go with new." With that in mind, here are a handful of renovation resources to help you get the most from stuff that's been around the block a time or two, courtesy of Materialicious:John Leeke's Historic Homeworks -- "Helping owners, tradespeople, contractors and professionals understand and maintain their historic and older buildings."Old House Parts Company -- focused on "18th, 19th and early 20th century restoration and home improvement Architectur...

Most Huggable: Grilling Al Franken, A Carbon Market Tanks, Barrels of Art, and More
In Australia, the countrys carbon-trading market is collapsing due to a foggy picture of its futureAl Franken is running for Senate in Minnesota. Maria Energia grills the man on his environmental agendaA new Romanian ad campaign paints the bloody scene of forest destructionThe Quality of Life Report takes stock of societys resources and its consumption habits. The paper has the right rankled, but is it even enough?French artist Francois Royer ...

TH Blog Love - Our Favourite Greens Of The Week
Camphor's: Carnival of the Green # 94 by Camphor"It is almost refreshing to see due consideration for the cost of the alternative to the environment as Vihar Seth point out the downside of Powering a Paperless World, and applaud a green digital company."Celsias: JetPack Rating System: The Volkswagen Chameleon by Doug Snodgrass"To recap, the JetPack Rating System is used to not only begin the healing process, but also for rating automobiles and buildings by a due...

Keeping Cool (and Warm) with the Sun
A Florida-based company called Solarsa has just launched one of the first pre-assembled solar cooling systems targeted specifically for commercial businesses. Its Energy Independence System 005 (EIS005) can also heat water and allows restaurants to recycle waste cooking oil. Scott Jergensen, its president, described the system as a "series of mirrors" that is "reflecting the sun into a series of collectors and is giving us electricity and hot water at the same time." The unit - which is installed at no cost (businesses just pay for the energy they use) and can produce up to

The Twin Peaks of PC Design
TH appreciates good design using quality materials that get the job done. Apple, for example, was applauded mightily when their iPhone was released, suggesting it may be the last phone you will ever buy. Drawing a page from Apple's rulebook, we are now seeing PCs that also focus on extreme parts and fine design; take the HP Blackbird, pictured. Retailing for around $5500 [sic] without the monitor, HP stuffs the all-aluminum case with overclocked processors, Voodoo video cards, a 1.1 Kilowatt power supply, and liquid cooling. It even ha...

Better Displays = Better Battery Life
Those of you who passed on the frame rate trick we covered a little while back to extend your video-playing device's battery life might find this next story more interesting. Unipixel, a startup company based in Woodlands, TX, has developed a new design for a handheld display that it claims is 60% more efficient than conventional displays - one that would almost double the battery life of a cell phone (such as Apple's iPhone). Where Unipixel's display differentiates itself from its competitors is not in the technology itself - the...

Expert Says: Make Healthy Fast Food Affordable
Let's face it, as much as we kvetch about them, fast-food chains and their destructive, polluting ways, aren't going anywhere anytime soon. But although fast food retailers are providing healthier food options, Nancy Childs, professor of food marketing at Saint Josephs University in Philadelphia, says that they arent providing them in a cost-effective way.Because research has demonstrated a correlation between higher rates of obesity...

A Full House For Cameron Sinclair at Idea Festival
The AMD Open Architecture Challenge was launched online to the waiting world yesterday and today, at 1pm, Cameron Sinclair will be taking it live to over 800 people at the Idea Festival at the Kentucky International Convention Center. His is the first sold out talk of the festival and everyone has come to hear him talk about the amazing work that AFH and OAN are doing. He will concentrate on the launch of AFH's first d...

Let em Eat Cake-Good Karmas Carrot Cake IceCream
Here is a classic example of the industrial organic food product that Michael Pollan spends many pages coming to grips with in his seminal book, The Omnivore's Dilemma. An ingredients list as long as your arm, yet 90% of it is organic, and dairy free to boot. It promotes a most sustainable form of agriculture compared to, say, the usual antibiotic riddled, factory-farmed milk and genetically modified corn syrup based ice creams. Which is great. But do we need it? Would an apple grown in our backyard, or neighbourhood community garden, just as easily satisfy our sweet craving? Reduc...

In An Absolut World: David Graas
Dutch designer David Graas is a TreeHugger favourite; we showed his new Not A Box light fixture recently, and his furniture earlier. He has contributed his Finish Yourself Stool to the download library at the Absolut Vision website; you can download and build your own scale model.Ideas, creativity and talent are global but materialization is local with downloadable designs. Try it at ::In an Absolut WorldVision of the day that we like:

Entire State Of Oklahoma Auditioning For Wind Power Play
Not the musical by Rodgers and Hammerstein: "Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweepin' down the plain." This one will be a reality play. "Major energy players in government and business are trying to chart a billion-dollar wind frontier with Oklahoma in the middle.""They say the biggest hurdle to harnessing the region's renewable, clean and lucrative gusts is the transmission of the energy. Electricity transmission lines in rural areas, such as the Oklahoma Panhandle, are too small to satisfy the needs of populatio centers like Oklahoma City and Dallas. The plan is a logistical and financial unknown. States, their...

Quote of the Day; Elizbeth Kolbert on Climate-Change Skeptics
Eventually I came to think there are three major reasons [for climate-change skepticism]. One is catastrophe overload. The end of the world has been going to come several times, and we're all still here. So it's: "Wake me up when the real end of the world is coming."Then there's: "If this were really as bad as you say, I would feel it by now. There'd be water lapping at my first-floor windows." The problem is that the climate operates on a very long time lag, so if you wait until there's water lapping at your first-floor windows, you can be sure there's going to be water lapping at your second-floor windows. I don't think...

Panel House Perhaps Not So Green
When we first wrote about David Hertz's Panel House, it was described as a "large, comfortable thermos". We liked it for its innovative use of refrigerator panels and other high-tech ideas. However after reading about it in the New York Times, we are reconsidering its virtues. The owner, Thomas Ennis, demolished a cottage where Jim Morrison once lived to build this 3,500 square foot glass and steel house with five car garage in the basement, complete with every energy consuming gadget that Ennis, an inventor, could think up. Push the button for the fire pit and flames leap out from a gas jet under a decorative ...

The Rebirth of the Seaside Pier
John McLean, Morgan Carn Partnership, Humberts Leisure & Hemsley Orrell PartnershipFrom Brighton to Atlantic City to Santa Monica, piers have been part of the culture of the waterfront. Pleasure piers were built with amusement parks and restaurants, but the main purpose was to let people walk over water in the cool sea air. After planes replaced trains and people went further for their vacations, they fell into disrepair.Now as we contemplate vacations without air travel, seaside resorts closer to home are seeing a revival, and people are thinking about piers again. BURA Seaside Network...

Bags of Goodwill
Acknowledging that everyone is getting a little fed up with the "I am not a plastic bag" phenomenon, we still couldn't ignore these great looking carrier bags. Twentytwentyone, a furniture and design store, has commissioned forty world-renowned furniture and product designers from Finland, Sweden, Germany, France, Japan, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, The Netherlands, Norway and the UK to come up with designs for Fairtrade cotton organic carrier bags. Those participating include El Ultimo Grito, Ella Doran, Jasper Morrison, Lucienne Day, Matthew Hilton, Michael Marriott, and Tord Boonjte.The bags will be on display for a week, as...

Sixteen Crazy Bikes. A Collection by Oobject
Regular readers will have seen some of these before, however for those who missed them Ooject (something like Billboard charts for gadgets) voters have curated a museum collection of 16 wacky bikes. They say they done it in honor of the Frankfurt Motor Show, record oil prices, etc, but really, who needs a reason to celebrate the fruit loopy end of the spectrum for human-powered land vehicles? Laugh, wrinkle your brow, scratch your head, vote. When we dropped by the rather chunky Gladiator Chopper, pictured above, was languishing at number 15. ::Oobject, via reader tip....

'Plan A' Gets Rolling: M&S to Open First Eco-store
British retailer Marks and Spencer was already in our good books for its comprehensive greening strategy known as Plan A (because, they claim, there is no Plan B though TH guest poster Lester Brown may disagree there). Now we hear from a report in The Scotsman that M&S is ready to open the first of its new eco-stores (an integral part of Plan A) in Scotland next month, boasting an impressive array of energy and water saving features:...

Match Tree
The Match Tree's function is a beautiful metaphor that illustrates a less-than-beautiful mode of consumption. As users break branches off of the geometric tree to use as matches, the tree looks smaller and more broken, until nothing is left but a two-dimensional stump. Like other conceptual products that cause us to question consumption, such as Nothing, it's unfortunate that this design uses wood and actually participates in the waste that it symbolizes. ...

Cure Air Traffic Congestion: A Systems Based Solution?
Air traffic. Just the word combination seems ridiculous. What miserably planned series of events have conspired to create traffic- in the air?Air traffic congestion around the world is already very bad and its getting worse, said Kagan Tumer, an OSU associate professor of mechanical engineering and expert on the control of large, multi-agent systems. More than 40,000 flights a day move through U.S. airspace. Air traffic controllers have an extremely demanding job to do, and our approach is a new way to assist them, with what are actually some fairly minimal changes to the existing system."Their approach takes into account the entire system or flow of transp...

Lexus Offers $1 Million in Grants and Scholarships as Part of Environmental Challenge
Thats right folks, the luxury automaker is stepping up to the plate by teaming up with Scholastic to invite teams of teachers and students from across the U.S. to get involved protecting the environment by devising and implementing programs that positively impact their communities. Theyre calling it the Lexus Environmental Challenge, and its open to middle and high school students everywhere. The challenge itself has two distinct elements: standards-based supplementary educational materials and a contest to reward environmental action. The idea is that the educational materials will encourage teachers to integrate creative lesson plans into their classrooms about th...