“Alternative packaging for supermarket produce, highlighting the distances that some foods travel from and the resultant carbon dioxide released during the journey. The receipt features a boarding card style tear-off strip.”
Awesome! I’ve always wondered when food labels would change my buying decisions. Some receipts tell you how much to tip , but none have been more eco-educational than this concept. Forget calorie counting, lets count carbon miles from food transportation. I’d definitely buy something for a bit more, knowing it used less carbon miles than another product. Think how the word Organic or Local has become such a buzz… hopefully one day, the carbon food miles will do the same =)
Woa, pretty cool, though I try to do direct deposits, it’s amazing how many paper checks I still get and send!
“A mid-sized bank, USAA, has become the first bank to let you snap a picture of a check with your iPhone and automatically deposit it once you hit the send button.” Video above.
“In Food, Inc., filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the veil on our nation’s food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that has been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government’s regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA. Our nation’s food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment. We have bigger-breasted chickens, the perfect pork chop, herbicide-resistant soybean seeds, even tomatoes that won’t go bad, but we also have new strains of E. coli—the harmful bacteria that causes illness for an estimated 73,000 Americans annually. We are riddled with widespread obesity, particularly among children, and an epidemic level of diabetes among adults.”
Go watch the film, get everyone you know to see it, and don’t bring too much food into the movie while watching. Start buying from farmers markets, eat organic, get local schools to serve healthy meals, and have restaurants display nutritional facts. Food Inc will not scare you away from food, but it’ll influence your food buying decisions while giving you a better idea in how some foods are manufactured, treated, transported, and concealed.
I’ve always had an interest between the blurry design intersections in space and objects. Graves is one of few successful architects to bridge the object world most notably known for his Universal designs along with a line up of products sold at Target.
The brief interview with Graves and a video explaining the project more after the jump along with images of the 3 glasses his team created.
Junior Jacquet creates some oddly familiar and intriguing faces using the the brown chipboard tube from an empty toliet roll! I’m not sure what to make of them, but making art from trash is always cool!
I’ve seen clouds, real clouds, and web clouds, but I’ve never see cardboard clouds, created by Fantastic Norway, which give a pixelated environment of brown clouds which looks pretty awesome in a huge warehouse space. If you have a huge space to do something, go make cardboard clouds! Reminds me a bit of the styrofoam robots!
I’m one of those crafty types that fold the paper sleeve you get with chopsticks in a restaurant to make a neat little stand to rest the sticks on, though usually I’ll get lazy and just fold the sleeve a few times. We’ll, if your one that likes disposable chopsticks, but want something a bit more clever, simple, and fun, check out these Bambu SnapStix which add an extra cut on the back end of the chopsticks which snap off to become a stand. sweet!
If you’re not familiar with Ideablob, it’s a pretty simple, but brilliant, concept. Participants (or blobbers, as they’re called) post an idea, and the ideablob community votes for what they think is the best. Winners receive, in addition to the prestige of being a champion blobber, 10,000 seed capital towards the development of their idea, and there’s a new winner every month. Simple, but brilliant.
This month, we’re proud to announce our friend Sami Nerenberg is a finalist with her idea, Room by Room! Room by Room is an eco-home redecorating reality show for low-income housing where ten inner-city high school students will participate in six weeks of eco-design bootcamp for a chance to win a health home make-over. Sami is brilliantly talented and incredibly motivated, serving as the youngest adjunct faculty at RISD (where she’s also an alumn), a member of Grain Design, a Timberland Earthkeeper Hero, and an all around awesome person. She’s got tough competition (including Paul Polak, who we also love), but with the Brown University’s Community Environmental College behind them, the Majora Carter Group as their media consultant, Timberland as their publicity outlet, RISD as their cohorts,we think they’re in good shape.
You can vote for Sami and see the Room by Room preview here!
A classic foundation project that occurs at RISD during one’s freshmen year is making a chair with no glue or cuts with only folds using 1 large sheet of corrugated cardboard, and bonus points for including a table of some sort.
The above video is a result of Danny Kim’s quick exploration on this project. There are a few more online if you dig around, but I’ve always wondered why such great projects like his never make it to market even if using a different material? Cost, manufacturing, longevity, uniqueness, business, too creative, market. Maybe I’ll just make a few for my house.
I was introduced to VerTerra’s intriguing dinnerware products during this years GEL conference. At first sight these unique plates seemed like raw sheets of veneer pressed into structural shapes, but then the founder gave a quick overview of the project. Simply put:
“Our environmentally-friendly plates, bowls and serving dishes are made only from two products: fallen leaves and water. They’re non-toxic, biodegradable, compostable, durable, lightweight, convenient and downright stylish.”
I love it! Collect fallen leaves, steam press them to shape, then deliver it. The plates will run you about a dollar for a pair, but once they get into Wholefoods later this month, I’m hoping Verterra will be affordable enough to be a abundant in everyday gatherings.
I wished I grabbed a few samples when I had the chance, but I’ll just have to wait for the next gathering to get some…unles someone from Verterra can send me some for my next party
If your seeking an alternative, check out Wasura paper plates, which will cost you a bit more, but just as cool looking.
Some pictures from VerTerra’s website after the jump.
“Forget about the hybrid auto — Shai Agassi says it’s electric cars or bust if we want to impact emissions. His company, Better Place, has a radical plan to take entire countries oil-free by 2020.”
Last week, I had a brief interview with 
I’m one of those crafty types that fold the paper sleeve you get with chopsticks in a restaurant to make a neat little stand to rest the sticks on, though usually I’ll get lazy and just fold the sleeve a few times. We’ll, if your one that likes disposable chopsticks, but want something a bit more clever, simple, and fun, check out these 
