The green goods

Cool green stuff we stumbled across this week:
What better way to subversively draw attention to guerrilla gardening tactics than on a bicycle built for (seeded) spew? The Bloom bike device puts a whole new spin on “exhaust plumes” by attaching a reservoir-like-tube that emits bubbles and seeds as you peddle along pathways and paved surfaces. The Bloom is a clever way to encourage bike transport along with greening strategies that literally clean up the streets with vegetable based soap and seeds.

Are e-books more eco-friendly than paper books? We have a pretty good idea of the carbon footprint of paper books, thanks to Environmental Trends and Climate Impacts: Findings from the U.S. Book Industry, a study released earlier this year by the Book Industry Study Group and the Green Press Initiative. That report concludes each paper U.S. book releases 8.85 pounds of carbon dioxide.

This week, the first of an eventual three queen bees moved into a suite of her own in the Royal York’s rooftop herb garden, with a panoramic view to rival the one afforded Queen Elizabeth II, and ably guarded by a few thousand well-armed drones. Sharp as their stings might be, their intentions are sweet - to fly about the city doing what bees do, all the while producing honey for the hotel’s kitchen.

The first ever 24-7 TV channel dedicated to green living goes live in millions of homes in the US tonight at 6:00pm. With more than 200 hours of original green lifestyle programming, Planet Green is a fresh conversation about what it means to be environmental.

You might be seeing bright, vibrant colors in the pages of magazines this spring, but choosing naturally-dyed duds is just as fashionable. Most conventional textile dyes originate from non-renewable petroleum and contain nasty stuff like formaldehyde, carcinogenic heavy metals and dioxins—dangerous to our health and that of the planet.

Is organic, fair-trade espresso guilt-free? Next to petroleum, coffee is the most valuable traded commodity in the world, and the most valuable agricultural commodity. Coffee is constantly scrutinized for its human and social impacts around the world, but rarely do we examine the environmental consequences of a double-double, a cappucino, or even an organic/fair-trade espresso. Check out this Tyee podcast about how the removal of human labour from the coffee industry has led to poverty, hunger, environmental destruction and climate change.

Eighteen-year-old Ontario teenager Ben Gulak has taken the motorcycle world by storm with Uno, the world’s first zero-emissions electric unicycle. Armed with about $50,000, Gulak literally went to the drawing board - he couldn’t afford CAD software - and started tinkering in his garage.

Brad Pitt has been named to a team of design consultants for a brand-new environmentally friendly green hotel and resort in Dubai. Development firm Zabeel Properties has brought on the Los Angeles-based architecture firm GRAFT to help bring the project to life. Pitt will work with GRAFT to make a sustainable and energy-efficient structure.