Terrariums!

LOVE these from Flora Grubb Gardens

Wall Bubble Terrarium with Succulent - $33.00

(via the LA Times)

Recycle electronics with USPS

Select USPS offices are offering free mail back envelopes to be used for recycling inkjet cartridges, cell phones, PDAs, digital cameras and other small electronics. Now's the chance to recycle those small electronics for free!

http://www.usps.com/green/recycle.htm

(via Unclutter)

Adopt a Species

Instead of traditional gift giving this holiday season, consider adopting an endangered animal through the World Wildlife Fund's species adoption. With donations ranging from $25 - $250 you can help support and protect severely endangered animals. There are over 100 species to choose from and you can even sort by threat level (extinct in the wild, critically endangered, vulnerable etc.).

"Your donation will be used in general support of WWF's efforts around the world. 82 cents of every donated dollar goes toward conservation. WWF has been recognized by Charity Navigator as a Four Star Charity, and is a Better Business Bureau Accredited charity.World Wildlife Fund is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization."
http://www.worldwildlife.org/ogc/index.cfm

Holiday Gift Guides

With the last few holiday themed posts you could probably guess I'm starting to get into the festive mood. It is my goal to not only cut back on the gift giving this year but get it all done early. Been perusing these gift guides....

TreeHugger's Gift Guide

MAKE magazine's Holiday Gift Guide

Real Simple's 2009 Holiday Gift Guide

Martha Stewart's Homemade Gifts

Check out Real Simple's Holiday Gift Guide iPhone application...

the app includes other gift guides... ie. Cosmopolitan, Nordstrom, Sunset

and if you're still feeling Scrooge-ish - read this TIME article by Andrea Sachs "Why We Shouldn't Give Christmas Gifts"

(photos via Martha Stewart)

Genetically Engineered Bacteria Reveal Landmines

This is incredible... AND it's a student-led project.

From BBC News -

Bacteria which glow green in the presence of explosives could provide a cheap and safe way to find hidden landmines, Edinburgh scientists claim.

The bugs can be mixed into a colourless solution, which forms green patches when sprayed onto ground where mines are buried.
Edinburgh University said the microbes could be dropped by air onto danger areas.
Within a few hours, they would indicate where the explosives can be found.
The scientists produced the bacteria using a new technique called BioBricking, which manipulates packages of DNA.
Alistair Elfick, from the university's school of engineering, who supervised the student-led project, said: 'This anti-mine sensor is a great example of how innovation in science can be of benefit to wider society.' "

Read the rest of the BBC article here

DIY Weekend Project- Bird Feeder

Soda Bottle Bird Feeder Converter from Amazon - $10.95

(via Unclutterer)

Whole Tree Architecture

Architect Roald Gundersen founded Whole Tree Architecture and Construction in 1991 (formerly Gundersen Design) with the philosophy of using renewable building material to create sustainable and affordable designs. Inspiring.

(via Inhabitat,)

ecolean packaging

Ecolean is a new packaging alternative dubbed as "A Lighter Approach to Packaging".

Lightweight packaging is our answer to the demands of the liquid food industry and consumers asking for modern and clever packages. By using a minimal amount of raw material we create a lightweight package which combines low environmental impact with consumer convenience. Saving resources is saving the environment. That is why lightweight packaging has become a heavyweight argument.

Ecolean products are currently sold in over 30 countries around the world, not yet here in the United States, but lets hope it makes its way here soon.

via: here

Google Earth alphabet and numbers

(via here)

FLOW: For Love Of Water

Just arrived from Netflix and I can't wait to watch it. Ever since I watched Blue Gold: World Water Wars, I've been fascinated by the water industry and the fight over fresh water sources.

To learn more check out http://www.flowthefilm.com/

A tour of the deepest cave in the US

Lechuguilla Cave is part of the Carlsbad Caverns Natural Park in New Mexico
Since it was discovered in 1986 over 120 miles of passageways have been mapped!
The cave is not open to the public.

(via Boing Boing)

Diamond in the Rough

I love the story behind the building of this house in Rough and Ready, CA featured in Dwell...

Diamond in the Rough (and Ready)

"This was a really difficult site to build on, because there’s so much water. A creek runs through it, and there are springs all over the place. But we love the water, and so do the kids. They dam the creek up every summer for swimming, and it collects silt in the winter, which makes great compost for the garden. Last year, we grew sunflowers that must have been 12 feet tall.

There are two structures on the property: the little workshop, where we lived for almost ten years, and the main house. Before the workshop, we lived in a tent. We were very poor, but we were having an adventure, like the Swiss Family Robinson—–until a giant, once-every-20-years rainstorm pretty much blew us away. The morning after the storm was over, the kids came to me and said, “Dad, this isn’t so much fun anymore.”
We only had two of the four kids when I started building the main house, and as the family grew, we kept adding bedrooms. Officially, it’s 3,400 square feet, but half of that is a greenhouse. When I was a young architect in Malibu, I hired a landscaper who took me to a greenhouse tucked back in one of the canyons. It was crammed full of plants, and when we squeezed down one aisle, he said, “Just take a deep breath.” And when I breathed that pure, oxygen-fortified air, I knew that I wanted to build a house just like that.
Regular houses are full of barriers. Even windows are psychological barriers. Here, we slide open the walls and live in direct contact with nature. You can feel the weather in here. I was on a business call once when it was raining; it was this tremendous downpour, where the sky just opened up, and I couldn’t hear or talk. That’s what this house is all about.
Living with wildlife is also important. We get lizards inside and don’t bother to run them out. We’ve had wild turkeys wander in, and a baby squirrel used to sleep with the kids. We have tons of people here all the time, too. I’ve stopped noticing when there’s an extra kid or two in the house.
I consider this house a prototype. Some of its features I wouldn’t dare build for customers, in case they don’t work out. Like the garage-door “sunroof” in our bedroom, or the sliding glass walls. When I build those walls for customers, I buy cool, superexpensive hardware from Germany, with big lever handles. Here, I tried something different, putting them on Rollerblade wheels. They worked out wonderfully, though! The flip side of experimenting is that the inspection process can be a real drag. I had to get a rural occupancy permit for us to live out here. And I had to block off the spot where the fireman’s pole was supposed to go.
For the walls, my theory was “anything but drywall.” The walls on the ground floor are straw bales, covered with clay mud dug from the site. And a lot of the wood upstairs is salvaged. When I build big vacation houses for other people, we usually clear a bunch of trees on the location and mill them into lumber onsite.And then when the job is over, I just drag home whatever’s left and use it around here.
There’s corrugated polycarbonate on the roof of the greenhouse and corrugated galvanized siding out on the workshop. I consider it an indigenous material. In nearby gold-mining towns like Grass Valley and Nevada City, the forty-niners used corrugated metal extensively, probably because it was a cheap material. They built a lot of Victorian houses, too, but those don’t stimulate me as much as an old barn does, or an old mine building. If you make a building too perfect, it doesn’t give you that interesting feel. You don’t want your house to feel like a modern furniture store.
I grew up in suburbia, in Redondo Beach, California, and I think our environment here is a rebellion against that. Once, I wondered if the kids might be better off somewhere else, so I asked them what they thought about living here. They said, “Are you kidding, Dad? We love it here.” They don’t know anything different, of course. But they will. My 20-year-old daughter lives down in San Luis Obispo now, and she thought it was so great to have her own apartment. But after two weeks of sitting in that drywall box, she started to appreciate what she had up here in Rough and Ready. We’re pretty good with weird around here. It’s a little on the funky side, but it’s home."

Trash: anycoloryoulike

Developed by artist Adrian Kondratowicz, TRASH:anycoloryoulike is an art intervention for urban beautification and environmental awareness. The first intervention took place in NYC in the summer of 2008.



(via OhJoy!)

The Recycled House

About 12 years ago, Dan Phillips started Phoenix Commotion, a construction business in his hometown, Huntsville, Tex., where he builds low-income housing out of salvaged items.
"You can't defy the laws of physics or building codes," Mr. Phillips said, "but beyond that, the possibilities are endless." Check out more from the New York Times slideshow on "Recycled Houses"

Salvaged wine corks, which are easy to come by, provide an inexpensive form of cork flooring. "We have some heavy drinkers in town," Mr. Phillips said.

Thousands of picture frame corners were used to create the ceiling at left. Mr. Phillips said, "A frame shop was getting rid of old samples and I was there waiting."

Mr. Phillips created a counter out of slices of osage orange wood, a ubiquitous material in East Texas that many builders find difficult to use.
Cattle bones are also used to form address numbers.

Broken tiles are brought together to make up a bathroom floor.

Mr. Phillips used old shingles, arranged by color, to build the roof of what he calls "the storybook house."

(via mint)

The Age of Stupid

I can't wait to see this film.

"The Age of Stupid" premieres Monday, September 21st in the United States, on the eve of the UN's general assembly climate session. The "Global Premiere" takes place in a solar-powered cinema tent in New York and will be linked LIVE to over 400 movie theaters across the country.

Tickets are on sale now. Click here to check out your nearest theater.

Learn more here http://www.ageofstupid.net/



The NY Times review ....

An Alarm From 2055: Act Now to Save the Earth
By STEPHEN HOLDEN
Published: July 17, 2009

In “The Age of Stupid,” a frightening jeremiad about the effects of climate change, the craggy-faced British actor Pete Postlethwaite plays the Archivist, a finger-pointing, futuristic voice of doom in 2055. Peering into a retrospective crystal ball that shows scenes from the early 21st century, he scolds the human race for having committed suicide.

The curator of the Global Archive, a storage site of human knowledge in what is now a melted Arctic, the Archivist presses a rewind button on a touch screen to show documentary scenes related to climate change that were shot when there was still time for humanity to save itself. At the end of “The Age of Stupid,” which uses crude animation that depicts London underwater, Sydney burning and Las Vegas buried in sand, the Archive is sent into space.

A much sterner and more alarming polemic than “An Inconvenient Truth,” “The Age of Stupid,” directed by Franny Armstrong, will be taken by some as an emergency wake-up call to do everything possible to avert impending catastrophe. In the film Mark Lynas, the British environmental activist and author of “Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet,” warns of a tipping point around 2015 if the world doesn’t immediately act to reduce carbon emissions. Once global temperatures warm more than two degrees, he says, all will be lost.

Others may find the challenges to humanity posed by the documentary so daunting that “The Age of Stupid” (the Archivist’s sarcastic nickname for our time) may convince viewers that, practically speaking, it is already too late to act. Cynics may assume that the ethic of consumerism is too deeply instilled in us to be changed, as is the faith in capitalism, which depends on continuous growth. If so, we might as well put the coming horrors out of our minds and live for the moment, while hoping for a miracle.

The personal stories among which the film hopscotches examine specific situations. Two involve big oil. We meet a retired paleontologist, who worked for Shell Oil, discovering new resources off the coast of New Orleans, but who also helped rescue more than 100 people after Hurricane Katrina. This was a disaster that the Archivist, looking back, says was only the first of many similar meteorological catastrophes related to climate change.

A young woman who dreams of becoming a doctor lives in an impoverished Nigerian village where Shell operates a drilling operation. She fishes in the oil-polluted waters to raise money for her education. She laments the paradox of “the resource curse,” in which oil wealth contributes to a country’s poverty by putting riches in the hands of a greedy, corrupt few who neglect the education and health of a country while contaminating the environment.

An octogenarian mountaineer in the French Alps observes how the melting of glaciers has necessitated the construction of longer ladders for climbers to reach them. Another vignette revolves around Iraqi children who hate the United States and blame the American lust for oil for the war.

The two stories that best exemplify the difficulties faced by environmentalists have to do with a fledgling Indian airline and a proposed wind farm in the English countryside. Jeh Wadia, an entrepreneur in Mumbai who is starting a low-cost airline, believes he is doing good by helping the economy in India. But as Piers Guy, a wind-farm developer in England who carefully measures his carbon footprint, says, air travel is a major contributor to global warming. Mr. Guy’s campaign to build turbines that would produce wind energy in Bedfordshire is vehemently opposed by residents because it will spoil their views and lower their property values.

A thread of needling gallows humor runs through “The Age of Stupid.” Near the end of the film the Archivist wonders: “Why didn’t we save ourselves? Was the answer that we weren’t sure we were worth saving?” He may have a point.

Naked Juice

Naked Juice has taken a lead in the food industry in terms of scrutinizing their carbon footprint. They are making some cool choices to improve the sustainability of their production facility, their juice bottles and even the tasty stuff inside the bottles. Here’s how. Their first big move will actually be that: a relocation into a brand new LEED certified production facility. This means they have met some pretty stringent criteria for water and energy efficiency, use of recycled building materials and waste reduction. Next, Naked Juice announced that they will be the first national beverage company to use 100% post consumer recycled plastic, or RPet. This means their bottles will be made from previously used bottles. And that ain’t all, folks. Naked Juice has also decided that they will become the first major American juice company to partner with Rainforest Alliance to certify the tons of bananas used in their juice. (via: whole foods)

Great Pacific Garbage Patch

yikes....

"The North Pactific Gyre, is a slow-moving clockwise vortex where four major ocean currents meet. However the currents have carried millions of tons of rubbish in the center of the gyre, which now covers and area estimated to be larger than the state of Texas."

"One thousand miles from shore with no sign of human life for days, yet our human footprint is now apparent in even one of the most remote places on the planet." - Kaisei project director Doug Woodring

(via Inhabitat, via BBC News)

Going Organic

An excerpt from the NYT article "Five Easy Ways to Go Organic"

5 organic foods that can have the biggest impact from Dr. Alan Greene author of "Raising Baby Green"

1. Milk: “When you choose a glass of conventional milk, you are buying into a whole chemical system of agriculture,” says Dr. Greene. People who switch to organic milk typically do so because they are concerned about the antibiotics, artificial hormones and pesticides used in the commercial dairy industry. One recent United States Department of Agriculture survey found certain pesticides in about 30 percent of conventional milk samples and low levels in only one organic sample. The level is relatively low compared to some other foods, but many kids consume milk in large quantities.

2. Potatoes: Potatoes are a staple of the American diet — one survey found they account for 30 percent of our overall vegetable consumption. A simple switch to organic potatoes has the potential to have a big impact because commercially-farmed potatoes are some of the most pesticide-contaminated vegetables. A 2006 U.S.D.A. test found 81 percent of potatoes tested still contained pesticides after being washed and peeled, and the potato has one of the the highest pesticide contents of 43 fruits and vegetables tested, according to the Environmental Working Group.

3. Peanut butter: More acres are devoted to growing peanuts than any other fruits, vegetable or nut, according to the U.S.D.A. More than 99 percent of peanut farms use conventional farming practices, including the use of fungicide to treat mold, a common problem in peanut crops. Given that some kids eat peanut butter almost every day, this seems like a simple and practical switch. Commercial food firms now offer organic brands in the regular grocery store, but my daughter loves to go to the health food store and grind her own peanut butter.

4. Ketchup: For some families, ketchup accounts for a large part of the household vegetable intake. About 75 percent of tomato consumption is in the form of processed tomatoes, including juice, tomato paste and ketchup. Notably, recent research has shown organic ketchup has about double the antioxidants of conventional ketchup.

5. Apples: Apples are the second most commonly eaten fresh fruit, after bananas, and they are also used in the second most popular juice, after oranges, according to Dr. Greene. But apples are also one of the most pesticide-contaminated fruits and vegetables. The good news is that organic apples are easy to find in regular grocery stores.

***Here's a great grocery store shopping guide with a list of the "Dirty Dozen" - the 12 most pesticide contaminated foods

Mercury in all fish

"Federal study shows mercury in fish widespread"

Read the full AP article here....

By DINA CAPPIELLO
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - No fish can escape mercury pollution. That's the take-home message from a federal study of mercury contamination released Wednesday that tested fish from nearly 300 streams across the country.

The toxic substance was found in every fish sampled, a finding that underscores how widespread mercury pollution has become.

But while all fish had traces of contamination, only about a quarter had mercury levels exceeding what the Environmental Protection Agency says is safe for people eating average amounts of fish.

The study by the U.S. Geological Survey is the most comprehensive look to date at mercury in the nation's streams. From 1998 to 2005, scientists collected and tested more than a thousand fish, including bass, trout and catfish, from 291 streams nationwide.

"This science sends a clear message that our country must continue to confront pollution, restore our nation's waterways, and protect the public from potential health dangers," Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in a statement.


Yeesh...

Ceramic Notepad

Love it...

Purchase here at Yoyo Ceramics

(via Man Make Home)