Kayakas!

We’ve given you a few eco-tips lately involving lemons: one was that they whiten your laundry naturally and the other was a homemade solution to help your dry hands and feet. Now we’re going to tell you that you can use lemons to kill those pesky weeds that are currently growing between your bricks and are just a pain in the you-know-what. We actually tried it just to be sure it did the trick before we reported this eco-tip to you. Simply douse the weeds with lemon juice and they will likely shrivel within a day or two. We found that they rarely need a second treatment. Other alternatives also include vinegar or boiling water. Try all three for those resilient ones that just don’t want to stop growing. Via ::body+soul

In a survey last week we discovered that there are lots of packrats among TreeHugger readers. Click here to advertise on thousands of blogs including mine

We are seeing convergence happen across industries and individuals collecting/aggregating their personal choices together in one networked place and comparing to each other. Here”s a provocation: brand “Mobility” does this for transport. What if a car manufacturer were to own, and brand, mobility services for me?

The New York Times announced on Saturday 27 May that according to the AAA nearly 38 million people will travel this Memorial Day weekend and most of them will drive on America’s roads and highways. That is a lot of cars, a lot of emissions, a lot of money on gas and a crazy amount of time in traffic. And despite rising gas prices and energy security fear, it is not yet changing consumer habits. Hundreds of thousands of us will be sitting tail-to-tail in our half empty vehicles, while empty seats on planes or trains or buses pass us by. The old model has yet to be challenged much then. And the white space for innovation remains untouched.

What if you replace ‘car’ with ‘mobility’?

We”ve seen quite a bit of encouraging news lately about major venture capital firms looking to invest in clean and green technologies, and hope this signals a trend towards sustained investment in the eco-business sector. Click here to advertise on thousands of blogs including mine

War in Kosovo. Aids in Africa. Earthquakes in Bam. Then, in quick succession, tsunamis in Asia, earthquakes in Pakistan and hurricanes in America. Now this past weekend, yet another tragedy in Indonesia. Click here to advertise on thousands of blogs including mine

“Why do we do it?”

It’s a question that must have passed the lips of every UK diver there has ever been. At the time I uttered them I was sat in my car in a huge traffic jam. I’d barely moved more than a mile in the previous hour, queueing up to get through a set of traffic lights near the end of the M67. I’d left home almost two hours previously and had travelled about 20 miles. It was the Friday of the late May Bank Holiday – reputedly the worst day of the year on Britain’s roads, and I could well believe it!

I was setting out for some diving on the south coast and I still had a very long way to go. The real question was not why we do it – we all know the answer to that. No, the question that really mattered was, “Will it be worth it?”

Recently on Hugg we’ve seen…

A New Zealander who runs his car on a cocktail of water with a splash of gasoline (and him “drinking” his car’s exhaust from a glass ala Daryl Hannah and her biodiesel)…

A philosophical perspective on the aesthetics of the windfarm, technology, and natural systems…

How to put worms to work “shredding” your sensitive documents…

General Electric investing millions in green-tech in up-and-coming sectors in China…

A high-tech (solar-powered desalinization) and low-tech (fog harvesting) approach to getting a clean glass of water…

Stay tuned to Hugg for the most recent reader-generated green news. Now fully searchable! We”re steadily working out the kinks and getting more functions operational for your posting and Hugging pleasure.

We have just learned that An Inconvenient Truth has partnered up with the hugely popular social website MySpace to promote the film. If we look at the coverage that the announcement received in the media and on the blogs, we could conclude that it is low-key. But it seems effective: In a week, over 48,000 MySpace members have added the MySpace profile page of An Inconvenient Truth to their “friends” lists (including the official TreeHugger MySpace and TreeHuggerTV MySpace pages - there”s not a lot there yet, but feel free to add us to your “friends” list).

Hybrid drivers on the East Coast of the US can now get a deal on hotel stays with some Kimpton Hotels locations. The deal, called the “Green Road Warrior Package,” rewards the owners (and renters) of hybrid cars with a more affordable stay at hotels in Boston, New York and Washington, D.C. Kimpton has a list of 15 hybrid models that qualify for the discount, which runs through September. TreeHugger has noted Kimpton”s eco-work before, and the award-winning chain spreads it”s eco-love among the featured hotels. The Onyx Hotel, in Boston, won the National Good EarthKeeping Award from the American Hotel & Lodging Association this year. ::Kimpton Hotels via ::AutoblogGreen

TreeHugger is a big fan of the energy-efficient, off-the-grid lifestyle; one difficulty of selling it to a mainstream audience is that so many grid-free homes are prohibitively expensive or aesthetically-challenged and ugly. Off The Grid: Modern Homes + Alternative Energy is a foil for both arguments, proving that we can, at once, have good design and extensive use of alternative energy without reliance on the traditional power grid. The book profiles “ten beautiful homes in regions as diverse as New York City, urban Germany, suburban Southern California, rural Canada, and the remote ‘bush’ of Australia,…(and) shows you how to take responsibility for your future choices and conveniences by living in a beautifully designed home that uses much less energy. Off-the-grid living is a concept that can be easily understood and adopted by everyone, regardless of where you live or how much money you make.” “Nuff said. Available at ::Powell”s Books and ::Amazon via ::MoCo Loco