Kayakas!

When first stumbling onto these, we thought “Wow, they”re works of art.” And it would appear someone else thinks so too, because one is said to be in the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art. Designed by Nick Schade, ex-US Navy engineer, Guillemot Kayaks are boats you built yourself. Nick creates the prototypes and from them develops plans and specifications that others can buy. When you slave long hours to make something with your own hands, it takes on a value that has no relationship to money. You’ve invested of yourself and that makes the product so much more personal than a store bought item, manufactured in a distant factory. More likely to used, appreciated and cared for, rather than discarded with little thought. Such a shame then that these beauties are conceived to be covered in an outer layer of fibreglass and resin. Maybe Nick can team up with OceanGreen surfboards to further develop the hemp fibre and eco-resin idea. We are pleased to note though, that he is seeking out alternatives to the old growth cedar, which seemed to have graced earlier models. But with those caveats in mind, we reckon a handmade timber kayak sounds very sharp. Takes this writer back many aeons, to being a kid building sea kayaks from plywood and canvas. Ah, the good old days. ::Guillemot Kayaks, via See Kayak.

Wal-Mart-owned retailers in Europe are taking thousands of miles out of their produce by buying locally and shipping shorter distances…

New York WiFi pioneers are selling pixels to fund a wind and solar-powered wireless network for the city’s parks and public spaces…

Los Angeles tries to decide if putting sewage on crops is genius or heinous…

London’s largest aquarium puts an underwater office on display to illustrate how much water is wasted by careless businesses…

Miōn is a relatively new company. A subsidiary of Timberland. It’s chief designer is Martin Keen, who lent his name to another footwear company of the same name. Anyhow, Miōn is a very Twenty First Century looking sandal. What you might expect the Jetsons to wear on the weekends. Or some might see it as a high performance pair of Crocs. But the Industrial Designers Society of America (ISDA) saw it as a leading light in EcoDesign. Awarding it a Bronze Award in their ‘06 Industrial Design Excellence Awards (IDEA). Though, strangely, the awards site is shy on details about how they came to this conclusion. They talk vaguely about “radical reductions in energy use and waste generation.” And mention a “repertoire of ecologically sensitive materials”, but only note one: a corn-based film. Plus they cite a “first ever” Eco Metrics label modelled on the FDA nutrition label. (Great idea, but think others, like Worn Again, have been doing this before.) Don’t get me wrong, ….

We asked and you delivered. Observant readers have inundated us with celebrity peddle pushers. This week: Daryl Hannah, Naomi Watts, Hilary Duff, Elle Macpherson, Chloe Sevigny, Lindsay Lohan, George Clooney, Keifer Sutherland, Estella Warren, Scout Niblett, The Governator.

Living with Less is going mainstream- Time magazine gets small and covers it this week, with TreeHugger faves like the Micro Compact Home, the Katrina Cottage, Tumbleweed Homes and Geoff Warner of the Wee House. Says Geoff: “When you build smaller, you can put in a lot more quality than you can in a larger space.”, something we have been saying for a long time. ::Time Magazine

Oh, pity those poor designers on Project Runway.

Contestants sorted through paper, plastic and metal to collect the materials need to create a “wearable outfit.”

We first discovered and wrote about method a while back; we loved their product”s design and low impact on the planet, with a commitment to non-toxicity and no animal testing. We”re glad to see they”ve been diligently working to add new products since; they”re latest innovation encourages us to “throw in the towel.” They”ve introduced new four new microfiber towels designed to stem the flood of paper towels into the waste stream; each microfiber is finer than a human hair and is sliced 16 times, resulting in millions of microscopic hooks in each cloth to capture dirt, dust and even six times their weight in water. Reusing the towels only makes them stronger, too — using the cloths splits fibers, creating more surface area. The towels come in four varities, specifically designed for a particular medium: glass, granite, stainless steel and wood. There are a multitude of other new products since we”ve last seen method, and they”re now available in the UK as well as the US and Canada. Buy online or at Target, Office Depot, Linens-N-Things and more. ::method

Camden Kiwi: Carnival of the Green #40 by Cathryn Symons

City Hippy: Interview with Donnachadh McCarthy by Al Tepper

Dare you to name one truly “Treehugging” corporation? Hard, isn”t it? That”s not good news, not just for the environment but for all the companies who are spending a lot of green on trying to look green. Thanks to BP”s recent troubles in the Arctic and elsewhere (and more to come), the old phenomenon of companies trying to look green, or “greenwashing” as it”s known, returns to the limelight. Sure, the name switch from British Petroleum to BP (or “beyond petroleum”) was cool, but c”mon, how “beyond” it can you be when you”ve still got all that black stuff on your hands? As Athan Manuel, the director of lands protection at the Sierra Club, puts it to the Washington Post, “Compared to their colleagues in the oil and gas industry, they”re the best…[But] Being the best of the oil industry is like being the smartest of the Three Stooges. At the end of the day you”re Moe, you”re still a stooge.”