The Majestic Plastic Bag – A Mockumentary

Humbling and nicely done.

Gulf charity Poster

As oil continues to leak in the Gulf of Mexico and the powers that be continue to seem, well, powerless, we all wait impatiently wishing we could do something—anything—to lend a hand. The Heads of State designed the Gulf Charity Poster hoping, with your help, it can make a small impact on the growing devastation. This two color serigraph is an intial run of 200, signed and hand numbered.

They’re donating 50% (why not all of it??) of the profits from their Oil Drop poster (thats $20 per poster) to Oceana, the largest organization solely focused on protecting the world’s oceans. Oceana has been awarded the exceptional rating of 4 stars by Charity Navigator, which means you can feel good knowing your money is having a direct impact.

Get yours here.

via Swissmiss (thanks).

Planes of Volcano’s

The excellent David McCandless has done his beautiful information thing again, and answered an issue I was pondering whilst the European airspace was closed due to that pesky Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull.

Draplin BP Logo Redesign

As the hours and days pass by and the oil keeps pumping into the open ocean, destroying countless wildlife, and the environment around them, the hatred for bp grows, and as we see above the said hate also has a graphic form, created by Draplin, they a poignant image of the quickening demise of bp’s expensive public image.

Click here to view the Greenpeace flickr page for more of the same.

via GrainEdit (thanks).

7 Minute Bird Washing Machine

With BP currently trying its best to wipe out whole species, the above piece of gadgetry may have just come along at the right time.

The machine takes just seven minutes, versus as long as two hours of human handling, which reduces the amount of time a bird is under stress in increases how quickly it recovers for release into the wild.

The Vanishing of Bees

Click here to donate and found out more about the film and project.

Puma’s S-Index sustainable packaging

The PUMA S-INDEX challenges the company to uphold some serious environmental requirements. “The introduction of the S-Index for all products and packaging is a standard that serves as a production benchmark and communicates the products’ sustainable features to consumers. Consumers are becoming increasingly discerning in their purchasing choices and the PUMA S-Index will provide a seal of assurance. PUMA’s objective for the next phase of its long-term sustainability program is that 50% of its international product collections in footwear, apparel and accessories and 100% of its packaging are S-INDEX approved by 2015.”

Nice.

Nike 2010 World Cup Kits | 8 Recycled Bottles = 1 Football Shirt

Liking the sustainable direction Nike is heading with the refreshingly bold move of manufacturing all their forthcoming 2010 World Cup supporters shirts, from recycled plastic bottles. Each shirt will also come nicely packaged in (of course) a recyclable bottle. Click here to learn more about NikeConsidered.

Unpackaged London

Just came across this great little store which sells everything you need, but encourages you to bring and use your own bags, boxes and containers to take your bought goodies home.

I would love to see more of this kind of store here in Malmö and across the bridge in Copenhagen.

I will be paying a visit when I visit North London in a couple of weeks time.

What a great idea.

Bamboo Bike Studio

I have never built a bike, but a combination of rediscovering a mild love for bikes by using one everyday here in bike friendly Sweden / Denmark, and the discovery of Bamboo Bike Studio, I am now seriously giving it a go.

Their mission is twofold: provide every cyclist the experience of building his or her dream bike from scratch, while advancing sustainable entrepreneurship and development through financing bamboo bike factories in Africa and South America.

I Am

Tronic directed and animated this spot on the loss of nature in our increasingly man-made landscape. I AM shows a bleak future, where animals, now a recent memory, are constructed from detritus.

Midway – Message from the Gyre

The above shocking pictures are taken from a sad but poignant series by photographer Chris Jordan who has documented the impact that an abundance of plastic waste in the Pacific ocean has had on the albatross population…

Midway: Message from the Gyre, simply shows a series of dead albatross chicks. But as each one decomposes, it offers up a vivid indication of what actually lead to its death: a diet of discarded plastic waste.

As Jordan explains on his site, chrisjordan.com, “These photographs of albatross chicks were made just a few weeks ago on Midway Atoll, a tiny stretch of sand and coral near the middle of the North Pacific. The nesting babies are fed bellies-full of plastic by their parents, who soar out over the vast polluted ocean collecting what looks to them like food to bring back to their young. On this diet of human trash, every year tens of thousands of albatross chicks die on Midway from starvation, toxicity, and choking. To document this phenomenon as faithfully as possible, not a single piece of plastic in any of these photographs was moved, placed, manipulated, arranged, or altered in any way. These images depict the actual stomach contents of baby birds in one of the world’s most remote marine sanctuaries, more than 2000 miles from the nearest continent.”

Very, very sad but powerful work.

via CRBlog (thanks).

Timed mains power

I’m sure all of you know plugged-in appliances slowly run up your electric bill. The annoyance of having to unplug/plug devices is enough to just ignore the whole problem altogether. The (above) Belkin TimeOutlet concept is a modular, stackable surge protector divided into 4 quadrants. Each section corresponds to a time of day. When that time is over, power is cut from everything in that quadrant and power turns on in the next.

Nice idea, but a bit bulky me thinks.

The Interpretation

A work of art that explores the relationship between nature, motion and sound, The Interpretation takes us on a languid journey through a slowly flourishing forest. Hinting at vague memories of microbiology and rotating through a cool organic spectrum of greens, blues, browns, blacks and whites; this motion-based work will entrance its viewer as the forest evolves. The Interpretation is set to a minimal score filled with authentic sounds of nature, complimenting the environmental essence of the visuals. Visuals by Michael Paul Young. Soundtrack by Michael Cina. Published on DVD.

Here.

The beer bottle buddhist temple

My second beer bottle post of the day, and this one is whilst the other was kind of cool, is really quite amazing.

The Wat Pa Maha Chedio Kaew temple has found a way to bottle-up Nirvana, literally. The temple, which sits in Thaisland’s Sisaket province, roughly 370 miles northeast of Bangkok is made of more than a million recycled glass bottles. True to its nickname, “Wat Lan Kuad” or “Temple of Million Bottles” features glass bottles throughout the premises of the temple, including the crematorium, surrounding shelters, and yes – even the toilets. There’s an estimated 1.5 million recycled bottles built into the temple, and as you might have guessed, they are committed to recycling more. After all, the more bottles they get, the more buildings they are able to construct.

Very cool danish designed, electronic cars

A colleague and I have just been talking about electronic cars, and I was sitting here with the Toyota Priusin my head. Then I was told to have a look at this website.

Designed by Henrik Fisker the above, the Karma, is currently in production, ready for the first one to roll out of the (Finnish) factory in 2010 apparently, Initial production is anticipated to be 15,000 vehicles annually with pricing to start around $80,000… 0 to 60 in under 6 seconds, and 0 emissions.

One american car company that maybe knows where its at.