Hippyshopper

Friday's ecotourism: Outer Space with Virgin Galactic

The space travel itself, offered by Virgin Galactic, probably has all kinds of environmental issues in regards to the fuel burned, but the interior itself is designed to be incredibly inert - a dream vacation for anybody with chemical sensitivities. However, the eco-aspect comes in in that it is a travel company owned by Sir Richard Branson, who pledged all his travel profits to fight global warming for the next ten years. So if you have a spare $200k USD lying around, you can spend it knowing you get to go to space, and the profits stay with the planet. [GT]

Virgin Galactic

Related stories: Sir Richard Branson pledges £1.6bn for global warming | Friday's Ecotourism: Go Differently - to Thailand, to see the elephants | Friday's Ecospot: Liquid Therapy at Moonbeach Retreat, Egypt

Sainsburys brand new bag

Good news from Sainsburys after the debacle of the report on how not so green supermarkets are. They're replacing their old white bags with satsuma-coloured ones which are made of 33% recycled material. The changeover will be complete by next February - it takes a long time to replace 1.7 billion shopping bags. This, on top of their 500 new products with compostable packaging, should bump them quite a few rungs up the ethical ladder.

New 'green' bags for Sainsbury's [via EcoStreet]

Related stories: Greening Supermarkets revisited: not so green | A new green image for Tesco? | Waitrose, Sainsburys and Marks are great (boo hiss: Asda, Tesco, Morrisons)

ITV Granada Big Cleanup campaign

A whole slew of green groups have gotten under the ITV Granada umbrella to help green up its viewership. The campaign has daily eco-tips, a free 'green guide' in a reusable keepsake box, and a freephone response line you can call to find out how to get greener. As part of the campaign, you can get a hand cranked mobile charger for only £5 after P + P. 3 minutes' crank = 3 minutes' talk time. Adapters available for a wide variety of mobiles for only an extra 24p. [GT]

ITV Granada Big Cleanup campaign | ITV Big Cleanup Mobile Charger

Related stories: Back in black - the Solio solar charger | V.posh wind-up torch | Sunlinq Folding Solar Power Panel

Weekend DIY: Floppy Disk tote

We've all still got a box or three of those old-school 3.5" disks lying around, and they don't even make good coasters the way AOL CDs used to.  Well, now there's a nice weekend DIY project for you: the Floppy Disk bag.  While it does involve a drill, the rest of it looks pretty simple, and if you whip up a lining so that it actually becomes functional, you've got a tote that even has a flip-top lid.  Not exactly chic, but totally geek.  [GT]

Floppy Disk Bag [via Shiny Shiny]

Related stories: Weekend DIY: Build a workbench from an old fridge | Site of the week: Instructables | DIY Kyoto at home

Duke of Cambridge Organic Pub

The second-best bar in the UK (according to the Observer) is also the world's first certified organic gastro pub, the Duke of Cambridge, was founded in 1998 and began winning awards shortly afterward. They're also sticking with fully organic catering even though the EU guidelines were recently reinterpreted to exempt organic restaurants from having to provide same. They only use organically farmed salmon and trout, so you know where it's been. Located at 30 St Peters Street, Islington, London N1. [GT]

Duke of Cambridge

Related stories: Pizza Piazzo / Pollo / Pizza Organic / GM free | Vitaorganic Organic Vegetarian & Vegan Restaurant | Second helpings from the Dinner Lady

The Fun Chair your child is supposed to draw on

Like Ella before, I'm pretty keen on cardboard furniture, and think the Fun Chair is a great idea for a kid's toy. It's a small, folding chair of plain brown recycled cardboard, costing £19.50 at Green Apple, which is designed for your child to decorate to his heart's content. Which, at risk of invoking Valkyries of Protest, sounds pretty steep for a disposable kid's toy; Susie would probably be just as happy with a cardboard wine shipping box (very sturdy and usually white) that you told her was an ottoman for her to decorate. (Though it might not be recycled then, so much as repurposed.) [GT]

Cardboard Fun Chair

Related stories: Still not bored of cardboard furniture | Recycled cardboard fort from Ecotopia | Recycled kids stuff takes off

Diary of a Green Wedding #6: Early house hunting

Hippyshopper editor Gabrielle (aka [GT]) chronicles trying to have a small, affordable wedding while pleasing her dreamed-of-a-fairytale-wedding- since-he-was-a-boy fiance John, and trying to keep her consumerism low.  This week, a look ahead at green housing.

A friend who manages an apartment building called up today to let us know a two bedroom was coming up available soon.  Great location, room for the all-important home office, and good neighbors - he lives there himself.  But my green lifestyle was thrust upon me by having a rash (more like a plague) of chemical sensitivities and classical allergies, so there's a good chance I won't even be able to set foot in the place.  This got me thinking about the after-the-wedding part, where we go home together.  Which reminded me of something: I hate paying rent.  And I'll tell you why.

Sure, everybody hates paying rent, but as I was growing up, my mother was an accountant, and my father had a construction company.  It was dinned into me: get equity.  Buy a house.  Don't throw away money on rent.  So the arguments I'm going to give you in favour of owning are coming from bias, to be sure.  However, owning a house makes you interested in what happens to your part of the world in a way that renting never can, and encourages better behaviour.  (Yes yes, it also gives you equity, so your money is working for you instead of being burned up and blown out the window.  That's beside the point.)

We all want the trendy, tiny flat near all the cool shops, but if you also want a home office, there's a good chance that what you need is a house.  If you're going with a house, you might as well look into building your own, which is what I got thinking about.  Land is pretty cheap around here, especially exhausted farmland.  My uncle had previously convinced me of the merits of straw bale housing, since it has fantastic insulation value and is much less expensive to build sustainably (as well as without ugly chemicals) than with conventional materials.

The Straw Bale Building Assocation has a lot of good workshops (and The Last Straw magazine).  Most straw bale is simple post and beam, with bales of straw stacked up like Legos, then sprayed with lime plaster to create a smooth, breathable surface.  Don't use concrete if you can avoid it; concrete locks in moisture which leads to the straw rotting, whereas lime disperses moisture and dries out.  Concrete also offgases for years to come.  Lime is also generally pretty, and concrete generally is not.

If you want a basic idea of what you can do with it, BaleWatch has 50 plans for straw bale buildings, ranging from small storage sheds up to a nine bedroom Bed & Breakfast.  The idea I liked most is the Compound, which involves building a perimeter wall, then several small buildings inside, so that you can perfect your ability one square room at a time.  This also allows you to spread out the cost of your house building and easily expand for, say, more office space, an art studio, or, well, possibly sometime after the wedding there'll be children.  Assuming science catches up with us and John can carry them.  [GT]

See more Diary of a Green Wedding at Hippyshopper, and more Green and Organic Weddings at Bridalwave.

Google specs standards to save power - LOTS of power

Your computer uses a lot of power, much of which is wasted.  Some adapters are so bad as to produce only 20% efficiency - and the good ones still lose at least 10% of your power.  Consequently, Google, which has thousands of computers, proposes we go over to a 12 volt standard - not just for computers, but for pretty much everything that doesn't have a high demand (microwaves and fridges would be exempt).  That would lead to economy of scale (like how you can get USB cables for under a pound in the right high street shops now) and a huge efficiency boost.  How huge?  Google's plan shows a savings of $5bn USD in America alone, annually.  The ERPI consulting group is slightly less optimistic: Currently, EPRI said, power supplies account for more than 2 percent of the nation’s electricity consumption and that more efficient design could cut use in half, saving nearly $3 billion in electricity costs.  Either way, that's a lot fewer rolling blackouts, and standardization would make converting gadgets wholesale to solar power that much easier.  [GT]

Google to Push for More Electrical Efficiency in PC’s [via TreeHugger]

Related stories: Water saving gadget roundup | Alternate Energy Sources For A Flourishing Future | France shames high-emissions vehicles

Lovely Organics at Bridalwave

We've been neglectful of the best bridal site out there, which is Shiny's own Bridalwave, run by the utterly super Camilla Chafer, and paid the price of not plundering her totally fantastic Green and Organic Weddings category. I hereby publicly apologize for being such a dope and urge any matrimonially-minded readers to hotfoot it over there. Go on, I'll wait. The eye-opener was her writeup of Lovely Organic's wedding hampers. I was introduced to them by Kiss and Makeup's writeup of Lovely Organics, but Charlotte seized on the most relevant part for my brideness-to-beness, which is the gorgeous range of Lovely kits for brides and bridesmaids, including a terrific thank you bag you can give your bridesmaids - a total steal at only £5. I also was intrigued by her post on heart shaped rice confetti (as a biodegradeable alternative to the normal rice or paper) and she had a great option for plantable invitations. The Bridalwave organic category has really taken off lately and Camilla is to be congratulated hugely! [GT]

Lovely Organic's wedding hampers [via Bridalwave]

More Green and Organic Weddings at Bridalwave | More Green Weddings at Hippyshopper

Farmhouse sexy cardboard furniture

Okay, so the Fun Chair didn't totally do it for me, but the Farm Designs cardboard furniture by Giles Miller really does.  Instead of just having a smooth surface, he has a 'flocked' design, where he manipulates the angles of the corrugation to give the cardboard exciting and gorgeous textures.  It obviously also lends itself to room dividers, but even more surprisingly, apparently he's made rocking chairs and laptop cases (from carpet and cardboard) as well.  It's fantastic to see innovative uses of cardboard to dispel the idea that you'd do just as well to cut up an old fridge box - an old fridge box wouldn't have such texture.  [GT]   

Farm Designs cardboard furniture [via Treehugger]

Related stories: The Fun Chair your child is supposed to draw on |  Still not bored of cardboard furniture | Recycled cardboard fort from Ecotopia

Light prototype brights at 10% the power

Although compact fluorescent bulbs are a great step forward compared to traditional incandescents - lasting five times as long and using 20% the power - one can always hope for better, and better is in the prototype stages in Canada. Solid-state lighting uses 10% the power of incandescents - or half as much as compacts - and lasts 50 000 hours, not just 5 000. The trick is that they use semiconductors instead of tubes or filaments, and semiconductors are so efficient that they convert the vast majority of the power channeled through into light, with very little heat. The lights could save the equivalent of double the energy used by Toronto homes each year if it replaced incandescent light bulbs nationwide, said Group IV Semiconductor Inc. on Wednesday in Ottawa. [GT]

'Solid-state' light uses one-10th energy, maker says

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California imposes legal greenhouse gas limits

The Governator may not be giving up his Hummers, but we can forgive him because he just made California the first state to impose limits on all greenhouse gas emissions. Since California is one of the most populous states and tends to set the trends, this is a terrific sign. Also notable: While environmentalists have praised the bill, some business leaders have complained. Which, with all due respect for business, tends to be a good mix when laws are getting done. [GT]

Schwarzenegger signs landmark global warming bill

Related stories: Monday's unethical celeb: Schwarzenegger categorically not giving up his Hummers | Seattle hires goats | Yay or Nay: a black Kate Moss for the Africa issue

Canturn turns cans into canturns

In a very straightforward repurpose, Keri Anderson uses a pencil-thin oxy-acetylene torch to burn freehand designs into tin cans ranging from condensed soup can size ($10 USD) to olive oil cans ($40 USD). The heat turns the Canturn a purple-gray irridescent colour which you can then lacquer yourself, or allow to rust naturally. Prices range from £5 to £20. [GT]

Canturn [via GreatGreenGoods]

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The Recy: Mercedes-Benz's eco-roadster

Made of wood, alloys, glass and rubber, the Mercedes-Benz "Recy" would be 100% recyclable and look good doing it. It assumes excellent weather (though if you can afford it you may be able to conjure up sunshine) since it has no roof, nor even a convertible top. It's a top contender in a competition for the Los Angeles Auto Show to provide vehicles made of recyclable materials and "make the vehicle and its driver experience a deep feeling with the environment and help protect it". [GT]

Introducing the Mercedes "Recy" [via BenzInsider]

Related stories: Monday's unethical celeb: Schwarzenegger categorically not giving up his Hummers | BMW trots out the hydrogen car | Honda's home hydrogen power station

See the eco-home at Grand Designs Live and donate to Christian Aid

Drop by Grand Designs Live to see the eco-home and garden centerpiece for Christian Aid. Not only is it designed to be sustainable, it's also meant to protect the inhabitants from hurricanes and earthquakes. The Honduras version has insect-repellent natural paint, a defense wall made of recycled truck tires, and a strengthened rammed-earth wall. The Asian version is on stilts and contains emergency assistance packs. The African model has specialized ventilation, water butts and solar panels. You can also buy virtual presents based on what's in the model home, to provide saplings and solar panels to communities in need. [GT]

Grand Designs Live | eco-home for Christian Aid

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Seattle hires goats

Instead of dosing the English ivy and blackberries on a high-altitude hillside (where any pesticides would inevitably flow downward into the groundwater), Seattle hired goats to eat them.  For £1250 they got 280 goats, which methodically set to consume the entire fire hazard in an area that would be labour-intensive and unsafe for humans, and difficult for machines.  Eating 5-6 pounds per day, with 280 goats, the entire project should be finished by the weekend, with no ill effects beyond some manure.  [GT]

Goats make quick work of weeds

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Yay or Nay: a black Kate Moss for the Africa issue

The good: The Independent did an "Africa" issue on 21 September where half the revenues were donated to fight AIDS in Africa.  The curious: they put a blackened Kate Moss on the cover and included a free black Kate Moss poster.  This is a thornier moral question than last week's about Ashton Kutcher.  Is The Independent right to use Kate Moss in order to sell more issues, to generate more revenue, resulting in more money to fight AIDS - even though they've used her in a very peculiar fashion, instead of using either an African model (or perhaps even someone who was not a model in the first place) or a cover celebrity who is, er, genuinely dark skinned?  Crass for cash (for a good cause) or just plain wrong?   Or is there a deep artistic statement here that I, despite spending a lifetime in art criticism, just ain't getting?  Post your Yay or Nay in comments.  [GT]

Sign up for the (Red) campaign and save lives at The Independent [via Sepia Mutiny]

[Don't forget to vote at Trashionista, Bridalwave, Corrie Blog, Kiss and Makeup, The Bag Lady, Shoewawa and Shiny Shiny too!]

Loving Lovely Organic beauty goods

Shiny sister site Kiss and Makeup is stark raving mad about the glories of Lovely Organic.  Lovely specializes in top-drawer beauty goods, which ship in 100% natural jute bags with a complimentary organic soap.  Top seller is Doux Me Rose Glacee Milk Cleanser, which Kiss Editor Charlotte called "perfect for dry skin... and nature lovers", and their Mama Coco's Hawaiian Lip Balm was Charlotte's Natural Pick of the Week.  Good prices, too, with Lovely bundles starting at only £5.  We'll be following up soon with Charlotte's reviews of Nature Girl and Speiza products, but if you can't wait that long, visit Lovely Organic and pick up your own.  [GT]

Lovely Organic [via Kiss and Makeup]

Related stories at Kiss and Makeup: Doux Me Rose Glacee Milk Cleanser | Mama Coco's Hawaiian Lip Balm

Square your spirits with organic vodka

We're talking recycled paper wrapping, with soy ink, chlorine-free cartons, containing top-shelf Square One vodka.  Made from organic rye, Square One is super-purified and fully certified.  They recommend your cocktails feature agave syrup (extracted from cactus), honey or Spa Nectar.  After all, if you're going organic with the vodka, it'd be a shame to stop there.  GT]

Square One vodka [via ecoFabulous!]

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Stick your stuff in a silksack

Much as I love the Onya bag, I'm also delighted to see an alternative.  The silksackfolds up into a flat envelope when not in use - an envelope which doubles as an interior pocket when you've got it shaken out.   £15 for one or £25 for two, which is quite a bit more expensive than the Onya (£32.50 for 5) although it does look a bit more stylish.  Has anybody used a silksack?  Please post in comments.  [GT]

silksack

Related stories: Onya: the bag you'll never forget | BYOB reusable shopping bag | Give reusable bags to your Japanese friends

The ultimate repurpose: Shelves for Life by ww.modcons

Having had to deal with people who are so attached to their belongings that it seems that third set of china they never use (I'm not exaggerating, either) is going to have to be pried from their cold dead fingers, I'm seriously considering Shelves for Life as a Christmas present.  That way, when they kick off, we can just load them into the box alongside all the stuff they loved too much to touch - since the shelves reform into, yes, a coffin.  The ultimate repurpose - first it holds your things, then when you're done with your things, it holds you!  [GT]

Shelves for Life [via Inhabitat]

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Brother, can you spare some Greendimes?

Junk mail, particularly in North America, is a shocking blight.  Consuming vast amounts of paper and being transported at a huge discount (so costing enormous amounts of transport gasoline and oil as well), most of it is simply discarded on receipt.  Would you pay ten cents a day to avoid that?  Now you can.  Greendimes not only unsubscribes you from junk mail lists, they also plant a tree for every month that you're subscribed to their service.  Cost is only $3 USD a month (and available only in America) - and by reducing the amount of mail you throw out with your identity plastered all over it, you also reduce your chances of having your identity stolen.  [GT]

Greendimes [via Joel Makower]

Related stories: 50 Ways to Save Your Water | Is recycling utter rubbish? | Throwplace takes what you don't want

Organic Delivery Company's free wine offer

If you didn't have enough reason to go with an organic box scheme, or enough delivery services to choose from, The Organic Delivery Company has a sly way of putting itself ahead of the pack: free booze.  If you and a friend each set up a weekly or fortnightly delivery, you each receive a free bottle of organic red or white wine in your third box.  They also have free delivery on any box priced above £13.95, which includes free delivery on additional groceries.  Click here to see if they deliver to your area.  [GT]

The Organic Delivery Company

Related stories: Fieldfare fruit and veg boxes | Arthur Street Trading Company vegetarian and organic produce l Eden Farms Organic delivery box

Tuesday blog roundup: Sakhalin II permit canceled; waste collection in Wales, etc

Sakhalin II is a Royal Dutch Shell project to pump 45bn barrels of oil and gas - with the price being destruction of whale habitat, dumping in Aniva Bay, trashing of rivers and an overall disregard for environmental legislation. Result: Russia has pulled the permit, and there's a movement to get the funding revoked and ensure no further funding happens. From DirtyMoney.org. More blog roundup (a great Orecchiette con Broccoli recipe, the skinny on waste collection in Wales, and good news for trees in California) after the jump. [GT]

Three Layer Cake is a great blog for consumerist issues, but this week's point of interest is simply a great recipe for Orecchiette con Broccoli. It's usually done with broccoli rabe, which are the ends of turnip greens and not all that easy to come by every time, but this recipe calls for the regular kind. Can be made a day ahead and reheated to good effect also.

EcoStreet hosts this week's Carnival of the Green, featuring posts on toxic sex toys (!), whether public fruit trees are a boon or a bomb, and a top ten green diet choices.

Finally, two knockout posts from Hippyshopper emeriti Ella and CityHippy. At Organic Jac, Ella answers, "Is waste collection fair for all?" (and mentions a new fruit and veg delivery scheme: Roots and Fruits). Arcadia at CityHippy has a terrific long post about how the Roadless Area Conservation Rule has been reinstated in Northern California, in order to save a stand of remaining ancient redwoods. Calloo-callay!

And that's all folks, until next Tuesday. [GT]

Johnny the Tofu Maker, Blowing in the Wind

Made of whole soybeans from Hokkaido, with bittern from seawater off the coast of the city of Itoman in Okinawa; wrapped in non-woven cloth with the water drained away to the bottom of the package, with parts of the process returned to handmade instead of machine-made, the most remarkable thing about the tofu produced by Sanwa Toyu Foods is none of that, but the bizarre and eye-catching names.  Offering products with monikers like "Johnny the Tofu Maker, Blowing in the Wind" or "Handsome Tofu" (which sold out the first day it was on the market), Sanwa has got a strategy together that lets it charge triple the price of regular tofu.  But if beer gets you girls, perhaps tofu can get you handsomeness!  [GT]

Tofu with a Twist [GUSH Magazine]

Related stories: Soy silk fiber | Seasonless green fashion | Boycott the 'Shameless Seven' in milk and soy

Site of the week: Sustainable Style Foundation

The motto of the Sustainable Style Foundation - this week's site of the week - is: look fabulous, live well, do good.  They also brought us the ultra-cool Umbrella Inside Out, the project to rehabilitate the disposable umbrella into something useful.  Be sure also to check out their SASS Magazine (Style and Sustainability Seasonal) 2006 OSSA Awards for the best in sustainable style.  [GT]

Sustainable Style Foundation

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FREITAG's brand new bag (iPod sleeves, that is)

You'll remember FREITAG, the Zurich based company with its headquarters made out of old shipping containers.  They make cases, bags and wallets out of old truck tarpaulins and the results are fresh and pretty.  The latest line is the Fi-POD sleeves, sized for the 60-80 gig iPod, the 30 gig and the Nano.  With a convenient slot for your belt clip and an opening for your earbuds, you can bop around in eco-chic.  €32; colours vary by, you know, what they got off the back of the truck.  [GT]

FREITAG Fi-POD sleeves

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Greenknickers returns!

Rejoice!  Greenknickers returns!  Though only with a limited edition of Eat Organic or Global Warming (which, as they warm up, change colour to show how the sea overwhelms the land in order to illustrate the effects of global warming in an unusually personal way) there is the promise that Greenknickers has a new production method and we can look forward to regular availability of their organic cotton pants.  £25 plus P + P (though if, like me, you had subscribed to their notice list, you would've gotten a very cool 20% discount for being beautiful and patient).  Bespoke in the UK of organic cotton (of course).  [GT]

Greenknickers limited edition hand-made knickers on sale now!

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Do you really need that high colonic?

Purgatives and detoxifiers are multi-million dollar business.  But is there any evidence that they actually do anything that eating well, sleeping enough and exercising will do better?  The Philadelphia Inquirer cites figures on how detox spending is going up, but independent validation of methods is not.  You may recall Prince Charles touting the benefits of coffee enemas in fighting cancer without drugs a couple of years ago.  Such treatments have continued to skyrocket as patients look for hope anywhere they can find it.  However, they needn't be for such dramatic purposes.  For example, I take high doses of calcium magnesium supplements on the advice of my pharmacist, who said they would improve the efficacy of some of my prescriptions, improve my sleep, and help my body cope with the effects of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) such as car exhaust and cleaning product fumes.  However, I take generic high street varieties, agreeing with medical evidence that more expensive varieties, such as coral calcium, is no better.  I also take bromelain, an enzyme derived from pineapple, because I incidentally noticed that eating pineapple seemed to reduce my joint pain, researched it, and found bromelain was being studied for its abilities to help minor knee complaints in golfers.  (Your mileage may vary with either.)

Do you take any herbal or mineral supplements?  Does brand matter?  How do you know if they help?  Post in comments!  [GT]

Purge or scourge? To cleanse their inner selves, people are spending a fortune on pills and potions, diets and enemas. Detox is a waste, some experts say - or worse.

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Cruelty free fashion in Vegas: Faux Rocks!

Fashion, accessories and cutting edge design take the spotlight at Faux Rocks in Las Vegas Saturday 18 November.  Actually, taking the spotlight is that it's cruelty-free from hats to shoes.  Supporters include Sommers Plastic Products, who have provided animal-friendly fabrics and faux leather for the student collections, and the Sustainable Style Foundation, whose slogan is "look fabulous, live well, do good".  [GT]

Faux Rocks Cruelty-free Fashion [via Sustainable Style Foundation]

Related stories: Pants to Poverty: buy pants, end poverty | Seasonless green fashion | Site of the week: StyleWillSaveUs

Find hemp in America with MapMuse

Introducing MapMuse, another annotatable mapping service a la Platial.  MapMuse has put together a very impressive listing of hemp shops in America which you (and by you I mean you) can expand with your own knowledge.  You can either enter your local information or click on the map itself.  [GT]

MapMuse's hemp shops in America

Related stories: Google Earth adds environmental content | I can annotate my house from here with Platial: the People's Atlas

'Walk for Home' - all the way to Coronation Street

We could all use more exercise.  Maybe a nice little stroll through Manchester?  It'll only cost you £10 - and you might win a backstage tour of Coronation Street itself.  Your tenner (plus anything else you're good enough to fundraise as part of your participation - they ask you pull up a minimum of £70) goes to support Walk for Home, an event organized by Shelter, a group that aims to get all of the UK's 170,000 homeless into more agreeable circumstances.  You can do a 5km walk or a 12km walk.  If you convince 4 other people to go in with you, your place is free.  Dress warmly: the event is on Sunday 29 October.  [GT]

Walk for Home

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Monday's unethical celeb: Schwarzenegger categorically not giving up his Hummers

The word from ecorazzi (via the Drudge Report) was that the Governator was giving up his Hummers - but alas, it's been comprehensively debunked at SFGate.  Schwarzenegger was the first civilian to have a Hummer, and near single-handedly popularized the gas-exploding road-eaters.  There is a hydrogen-powered Hummer, but Schwarzenegger doesn't own it: General Motors does.  He said he was going to convert his fleet over to hydrogen entirely, during his election campaign two years ago, but this seems to be a broken campaign promise.  (It has been known to happen.)  So it goes.  [GT]

Humm baby, Schwarzenegger keeping his Hummers

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Click to save Swedish old growth forest

By now you're familiar with the concept: click to do good.  In this case, click to save 2 square decimeters of Swedish old growth forest.  So far 564119,55 SEK  has been collected.  If you're feeling especially flush, you can buy one ancient pine tree permanently for 200 SEK (around £15 (which is a pretty good deal) or just make an outright donation to help save the Taiga.  If you donate 1,000 SEK (£65 or so) or more, you get your name inscribed at the forest entrance.  Cheap at twice the price!  [GT]

A Click For The Forest

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Hand crank blender attaches to your bumper

It's a bit late in the year to get totally jazzed up about a hand-cranked blender that you can attach to the back bumper of your vehicle, but I mean, it's a hand-cranked blender that you can attach to the back bumper of your vehicle. It's margaritas anywhere. Spungle reports that the gadget in question, the VORTEX™ Hand Crank Blender, will be letting you pour your drinks cleanly no matter how sloshed you get, a two gear system that chops and crushes, and blades that seem to whiz through ice like it’s butter. But I'm sure you can find some totally practical use for it, like making mango smoothies in the wilderness. (With vodka.) $70 USD, which is pretty decent for any respectable blender, much less a human-powered one. [GT]

VORTEX™ Hand Crank Blender [via Spungle]

Related stories: Vinceremos organic wine and other tipples | English organic wine (I kid you not) | Booze up (organically!) to end veal abuse

Google Earth adds environmental content

You can now, with the click of a mouse, add layers to your