Kayakas!

Enroute for a weeks diving off the northern end of Skye, half of us had arranged to dive the Port Napier. Meeting up at Kyle of Lochalsh for the dive it was nice to see some familiar faces that I had dived with up in Scapa only a week before. The skipper was Dave from Lochaline Charter Boats and having left at two in the morning to bring the boat up from Lochaline he was already there with The Brenden when we arrived.

The wreck sits very high in the water and is visible from the shore at low tide. She is generally dived from Kyle of Lochalsh being only a five-minute trip from the pontoon, which is in front of the hotel by the harbour.

After three weeks of staying with my good friends Laura and Darren at their home on Waiheke Island I thought it was about time that I told you a bit about their life here. 18 months ago they bought what’s known as a lifestyler’s block on the island 30 mins ferry ride from the capital Auckland. Lifestylers, as the name would suggest, are those people who choose to put the way they live their lives ahead of any other priorities that may motivate them. They generally have a strong will to escape city life, to cultivate and to live off the fruits of the land with as little impact on the environment as possible. For me being a city kid, used to the hustle and bustle of Barcelona life, Laura and Darren’s place on the highest and least populated part of Waiheke can seem like the end of the world, albeit the end of the world with spectacular views and air so fresh it burns the lungs – just how the end of the world should be I hear you say! In a series of upcoming posts I want to tell you a bit about how they are trying to live the ‘Good Life’. An eco-wedding, solar panels, organic veggie patch, woofers and a cultural community festival are all part of the package.

No Sheep for You! A new book teaches knitting with silk, linen, hemp, bamboo, and other fleeceless delights…

Sheep poo for you! The famous sheep poo holiday cards are coming to the US! What better Valentine’s wish…

Talk about rims. The Tweel, Michelin’s airless tire design, could outlast the pneumatics we know and hate…

There’s nothing like the sun, even indoors. Suntracker brings sunlight inside…

The Army Corps on Engineers looks at the story of Katrina and the levees and makes a case for preserving wetlands…

There has been rumours and circulation about an artificial reef near Falmouth for a long time. What is the truth? Are there plans? Or just wishfull thinking?
Due to a couple of new spokespersons representing the interests of the Falmouth and District diving fraternity, Shaun Beedie from Bay Marine and Gaynor Bennett from Sea Fans scuba, I managed to find out some of the proposed plans.

Whilst the project is still looking for funding it does have some very interested parties and ideas are still flying around.

I have managed to get copies of various letter outlining most of the details :-

Last year, Google launched a new service called “Google Transit“. It was a version of Google Maps that provided directions for navigating public transportation. It was great, but it only covered one city: Portland, Oregon. Google has now added five more cities to the service: Seattle WA, Pittsburgh PA, Eugene OR, Tampa FL, and Honolulu HI.

We reported here back in May on Bordeaux Quay, a new eco-gastronomic venture in the UK city of Bristol (also home to Cafe Maytreya, a vegetarian”s paradise which we reported on here). Whilst we may have been wrong about Bordeaux Quay being the first carbon-neutral restaurant in the country, we certainly weren’t wrong about the sheer scope of chef Barny Houghton’s environmental ambitions. The project has been very successful in raising the profile of local food – the Times newspaper for example ran an interview with Barny Houghton in which he took the reporter to a muddy field in Somerset to see his supply of pork. The £2.7m project is now up and running and hosts a restaurant, brasserie, bar, deli, bakery and cookery school. Bordeaux Quay is promising to source staple ingredients from organic and sustainable farms within a 50-mile of Bristol, with other ingredients (Bristol isn’t known for its olives!) coming from producers that they know and trust well. As if this were not enough, the retrofit of the old dockside warehouse in which Bordeaux Quay is based was done to strict ecological standards, including salvage and reuse of existing materials and the installation of a rainwater harvesting system that now flushes the toilets. Being dedicated Treehugges, we felt it was our duty to check this place out. Oh, the sacrifices we make for the planet…

No Wet is a product that was developed in the US over a decade ago. With Australia experiencing the worst drought since the arrival of white civilisation, it is no wonder that a Waterless Car Wash product should attract interest. Although licensed from the American manufacturer and repackaged in South Australia, there has been talk of securing the rights to make the product locally down under. Essentially it is made of 17 different elements, of which the main players are Carnaubra Wax and Kaolin Clay. Indeed all of the recipes ingredients are said to be natural. It is claimed not to contain petroleum distillates (kerosene), silicone, abrasives, or other harmful chemicals. Apparently it works because the wax acts as an emulisifier and encapsulater of dust and dirt particles. This lifts them off the surface paint, where they can be wiped away with a polishing cloth. The suggestion is that a 32oz (1 litre) bottle of the stuff will wax, wash, polish and seal well over a dozen cars, which normally might’ve used thousands of gallons of water to wash. And we’re told you end up a showroom sheen on your metal chariot. No Wet Australia has been establishing the business over the past few years. Given that many Australian metropolitan and rural cities have imposed water restrictions limiting the volume of water used to clean cars, their timing seems very opportune. Available both as a DIY or a fully serviced product. ::No Wet Australia

It’s Co-op America’s 2006 People’s Choice Awards, which means it’s your turn to vote for your favorite green business of the year. Join Co-op America at the San Francisco Green Festival on November 10 to find out who won. The top ten nominees include: Endangered Species Chocolate; Green Living Now; Harmony Art; Ideal Bite; Joe Coffee Bar; Mountains of the Moon; Numi Organic Tea; Pangea Organics; Reusablebags.com and; Ten Thousand Villages. Cast your vote! ::Co-op America’s 2006 People’s Choice Awards

Gregor Barnum is the Director of Corporate Consciousness at Seventh Generation, leading marketers of natural, non-toxic cleaning products and other household goods. Gregor holds a Masters Degree from Yale Divinity School with a focus on ethics. He is a firm believer in rethinking the way we do business, creating institutions that are actually a force for good. He kindly agreed to talk to TreeHugger about the work that Seventh Generation have been doing on envisioning the future of the company. In this interview he shares his thoughts on ethics, organisational change, biomimicry and green consumerism. We also learn a little more about what makes him tick as a person.

This interview was exerpted on TreeHugger Radio number 2, which aired October 12th on Air America’s EcoTalk. To hear the show, and others, visit EcoTalk.net.

“Organic Minimalist” Ross Lovegrove”s designs have found their way to these pages several times before; his Orbit Chair, Bamboo bike, never-go-blunt ceramic razor and solar car prototype are all examples of the industrial designers” TreeHugging designs. He”s done some designing for lighting manufacturer Luceplan (we”ve featured their Artificial Natural Light) that has resulted in more TreeHugger-friendly products. One example is the Solar Bud, a handy garden lamp that needs no wires. Stuck in the ground in a place that gets some sun, the lamp uses sensors to detect when darkness falls, and automatically switches on three high power red LEDs. Entirely solar powered, the Solar Bud saves both on energy and installation: no need for electricity, no need for wiring, and we think it”d go particularly well with the Solar Address Light. Available from ::Surrounding via ::Futureproof/ed