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From the unfolding saga of “how Canada can suck ever more oil from the ground” we get this little news item:

Canada and Mexico should accelerate efforts to import temporary Mexican energy workers to alleviate the skills shortage in Alberta and other provinces as oil sands development ramps up, top North American CEOs will recommend today.

It’s mildly amusing that the most heavily Republican Conservative region of Canada is so desperate for workers that Mexicans are apparently necessary. But the facts are that there’s very little in the way of opposition to major developments in Alberta. Both provincial and federal levels of government have historically favored a strategy of growing the tar sands as rapidly as possible. The low-ball estimates see Canadian oil production tripling by 2020, with all the increase coming from the tar sands. And if something as trivial as “wages” or “willing bodies” is keeping the precious, precious crude from flowing, then it’s clearly time to bring in replacements.

It’s not so much that everyone loves the idea of defiling cubic kilometers of land and water to keep U.S. cars running, it’s that nobody has any strong vision of an alternative — selling Americans raw materials is kind of what we do up here, and it’s a tough habit to break.

Originally from Gristmill on February 27, 2007, 11:31am

The Evening Chronicle has an article on a teen-turned-fuel baron… sorta -

He happily admits he’s hopeless at school - but Steven Henderson is Tyneside’s very own oil baron.

Northumberland’s answer to JR Ewing has built his own oil refinery in the shed at his home in Stamfordham Road, Eachwick, near Ponteland, which he uses to produce 1,000 litres of bio-diesel a week.

He collects waste cooking oil from pubs and restaurants and each weekend he processes it into environmentally-friendly bio-diesel.

It is then used by his dad to power his farm’s tractors and vans saving him around £300 a week.

ansforms cooking oil into fuel - [via] Link.

Related:

• Cheaper veggie diesel… - Link.
• Garbage, fry grease and Linux - veggie oil supercomputer - Link.
• Veggie oil / grease powered toy Jeep - Link.
• DIY Veggie Conversion Kit - Link.
• MAKE AUDIO SHOW: Biodiesel! - Link.
• Making Antifreeze from Biodiesel - Link.
• Homebrew Biodiesel reactor plans… - Link.
• Biodiesel motorcycles - Link.

From the pages of MAKE:
Making Biodiesel. The best way to learn how to make your own backyard biodiesel is to start with a one-liter batch. It’s easy to make a small batch that will work in any diesel engine. You won’t need any special equipment–an old juice bottle will serve as the “reactor” vessel–and on such a small scale, you can quickly refine your technique and perform further experiments. MAKE 03 - Page 68. Subscribers–read this article now in your digital edition or get MAKE 03 in the Maker store.

[Read this article] [Comment on this article]

Originally from MAKE Magazine on February 22, 2007, 7:38pm

We here at Grist love computers, even if sometimes they don’t love us back. Every once in a while, a piece of technology comes out that you can’t help but get excited about (and I’m not talking about the iPhone).

The internet has physical houses in which information, services, and sites like this one are stored. These computers, known as servers, are the “always on” engines that power the constant activity. Due to the mission-critical nature of such machines, performance and reliability are of primary importance. Terms like “energy efficiency” and “ecological footprint” rarely find the ears of system administrators.

So it’s a pleasant surprise to stumble on a server that not only hosts websites and email, but is engineered from the ground up to have that minty fresh "green" stamp on it’s case.

British firm Zybert’s Z1 GEM server, which among other things is made completely out of recycled (and recyclable) parts, when “always on” runs at 45 watts and on 1 watt when idle. That’s about 25 times less than a modern toaster — 1146 watts — and almost half the the wattage of a typical light bulb.

Zybert was founded by retired physicist. It’s a new company, but already they are making waves, with their Z1 server being nominated for a Server of the Year by influential trade mag Network Computing.

Although the Z1 has yet to hit the shelves of American computer shops, I will be curious to see how this company and its products do from here. Perhaps a future Grist site will be rolled out on one of these babies — here’s to hope.

Originally from Gristmill on February 22, 2007, 11:52pm

Over on the Biopact website — probably the best website for up-to-date international news on bio-energy science and markets — they have posted an interesting commentary, based on a BBC interview, on how small Kenyan farmers, Mr. Peter Ndivo and Mr. Samuel Mauthike, are affected by the confusion engendered by concepts such as “carbon footprints,” “fair trade,” and “food miles.”

Biopact’s message? Buy your vegetables and fruits locally, if you must, but please allow developing countries to supply your biofuels.

Here is the crux of their argument:

If the consumer in Europe and America really wants to start buying local food to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, then that is alright, provided he [or she] starts buying globally produced biofuels to compensate for the loss of markets faced by the poor farmers in the South. The Kenyan baby corn grower could switch to big corn for ethanol instead. Or better, he would grow woody biomass, sweet potatoes, cassava, sweet sorghum or sugarcane — highly efficient crops to make solid and liquid biofuels from. Contrary to luxury fruits, vegetables or flowers, biofuels do not have to be served ‘fresh’ and flown in by air. They can be stored and shipped to Europe and America very efficiently, in huge tankers and ships.

The International Energy Agency’s Bioenergy Task 40, which studies the feasibility of sustainable trade in biofuels, has thoroughly analyzed long-distance transport and found that the greenhouse gas emissions arising from shipping biofuels from the tropics to the ports of Europe and America, are negligible. After their long trip in huge and efficient tankers, the biofuels from the South still dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions when used by Europeans and Americans in their cars. They mitigate climate change far better than biofuels produced in Europe or the US, simply because they are far more efficient to produce. One hectare [2.47 acres] of sugar cane delivers 8 to 10 times more energy than a hectare of corn grown in the US. If imported by Europe or the US, the sugar cane ethanol is still 7 to 9 times more energy efficient upon arrival. Higher energy efficiency ultimately means lower carbon emissions.

In short, our message to wealthy consumers in the West is simple: buy local food if you think this will change global warming (which is not always the case), but please buy globally produced biofuels.

A different and interesting perspective, non? Have at it.

A request: In your comments, please do not automatically characterize all biofuel production in developing countries as involving or necessitating the cutting down of rainforests. Yes, there is some production that does. But some deforestation is already occurring to supply the crops — soybeans and other oilseeds, for instance — for global food and feed markets that producers in Europe and North America are supplying a declining share of because their own crops are being diverted into making home-grown biofuels.

Moreover, in the case of Kenya, there is already a lot of farmland that is used to grow horticultural products for export to Europe that could be used to grow something else. I would think, nonetheless, that water could be a limiting factor in any expansion into thirsty crops such as sugarcane.

Originally from Gristmill on February 23, 2007, 12:51pm

It is an exhibition so large that it needed two museums- Detroit’s new Museum of Contemporary Art and the Cranbrook Art Museum. Four teams of urban geographers, cultural experts, architects, journalists, and artists have been looking at urban shrinkage in Detroit (consequences of suburbanization) Manchester, (deindustrialization) Ivanavo, Russia (post-socialism) and Halle/Leipsig which is evidently a bit of everything.

There are over sixty works in the show, looking at how cities change and adapt.According to Mocad, “One goal of the project is to develop a better understanding of how and why population and business in these cities have declined. Another goal is to recognize ways such change can help us understand and approach contemporary urban issues. The exhibit examines both the positive and negative side effects of urban decline, and also offers the opportunity for new ideas (including an international ideas competition) to be presented.”

Hugely successful in Europe, The Washington Post notes that it did not resonate in New York, but “Shrinking Cities” is deeply engaged art, passionate about moral and practical issues that don’t always animate the contemporary art scene in New York. It has all the edge, the irony, the gamester play with the conventions and boundaries that one expects of a major exhibition of contemporary art in a thriving metropolitan center. But it also has gravitas.
In Detroit until April 1 at ::Mocad

Originally from TreeHugger, ReBlogged by Rosanna Flouty on Feb 21, 2007 at 09:07 AM

Originally from Eyebeam reBlog on February 21, 2007, 8:07am

I adored James Burke’s late 70’s show Connections, (not the cheap 90’s knockoffs for TLC) where he “took an interdisciplinary approach to the history of science and invention and demonstrates how various discoveries, scientific achievements, and historical world events built off one another in an interconnected way to bring about particular aspects of modern technology.” He would be proud of Craig Mackintosh of Celsias for making the following connections between caffeine and global warming.

Craig starts with National Geographic on Coffee: It’s hardly a coincidence that coffee and tea caught on in Europe just as the first factories were ushering in the industrial revolution. The widespread use of caffeinated drinks—replacing the ubiquitous beer—facilitated the great transformation of human economic endeavor from the farm to the factory. Boiling water to make coffee or tea helped decrease the incidence of disease among workers in crowded cities. And the caffeine in their systems kept them from falling asleep over the machinery. In a sense, caffeine is the drug that made the modern world possible. And the more modern our world gets, the more we seem to need it. Without that useful jolt of coffee—or Diet Coke or Red Bull—to get us out of bed and back to work, the 24-hour society of the developed world couldn’t exist.

Originally from TreeHugger, ReBlogged by Rosanna Flouty on Feb 21, 2007 at 09:07 AM

Originally from Eyebeam reBlog on February 21, 2007, 8:07am

As best as we can make out from the myriad stories doing the rounds, the environmental group Planet Ark were about to announce a new campaign next week, in partnership with Philips. It was to be called Ban the Bulb. But the new federal Environment minister, Malcolm Turnbull, stole their thunder (and, it seems, their idea) by announcing today that incandescent light bulbs were to get the flick (as the newspapers are headlining the move). The government are claiming it as a world first, (for a nation maybe, but as we reported, California recently suggested a similar move for that state — which has almost double the population of Australia, as it happens). The minister reckons it should save 800,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions during the three year phase-out period, with an annual emission reduction of 4 million tonnes by 2015. Incandescents will be banned by legislation in about 2009-10, though some special needs, such as medical use, may receive dispensation. Of course, the replacement lighting offering these savings will be compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs). Though we imagine the LED guys will seize the opportunity too. An interesting stat that came out with all this, was that globally lighting is equal in emission contribution to about 70% of the world’s passenger vehicles. Which should remind us that turning off lights when a room is vacant also helps too, even better than using CFLs. ::Department of Environment Press Release (PDF), via ABC, SMH and the Australian.

Originally from TreeHugger, ReBlogged by Rosanna Flouty on Feb 20, 2007 at 08:59 AM

Originally from Eyebeam reBlog on February 20, 2007, 7:59am

It doesn’t look like much in this picture (although I am not much of a photographer) but this mix of old brick, old reclaimed douglas fir wood and new siding is another innovative and important social housing building by Levitt Goodman Architects, known to TreeHuggers for their flying prefab and their vermicondo. It is not in the prettiest part of Toronto either, and fits right in, as it is supposed to.

The former city works yard is now a homeless shelter and transitional housing; the part of the building shown here is composed ot 20 one-room 16 foot square rooms with small bathrooms, wrapping around a large courtyard. Originally conceived as a prefab, it turned out to be more economical to build on site, as is often proving to be the case.

Originally from TreeHugger, ReBlogged by Rosanna Flouty on Feb 17, 2007 at 12:50 PM

Originally from Eyebeam reBlog on February 17, 2007, 11:50am

The Thai architect and product designer Singh Intrachooto has created a beautiful series of furniture using scraps of teak wood. The wood is sourced from reclaimed trees uprooted to build roads and from off cuts of wood left over from Intrachooto’s architectural projects. His company Osisu Design launched three collections last year called Lini, Lami and Tilee. The two pieces shown above illustrate how different off cuts are used in different ways to influence the form and pattern of the furniture. The Chairwalker, from the Lini collection, uses off cut strips, while the seat of the TT bench, from the Tilee collection, is made from the smallest off cuts, showing how even the tiniest pieces can be reused. In an interview with Three Layer Cake last year Singh Intrachooto talked about his commitment to environmentally concious design, but also expressed the challenges he faces in his work:

Originally from TreeHugger, ReBlogged by Rosanna Flouty on Feb 18, 2007 at 12:20 PM

Originally from Eyebeam reBlog on February 18, 2007, 11:20am

Václav Klaus, the President of the Czech Republic, thinks the whole global warming thing is a hoax:

Global warming is a myth and I think that every serious person and scientist says so. It is unfair to refer to the United Nations panel. IPCC is not a scientific body: it’s a political institution, a kind of non-government organization with green flavor. It’s not a forum of neutral scientists or a balanced group of scientists. Its members are politicized scientists who arrive there with one-sided sentiments and one-sided tasks.

This bit from the interview is amusing:

Q: Don’t you believe that we’re demolishing our planet?

A: Let me pretend that I haven’t heard you. Perhaps only Mr. Al Gore can argue along these lines: a sane person hardly. I don’t see any destruction of the planet, I have never seen it, and I don’t think that a sensible and serious person might say that he has.

(hat tip to reader KP)

Originally from Gristmill on February 13, 2007, 6:33pm

A Second Life avatar produces 1,685 pounds of CO2? And an acre of real estate in Second Life produces 99 tons of CO2? What gives?

One of my pet research projects has been to find ways to establish effective, playful bridges between 1st life and 2nd life. What is 1st Life and what is 2nd Life? By 2nd life, I’m not referring to the virtual world run by Linden Labs. For me, “2nd life” is an evocative metaphor that counterpoints the normal, human, physical, material world, which I refer to as 1st life. I’ll grant that the language lacks precision, but I’m relying a bit on my own assumptions, which I think are fairly well-shared, as to what counts as a digital, networked, social environment. 1st life is then the non-networked, non-digital social environment.

The presentation — titled When 1st Life Meets 2nd Life I gave this week at Lift07 started with a reminder as to the material basis of 2nd life. There is “stuff” that undergirds digital networks — indeed every digital bit owes its life to some sort of material. Atoms compose digital data. There’s that stuff that we’re never really aware of unless we spend time working in the data center facilities where all of the Internets take physical form. 2nd life and its digital networks are made of heavy material — copper cable, steel racks to hold servers, rubber or plastic insulated power cabling, cooling systems, human labor, billions and billions of integrated circuits and the effluvia of the toxic chemicals expelled during their production, shipping and decomposition, etc. Our participation in this materiality probably ends at about the time when we discard the cardboard box and styrofoam packing of the shipping material in which our new computers arrive.

But this is more than the William Mitchell bits & atoms thesis. It’s not just the equivalence, but the precise nature of that material — what kind of stuff are we talking about? It’s not just the composition of digital bits, but what physical material, in the use of digital bits, of digital networks, of our PC’s, web and game servers, is produced.

Perhaps the most unsettling material characteristic of our 2nd lives is considering the resources necessary to maintain them. Whether emailing, googling, blogging, uploading videos, downloading music — everything — this owes a measurable and material debt to first life. When one computes the amount of power — normal 1st life electricity — that is consumed to maintain our 2nd lives it becomes clear what that debt is. Or when one computes how many tons of CO2 emissions result from the production of that electricity, assuming the majority of our power comes from plants that burn something that produces CO2 as a consequence of producing electricity.

I started running these numbers after reading a very interesting and thought-provoking discussion on Nicholas Carr’s blog where he computed these figures based on some public figures he found pertaining to Linden Lab’s Second Life environment. One could run the same numbers for any other digitally networked activity, like emailing or web surfing or whatever.

What’s particularly appealing about choosing an online world like Second Life as my example is that it’s underlying metaphor is 1st life. Email would be another good example, as postal mail requires energy that exhausts CO2 in its processing and delivery. But Second Life has more PR these days, so I’ll use that as an example.

Second Life itself captures many of the important characteristics of 1st life and uses that to convey a sense of familiarity for the users. There is property in Second Life, waterways, buildings, etc. It’s a 3D virtual world that is largely modeled on commonly held assumptions about what counts as 1st life. What it doesn’t convey to its users is any kind of Second Life representation of the ecological cost of that Second Life world, which would be very cool — Second Life CO2 emissions, for instance, to correspond to equivalent estimates about how much CO2 is emitted in 1st life.

I was shocked at the numbers on Carr’s blog, so I computed them myself to check the math. I revised some of his assumptions, so my figures are significantly more conservative than his. (I’d even go so far as to say that my figures are unrealistically low, because a more rigorous analysis would include estimates about the power consumption of the ancillary network devices between the user’s computer and the data center.) I also culled from comments in Carr’s blog post to refine some of the assumptions, especially the remarks from Second Life employees who have direct access to some of the power consumption figures.

There are a few additional assumptions I’ve made, mostly pertaining to what I think is a more realistic assumption as to how much power a typical home PC uses, and how often one might actually play Second Life.

Carr assumes that a home PC consumes 120 watts, which I think is much too low — I assume 300 watts, based on looking at the technical specifications of a mid-range Dell computer, and I also compute the power consumption of an LCD display. I also don’t assume, as Carr does, that someone playing Second Life is playing 24 hours a day — I assume, averaged over a year, they will play eight hours per day. Some days they won’t play, others they may invest 12 hours. I think 8 hours is a fair assumption.

I’ve also used the assumption that 1.35 pounds of CO2 is emitted per kWH of electricity produced.

A Linden Labs employee measured the power consumption of their servers and came up with the figure of 175 watts (energy per hour) with the server running at full-tilt. I assume that the servers basically run at full-tilt 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and that servers of this sort make demands on the data center for cooling, power distribution, ancillary resources like lighting, operations center energy costs, keeping the candy and pop machine running in the break room, etc., at an equivalent of 50% of their nominal energy use. So, a 175 watt server actually needs 175+87.5 watts of energy to function in a data center.

I came up with the following figures:

Power Consumption Per Avatar Per Year (Second Life Servers): 153 kWH
Power Consumption Per Avatar Per Year (Home User’s PC): 1,095 kWH
Total Power Consumption Per Avatar Per Year: 1,248 kWH

CO2 Emissions Per Avatar Per Year (Second Life Servers): 207 lbs (94 kilos)
CO2 Emissions Per Avatar Per Year (Home User’s PC): 1,478 lbs (670 kilos)
Total CO2 Emissions Per Avatar Per Year: 1,685 lbs (764 kilos)

Second Life is composed of regions that have a correspondence to normal 1st life acres. I’ve learned that there are 16 acres per region, and there are 4 regions per server, so there are a total of 64 Second Life acres per server. That means the power consumption per Second Life acre is 16.8 kWH, or 147,168 kWH per Second Life acre per 1st life year. And that means that 23 pounds of CO2 is produced and exhausted into the 1st life atmosphere per Second Life acre per hour, or 198,677 pounds (90,118 kilos) per Second Life acre per year.

Some equivalence for perspective:

In 2003, the per-capita power consumption in the United States: 13,242 kWH
In 2001, the per-capita power consumption in Iceland: 26,947 kWH
In 2001, the per-capita power consumption in Keyna: 118 kWH
(World Resource Institute, EarthTrends — http://earthtrends.wri.org)

Every year, every Avatar in Second Life produces CO2 emissions equivalent to a typical, honking, bloated, arrogant SUV driving 1,293 miles, based on the assumption that this kind of SUV generates 1 lbs of CO2 per mile.

If serving this page took the CPU on my modest web server .1 second to serve to you, it probably consumed .004 watt (assuming my clunker consumes 100 watts + 50 watts for overhead)..it works out to about 6 micrograms of CO2, not counting whatever your PC contributed to the production of CO2. Okay, I’m getting carried away, but you get the idea.

Why do I blog this?I find this kind of analysis fascinating and revealing. It is the kind of bridge between 1st life and 2nd life I am trying to build, where the semantic link between what goes on in our 2nd life worlds is made plain in its correspondence to 1st life. 2nd life activities are not the clean, sustainable, whole-earth friendly activities the Bay Area, Web 2.0 crew may think they are. Despite the important evolution of human social formations that have arisen, the messiness of the 1st life remains. Maybe there should be a little eco-meter on the dashboard of Second Life, World of Warcraft and, whatever — YouTube and my blog. I’d be interested in computing the same figures for World of Warcraft. I suspect they’re probably equivalent, although I’d probably bump up the average hours of play per WoW character quite a bit. I would need to know the distribution of simultaneous characters per server, or number of servers per instance, as well as some sense as to how much power is consumed by whatever server they may use. It’s about provoking some thinking about the material contingencies of our online activities. I won’t really quibble about the numbers. Someone’s going to want me to adjust something this way or that — the accuracy of the figure will be forever elusive, so I’m not interested in debating that, or tweaking some of the numbers. The point is — there is a debt paid for our online lives and we rarely think about it. How can we start to introduce the material aspects of this activity more directly? That is my goal here.

---

The Calculus

At The Data Center
Server Power Consumption (Energy Per Hour): 175 watts
Percept Power Consumption for Cooling and Ancillary Network Operations Center Needs: 50%
Ancillary Power Consumption Per Server (Energy Per Hour): 87.5 watts
Total Server Instance Power Consumption (Energy Per Hour): 262.5

Active Servers for Second Life: 1,000
Active Avatars in Second Life Per Day: 15,000
Average Active Avatars Per Server in Second Life Per Day: 15
Power Consumption Per Avatar Per Hour (Server Only): 262.5/15=17.5
Power Consumption Per Avatar Per Day (Server Only): 17.5*24=420
Power Consumption Per Avatar Per Year (kilowatt hours): 420*365/1000=153.3
CO2 Emissions Per Avatar Per Year (lbs): 153.3 (kilowatt hours)*1.35 (CO2 pounds per kilowatt hour)

Acres Per Region: 16
Regions Per Server: 4
Acres Per Server: 64
Power Consumption Per Acre: 64*262.5=16.8 kWH
Power Consumption Per Acre Per Year: 16.8*24*365=147,168 kWH

CO2 Emissions Per Acre Per Hour: 1.35 (CO2 pounds per kilowatt hour) * 16.8 kWH = 23 lbs
CO2 Emissions Per Acre Per Year: 23*24*365=198,677 lbs (99 short tons)

Average PC Power Consumption: 300 watts
Average PC LCD (17″) Power Consumption: 75 watts

At Home
PC Use (Hours/Day): 8
Power Consumption Per PC Per Day: 3 kWH
Power Consumption Per Avatar Per Day: 3 kWH (One PC At Home Per Avatar)
Power Consumption Per Avatar Per Year: 1,095 kWH

CO2 Emissions Per Avatar Per Day (Home PC @ 8 hours/day): 1.35 CO2 Pounds Per kWH * 3kWH = 4.05 lbs
CO2 Emissions Per Avatar Per Year (Home PC @ 8 hours/day): 4.05 * 365 = 1,478 lbs

Power Consumption Per Avatar Per Day (Home + Server): 20.5 lbs
Power Consumption Per Avatar Per Year (Home + Server): 1,248.3 lbs

CO2 Emissions Per Avatar Per Day (Home + Server): 27.68 lbs
CO2 Emissions Per Avatar Per Year: 1,685 lbs

SUV CO2 Emissions Per Mile: 1 lbs
Equivalent SUV Miles Per Avatar Per Year: 1,685

==============
Parenthetically, I’ve been asked why I pluralize Internet — isn’t there just one? I guess my speculation is that we are heading toward a kind of Balkanization of digital networks, thanks to the deleterious effects of net neutrality. It wouldn’t surprise me if there were tiers of networks, with levels of privilege offered based on one’s ability to pay for better or faster or thicker bandwidth.

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Originally from research/techkwondo - research node of www.techkwondo.com, ReBlogged by yatta on Feb 12, 2007 at 11:18 AM

Originally from unmediated on February 12, 2007, 10:18am

photos by Brett Boardman from website of Farnan Findlay

The March issue of Dwell includes this off-grid house north of Sydney, Australia, designed by Farnan Findlay Architects for mechanical engineer Chris Medland, and the mechanics are certainly impressive. Four 6,000 gallon tanks hold water gathered from the roof; a wind turbine and photovoltaics generate electricity for 14 batteries that hold a week’s worth of electricity (do they have longer nights in Australia?) LED lighting, passive solar design, in an elegant modern envelope. As Dwell says, none of the “down-on-the-alfalfa-farm nuts and berries aesthetic associated with sustainable architecture.”

Originally from TreeHugger, ReBlogged by Angie Eng on Feb 10, 2007 at 10:37 AM

Originally from Eyebeam reBlog on February 10, 2007, 9:37am

Chinese developers have unveiled the world’s first permanent magnetic levitation wind power generator at the Wind Power Asia Exhibition 2006 in Beijing. The device is called a MagLev generator, and is being regarded as a key breakthrough in the evolutio

Originally posted by jfig from del.icio.us/tag/future, ReBlogged by Angie Eng on Feb 9, 2007 at 10:04 AM

Originally from Eyebeam reBlog on February 9, 2007, 9:04am

This beautiful and functional chair is made by a Cornwall-based group of design school graduates who were determined to keep on working together. They transform wood into sculptural objects by using a unique steam technique that bends it into 3D shapes. Steam bending has been around for a long time, however the designers have adapted the machines and the process so that they could twist the wood into more complex and creative shapes using their own ideas. They use locally sourced, unseasoned (green) timber. Because they want to be ethically and environmentally responsible, the wood is from renewable sources and there are no resins or sealants used. All of the work is done in their studio so that they have complete quality control over the furniture and other products. They also make curly lampshades and chandeliers which look luminous when the light comes through the natural grain. A tree seat was made by bending the wood around the limbs of the tree. Watch out for them, they have already won the Laurent-Perrier Design Award and are showing in The London Design Festival. :: Sixixis via :: Vogue Magazine

Originally from Treehugger on September 18, 2006, 7:15am

After suffering through a pesticide poisoning in her garden, American photographer, Laurie Tumer was determined to show the omnipresence and danger of chemicals in our lives. She took innocent images- childrens’ booties, a can of Coke, and flowers as examples and revealed how easily noxious pesticides can infiltrate the most intimate places in the home. Her exhibit is called Glowing Evidence. ::Grist

(This post continues on the site please click the title)

Originally from Treehugger on September 17, 2006, 1:53pm

We’ve written a lot about the 100-mile diet before (see links at the end of this post), but it is the first time that we hear about Powel River’s local-eating adventure. That small British Columbia town (pop. 13,000) can now claim the title of “local-eating capital of North America” thanks to an initiative by Lyn Adamson. “Adamson, a key organizer for the challenge, had originally hoped to get 50 people eating food grown or raised within 50 miles for five weeks. [but as of August] there are more than 250 people signed up”. Citizens pledged to eat locally at various levels, from 25% to 95% (many not going 100% to allow for coffee). But what makes this project even more impressive is that they went the extra mile, or rather, they didn’t; instead of eating food produced within 100 miles, they are limiting themselves to a 50-mile radius.

(This post continues on the site please click the title)

Originally from Treehugger on September 17, 2006, 5:44pm

Good Magazine is a brand-new bimonthly designed to educate and inspire a group of people united by passion for potential mixed with fierce pragmatism and creative engagement. That’s a mouthful, so they shortened it to “give a damn” and even further to just Good. The inaugural September/October issue, with designs on getting everyone to ______ like you give a damn (would Hug Trees fit there?), has some really interesting looking content. They fuel up a Mercedes on SVO (straight vegetable oil) and drive it around LA. Ben Jervey, author of The Big Green Apple, takes a month to make his ecological footprint smaller by any means necessary, and they count down five innovative projects revitalizing American urban spaces. For the relative weightiness of the topics, a largely optimistic worldview combined with hip layouts, photography and illustration reinforce their “The world of good, not just for do-gooders anymore” attitude without losing its intelligent edge. It’s inked on recycled paper, and the $20 annual subscription goes entirely to the non-profit of your choice. If that’s not a Good enough reason to subscribe, there are launch parties planned for LA (September 16) and NYC (September 21) for subscribers only. ::Good Magazine via ::Cool Hunting

Originally from Treehugger on September 12, 2006, 8:19am

Mebel Furniture takes great pride in its roots, both historical and genealogical. Architect Jasek Ostoya and craftsman Peter Brayshaw (who is married to Ostoya’s sister) teamed up in 2002 to start the company; Brayshaw and his brother had a millworking shop in a family-owned building in their Connecticut home town, and San Francisco-based Ostoya had always wanted to design furniture. The result is a collection of furniture that reflects all of these things; the bi-coastal design influences foster a fusion of clean-lined modernity and a sturdy, organic feel lent by the solid wood Mebel uses for all of its furniture. The wood, like the maple used in the Lublin Lee Table (pictured), is FSC-certified, so that historical and genealogical roots aren’t the only things that are preserved. ::Mebel Furniture available at ::2modern

Originally from Treehugger on September 12, 2006, 11:01am

Uniross, a rechargeable battery manufacturer, has released its range of “hybrid” Hybrio batteries in North America. (They will be fully available in late October). The Hybrio batteries mix the best of disposables batteries (fully-charged out of the box) with the best of rechargeable batteries (can be recharged), whilst keeping the price down, which is the main reason that people continue to buy environmentally damaging one-use batteries. Sanyo has a similar offering called the Eneloop a rechargeable which came fully charged. A four-pack of fully charged Hybrios with a charger comes in at around £15, and each battery keeps 70% of its charge after a year, can cope with up to 500 charge cycles, and is protected by a three year limited warranty. The Worldwide Wildlife Fund recently let the company stick its logo on the packets. :: Hybrio via Ecogeek via Engadget

Originally from Treehugger on September 12, 2006, 11:10am