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Archive | Innovation

Naturally Sustainable Packaging: Sasa-dango

Naturally Sustainable Packaging: Sasa-dango

Talk about sustainable packaging… These Sasa-dangos (mochi pounded rice balls filled with red bean paste and seasoned with mugwort) are wrapped in bamboo leaves and bound with a vine.  You steam it inside the bamboo grass wrap then unwrap and eat.  Simple, functional, beautiful and tasty.  

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Art Glass: Bottles in the Sun

Art Glass: Bottles in the Sun

Western Art Glass creates amazing art from reclaimed bottles: building a mobile from beer bottle bottoms, or wrestling a curving leaf from the side of a discarded wine bottle.

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Far Foods Carbon Footprint Labels

Far Foods Carbon Footprint Labels

So you are buying organic and mostly local, that’s pretty good, but if you live in New England like me come winter time local produce is a little harder to come by so end up buying tomatoes from… China!? The fact is there’s no reliable and easy way to know where your produce is [...]

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The Root Bridges of Cherrapunji

The Root Bridges of Cherrapunji

If you venture deep into the rain forest of Cherrapunji you’ll find these amazing examples of natural architecture, root bridges.  Cherrapunji is one of the worlds wettest places covered with rivers and streams.  This is also the home of the Ficus Elastica tree, a species of Indian rubber tree that boasts a very strong root system. [...]

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Roof Tiles that Power Your Home? Just say, Solé!

Roof Tiles that Power Your Home? Just say, Solé!

These days it seems there are plenty of reasons for homeowners to consider the switch to solar power, not the least of which is a pretty attractive tax rebate from the good ‘ole federal government. But for those who also take aesthetics into consideration in their home improvement decisions, there has always been the pesky [...]

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Piet Hein Eek: Reclaimed Wood Furniture

Piet Hein Eek: Reclaimed Wood Furniture

There are many roots to our addiction to consumption, but in this post I am going to discuss just one of them… aesthetics.  It’s funny that dispite the inherent aesthetic beauty of nature and the environemnt, our desire to make our own environments aesthetically pleasing can wreak havoc on the former.   Now obviously there [...]

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Posted in Art, Furniture 4 Comments

Daniel Beltra’s New Photos Show Amazon’s Glory and Destruction

Daniel Beltra’s New Photos Show Amazon’s Glory and Destruction

Daniel Beltra, a Spanish photographer, is traveling the world to capture the world’s three major rainforest regions. We have some of his amazing shots from the first leg of the trip… the Amazon! From cattle men in the deforested Mato Grasso region of Brazil to smiling native Indian children pointing down the barrel of his [...]

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5 Things You Should Know About the 2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid

5 Things You Should Know About the 2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid

Danielle takes the new 2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid out for a spin… In working for a conservation nonprofit, it’s not very often I get the opportunity to review a highly anticipated hybrid vehicle. I spend more time in my car looking out the window trying to identify a passing bird then I would noticing the smoothness [...]

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Swiss CODE-X Solar Luxury Yacht - Green?

Swiss CODE-X Solar Luxury Yacht - Green?

At the very least entertaining, the Code-X Yacht is touted as a uber highend and environmentally friendly motor cruiser. It is propelled by either twin solar powered electric engines, driving this razor sharp machine 9 knots through the water, or the slightly less eco-friendly twin Ilmor marine combustion engines pumping out 790hp a piece for a top speed of 80 knots. That is quite some fossil fuel burning mayhem for a company that claims to develop "products with maximum exclusivity that use renewable energy sources."

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The Chocolate Powered Veggie Racecar

The Chocolate Powered Veggie Racecar

In a sport that values speed and performance above all else, a group of speed loving treehuggers are trying to dispel the myth performance must be sacrificed to incorperate sustainability. World First Racing has developed a Fomula class race car that takes sustainability beyond the fuel tank with the World First Racer.

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