Food for Thought

Date: May 30, 2008 | Category: Food & Drink, Lifestyle

For ecofabulous foodies in Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland and all over Canada you can order up all of your weekly ingredients from Spud. Certified organic produce from local farms and sustainable seafood top the goodies available from Spud (not just great potatoes). More than half of the company’s groceries are certified organic, and they pay close attention to the ingredients in products sold. By simply entering in your zip code, you can browse foodstuffs and submit your order 48 hours before your area’s delivery date. With Spud, you can keep a standing order so that kitchen staples will be delivered routinely, or you can simply order food as you need it (though you will be limited to certain days). By switching to Spud, you’ll keep another car off the road and save yourself a lot of time that you can spend figuring out how to properly compost!

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Eco-Power for Websites

Date: May 30, 2008 | Category: Lifestyle, Stores & Resources, Tech

We don’t really think of websites as having much of a carbon footprint, but as earth2tech points out, web hosting requires power that chiefly comes from fossil fuels, and computers run on electricity. A Harvard and Yale student duo is tackling this oversight and has created a new widget that tracks a site’s visitors, calculates its carbon emissions and offsets them, at no cost to the site. The CO2 Stats Project aims to fund the offsets through advertisers, which shouldn’t be hard given their growing popularity. Nearly 1,000 sites have signed up, garnering over a million unique visitors to the CO2Stats site already. Ecofabulous will no doubt be adding themselves to that growing list.

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Tea Time Tonight

Date: May 29, 2008 | Category: Events, Food & Drink, Lifestyle

If you can make it tonight to the Bliss Tea Company launch party at Hollywood hotspot Libertine, you’ll be in for some premium cocktails debuting the Bliss Sparkling White Tea and Green Tea. Organic teas combine with natural, organic sweeteners to form this sparkling alternative to soda. With most ingredients sourced domestically, Bliss teas are brewed in California and chicly packaged in recyclable aluminum. To read all about Bliss, tonight’s event and to hear from the founder, check out Weekly Phil’s coverage here.

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Pinning Down Cool Jewelry

Date: May 29, 2008 | Category: Fashion, Jewelry

Inhabitat loves Mana, which is no surprise. This eco-friendly jewelry collection features some of the most innovative accessories we’ve seen in a while with Cleopatra-esque necklaces made out of bobby pins and bracelets fit for a mermaid featuring pieces of recycled phone cards laid out like scales. We’re amazed at the way Brazilian designer and multi-media artist Mana Bernardes and her team of teenage and student design protégés have turned garbage into green goods and we can’t wait to see more of their work stateside. Currently, Mana has an ongoing collaboration with TOUCH, an organization that works with and promotes new designers concerned with the health of the planet and their workers.

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Hydrate with Agua

Date: May 29, 2008 | Category: Beauty, Body Care, Skin Care

For a complexion so smooth that you’ll spark envy in even your fairest of friends, check out Aguacate & Co. The company provides customers with organic and all-natural skincare in five categories – cleanse, exfoliate, tone, moisturize and replenish. All products are hypo-allergenic and are free of parabens, silicones, sulfates and synthetic dyes. We particularly loved the jojoba-infused facial exfoliating crème, which works on all skin types. A member of One Percent for the Planet, Aguacate & Co donates at least 1 percent of sales to environmental research, as well as donating portions of sales to support the arts, community and the environment. Aguacate & Co. also uses recyclable plastic bottles and has reduced packaging across the board.

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Nice Tighty Whities

Date: May 28, 2008 | Category: Fashion, Women

Gear up for sun-filled days and balmy nights with the first and sexiest non-bleach white jeans, produced by one of our favorite denim labels, Sharkah Chakra. The new style, Orca Sunbaked White, is made with cotton that was “bleached” the old fashioned way - in the sun, no harsh additives and chemicals here (adios dioxins)! As if you needed yet another reason to love a company that crafts denim out of organic cotton, recycles water, pays workers fair-trade wages and offsets its carbon footprint for transportation and manufacturing stages, crisp summer jeans are a pretty compelling excuse. Tokyo girls can slip into a pair at Indigo Denim Bar, Londoners can try them on at Harvey Nichols, Browns or Matches and So Cal gals can get their fix at Fred Segal. Or if those post codes are out of reach, go to their site to find a store near you or simply order online.

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Aptera Awe

Date: May 28, 2008 | Category: Lifestyle, Tech, Transport, ecoMan

Mrs. Jetson, your vehicle awaits. Well, not quite yet. And only if you live in California. Splendora turned us on to the Aptera, a three-wheeled enclosed motorcycle, scheduled to go into production in late 2008, that certainly looks like it could be the vehicle of the future. It performs that way too: Aptera, which means “wingless flight”, can go from 0-60 in under 10 seconds (ok, so the Tesla smokes it, but wait for the price) and the hybrid version recently test-drove at 230 miles to the gallon (an all-electric version is in the works as well). Aptera promises comfy seating for two plus an infant seat (for up to 3 years of age) as well as plenty of storage space. This aerodynamic amazement will set you back between 26 and 30 grand, but it’ll be worth every penny when you fly past the 4+ dollars per gallon pumping station!

official website: aptera.com

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Painters That Think Outside the Lines

Date: May 28, 2008 | Category: Home Furnishings, The Home

I love art, but often the only thing green about a painting is the color of the paint! When I decided to frame some old wall hangings, I found it difficult to find frames that respected the planet. Luckily I was alerted to a new collection at the Painter’s Place, which is a thriving, multi-generational, Bay Area family framing store that has been in business since 1966. The Painter’s Place has three locations and an online presence (with pick-up, delivery and installation services) and a knack for churning out beautiful picture frames (I guess practice makes perfect in this case). And now they have reclaimed wood frames that are beautiful enough to set off a Miro.

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Cure for the Summertime Blues

Date: May 27, 2008 | Category: Food & Drink, Lifestyle

At first sip, MateVeza tastes… interesting. But by the third sip, our little after work impromptu office party couldn’t get enough. The yerba mate infused cerveza has an unexpected kick that sets it far apart from other beers. It has a decidedly herbal finish and a natural stimulant, making it both unique and compelling. Now we’re not saying swap your morning cup of joe for a bottle of this earthy brew, but the next time you have some friends over for a BBQ and don’t want to take a 3pm nap, pop open a MateVeza and make your event a hopping success.

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Reduce, Reuse, Reclaim

Date: May 27, 2008 | Category: Green Building, Home Furnishings, The Home

Menlo Park, California, a stone’s throw from Stanford University, is probably best known for it’s golliath tenants - venture capital firms. Now, it seems that it is offsetting it’s decadent investors by becoming a hub for green living. With a Green Ribbon Citizens Committee and a green author series, good things are bound to happen. Enter Reclaim, an eco-home-boutique in the heart of downtown Menlo. From basics like organic bedding to low VOC paints, Reclaim sells repurposed wood furniture, cork flooring, custom bamboo cabinets, organic items for babies, and non-toxic nursery furniture. People in the Bay Area have awesome resources over every bridge and through all of the tunnels. Reclaim joins Green Fusion Design Center in Marin, Spring in San Francisco and Eco Home Improvement in the East Bay. But if you don’t live in Northern California, don’t despair, there are lots of online resources and more and more Eco-depots cropping up.

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