Motherboard Gifts offers recycled products to display and store your business cards. Both the business card case and the business card caddy are made from recycled circuit boards. These devices let you keep your professional look with your eco-friendly vibe.

"Think about what it consumes before buying." http://shanghaikiss.blogspot.com

On ballon: Drive one day less and look how much carbon momoxide you`ll keep out of the air we breathe.
While the Chinese economy is booming, the skies above its cities are darkening. One of the biggest causes is the phenomenal growth in the number of cars and exhaust emissions. To kick off their `20 tips for sustainable developemet campaign and drive people to their 20to20.org mini –site, WWF expressed one tip in dramatic fashion. Along with an increase in new volunteers, WWF received coverage of the event in a number of Chinese newspapers as well as on CCTV 9, Bejing TV, Phoenix TV; even international news stations as far away as Deutche Well Broadcasting in Germany and Al Jazeera in the Middle East. www.20to20.org www.notcot.com

Botanical Lipstick Cosmetics label CARGO has created a new line of botanical lipsticks, exclusive to Sephora. Called PlantLove, the lipsticks have compostable tubes made from corn, a renewable resource. (Some finger-wagging persists around corn-based plastic and fibers, however, because of the use of genetically modified crops.) The paper packaging is infused with flower seeds, so you can plant and water it to sprout a "bouquet of wild flowers," maybe harbor a bee or two. Check out more at: http://www.sephora.com

Bees are so industrious when they are at the job. Tomas Gabzdil Libertiny introduces With a Little Help of the Bees in Milan. It is a vase built by bees. "Libertiny made a vase-shaped hive that the bees then colonised, building a hexagon comb around it. The wax sheets used to make the hive were embossed with a honeycomb pattern to help the bees on their way. Libertiny calls the process “slow prototyping” - it took 40,000 bees a week to make the vase. Since the bees get aggressive when they are interrupted, Libertiny had to guess when it was time to remove the vase." Dezeen Magazine. http://www.dezeen.com/2007/04/19/studio-libertiny-at-droog/

LOT-EK are among the best of the small crew of architects working with shipping containers, which are rarely seen in the urban context. However it is coming to Chinatown in NYC as they build this 19 storey artists loft building with a commercial base. The developer. According to Curbed: Mr. Woo of Young Woo & Associates said that he had become very interested in plans developed by Lot-ek (which stands for "low-tech") employing large metal shipping containers. He said he considered their use in residential construction "fascinating" and "environmentally friendly." http://www.noticiasarquitectura.info/noticiasEn/news2648.aspx

If you don't preserve nature by switching your television off stand by, who will ?

Campaign for water conservation in Denver. Clever, simple, mindful.

Hej och v�lkomna till min hemsida. Den �r fortfarande under konstruktion men kika g�rna in p� skrotlamporna s� l�nge. Sj�lvklart �r de alla till salu. Jag g�r �ven best�llningsjobb, s� s�g till om ni har n�got liggandes d�r hemma och dr�ller som ni vill g�ra n�got av. F�r �vrigt �r jag inredningsaritekt & m�belformgivare, s� jag tar g�rna st�rre jobb ocks�. Kontakta mig via mailen s� �terkommer jag n�r sidan klar.
Frida Ottemo Kallstrom

these wallets are made from recycled milk and orange juice cartons. which means they've got a bit of regional variation...and fill me with nostalgia. its like carrying kroger and shaw's cards to sainsburys.

With the overwhelming number of generic black laptop totes flooding the market these days, it was refreshing to have a close encounter with Giles Miller’s unique Corrugated Cardboard Laptop Case at London’s [re]Design exhibit this fall. Sturdy, stylish, and completely sustainable, the cardboard lining the front of Miller’s tree-loving creation is 100% recycled, and the unique fluting gives its wearer the option to personalize it with custom designs such as one’s initials. If you are looking for something a little warmer, the case also comes in cosier-looking versions craftily constructed out of old carpet patches.
Feeding off the plethora of potential possibilites that have become available to him via working with sustainable design, the young UK designer primarily focuses his energy on three primary categories of sustainability: using recycled and recyclable materials, using all-natural materials and re-using existing objects and products. Miller showed off a number of other recycled corregated cardboard pieces at the London Design Festival this year, including tables, lamps and room dividers. His simple but brilliant fluting process is what caught our eye and makes this refined work rise above all the other cardboard designers out there.

we love this idea of reverse vending machines for recycling which take it in, scan it to determine type of material involved, compacts or shreds it, and can dispense prizes or vouchers as incentives to recycle. "The basic premise behind the concept is that consumers get the ‘feel good factor’ by doing something for the environment in an easy and efficient way. Machines can come fitted with a modem that monitors the success of the machine and can publish recycling statistics. In the future, award schemes could be set up whereby organizations/schools can be recognized and awarded for how much they’ve recycled." The guy going through our blue box every garbage day knows this- separated waste has value and technology like this recovers it. Instead of relying on guilt or conscience it creates a rational incentive to recycle. Not as good as a deposit/return/re-use system but pretty impressive.

My name is Ashley Martineau and I enjoy shocking thrift store cashiers by casually buying the most hideous sweaters they’ve ever seen. I learned how to knit from a widow in Oregon when I was thirteen. As a community service I visited her weekly; she passed down her wisdom as well as her knitting experience. She has also taught my adopted sister how to knit. My mother in law re-taught me in January, and now I can’t stop. I am recently married, and my new hobby was getting a bit expensive, so I decided to find a cheap way to keep my yarn stash full. One day at the thrift store I found the ugliest wool sweater. I thought, “This dog of a sweater would be beautiful as a hat or scarf!” As a beginner at knitting, I considered myself a pro at unraveling knitted items; so the sweater came home with me. After reading how to knit a sweater, I followed the directions backwards and turned the sweater into a pile of Ramen-looking yarn. Through trial and error, I learned what sweaters were easiest to unravel. One day I brought several sweaters to my in-laws house to unravel while my husband did some yard work. My in-laws found unraveling so relaxing that they began buying sweaters and unraveling them for me. Before I knew it, my yarn stash was filled to overflowing. I didn’t need 30 sweaters worth of yarn in my house, so I sold the surplus on eBay. It became so successful that I turned unraveling into a little eBay business. My inbox was soon filled with emails asking, “How do you unravel a sweater?” So I spent an afternoon photographing and writing a detailed online tutorial. As of today over 7000 people have viewed the tutorial. I also started an online community for people to ask questions and share their unraveling projects. Unraveling sweaters is a great way to keep your yarn stash full, and the yarn you don't use can be sold on eBay to make money for other craft projects. I like to think I'm saving the world one ugly sweater at a time by ripping it apart and giving it a chance to be something beautiful.

The products here are designed and handmade by Michael Bom and Antoinet Deurloo. All the products are made out of reused materials.The products can be ordered through the site underneath or at Studio Hergebruik.
Check out more stuff at: http://www.bomdesign.nl

Chris Jordan is from Seattle (that city and photography is starting to haunt me), and takes photos of industrial yards and waste facilities. He has been published in the New York times and Smithsonian Magizine. Here is what he has to say about his photography. "As I explore around our country’s industrial yards and waste facilities, where the accumulated detritus of our consumption is exposed like eroded layers in the Grand Canyon, I find evidence of a slow-motion apocalypse in progress. I am appalled by these scenes, yet also drawn into them with awe and fascination. The immense scale of our consumption can appear desolate, macabre, oddly comical, full of irony, even strangely beautiful; for me its consistent feature is a staggering complexity. Perhaps our vast piles of junk can serve as visual metaphors for the difficult questions that we Americans face as the earth's most voracious resource gluttons."