Ginormous Hand Knit Bunny Took Five Years to Complete
Ok, this may be a little off topic for Really Natural, but check out this ginormous knit bunny! Knit by four artists over five years, this art installation is located in the Italian Alps (and it makes me smile). The artists state:
behind a hill, as if knitted by giant grandmothers, lies this vast rabbit, to make you feel as small as a daisy.
I hope they used organic or at least natural fiber yarn. I wonder how it will hold up to the the mountain weather.
Most radios don't qualify as decor accents: ours does. Every detail of its design, from sustainably harvested wood to round knobs, merges nostalgia with contemporary elan to please the ear as well as the eye.
Handmade by artisans in Indonesia, the radio also contains two shortwave bands and an iPod jack. I've not personally tried one of these radios, but I think they look really cool.
I hate to buy books, as once they are read, they sit on a shelf or get passed around. It seems like a waste of money. I live too far from the library to make use of it. BookSwim offers the perfect solution: it's like Netflix for readers.
BookSwim is the first online book rental library service lending you paperbacks and hardcovers, Netflix®-style, directly to your house, without the need to purchase! Whether it's new releases, bestsellers, or classics, we have something for everyone, with free shipping both ways! Read your books as long as you want -- no late fees! Even choose to purchase and keep the titles you love!
Plans start at $9.95 a month. Books are shipped in 100% recycled plastic bags. By using BookSwim, you will reduce the amount of trees that are cut down to produce books (BookSwim estimates that 20 million trees are cut down every year for American book production!)
Your Flat-Screen TV is Worse for the Environment than a Coal Burning Power Plant
Nitrogen trifluoride (NF3) has been deemed the "missing greenhouse gas", because it is not covered by the Kyoto Protocol, yet it is 17,000 times stronger than carbon dioxide! NF3 used to be produced in tiny amounts, but the boom in flat-screen TVs has changed that. According to the Guardian:
Manufacturers use a greenhouse gas called nitrogen trifluoride to make the televisions, and as the sets have become more popular, annual production of the gas has risen to about 4,000 tonnes...Writing in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, Prather and a colleague, Juno Hsu, state that this year's production of the gas is equivalent to 67m tonnes of carbon dioxide, meaning it has "a potential greenhouse impact larger than that of the industrialised nations' emissions of PFCs or SF6, or even that of the world's largest coal-fired power plants".
Now, I have another good reason to convince my hubby we should hang on to our old TV besides the cost of a flat-screen. Until our TV breaks, there is no reason to upgrade. Via: The Guardian and The Grist
Energy Efficient and Environmentally Friendly iPod Speakers
Given our earlier post this week on not so natural iPod speakers, we thought we'd find some iPod speakers that were a bit more in line with our taste. The Vers 2x hits the mark with a casing crafted out of wood (either cherry, bamboo or walnut), and the wood comes only from plantation forests. The Vers 2x is also RoHS compliant, which means the electronics are free from hazardous components like lead, cadmium, mercury, hexavalent chromium, polybrominated biphenyl (PBB) and polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE) flame retardants.
The Vers 2x uses energy efficient components, such as a low-draw amplifier which not only helps your power bill, but will also help reduce your carbon footprint. The whole system is rated at 36 watts, and also comes in 100% recycled packaging.
What's not to like in a green little eco-sphere of stereo madness? Well for one this product isn't all that natural, but it does indeed bring home the green eco-sphere point when listening to music. Perhaps you might get this instead of some other iPod stereo dock just for that reason, or maybe just because it looks really cool.
How does it work? You just put the music on your iPod, dock it onto the Orb and then you can use the 10 key remote to adjust volume, bass, and treble levels. The mStation Stereo Orb has a built in subwoofer to pump out a nice sound. This is a perfect set up for listening to music in the kitchen, or even in the backyard while gardening.
Radiant City is a new documentary about the cookie cutter life that has emerged from suburban sprawl in North America. Farm land is being converted into massive enclaves of identical homes, where people live closely to their neighbors but in complete isolation as a community. The layout of suburbia requires dependence upon cars, as families shuttle children around and drive to big box stores. Suburbs create monocultures that will not be supported as the energy crisis manifests.
I grew up in a suburb, as my parents purchased a new home when I was a toddler. The difference between my suburb and the one featured in Radiant City is that we could walk to our school, church, grocery store, bank, post office, etc. We did know our neighbors and block parties occurred every summer. Now, this sense of community has been lost in my suburb, as the children have grown up and left the neighborhood and schools have closed. This is the fate typical of "communities" in the Late Suburban Age. It is not a sustainable model for communal life.
Getting excited for Live Earth? Want to tell your friends about it?
The folks at Barefoot Books have developed a free e-card so you can do just that. The card includes content from the new book Whole World and includes eco-tips for making the world greener. A percentage of book sales benefits global conservation.
Tired of hearing your friends rave about the BBC series Planet Earth, narrated by David Attenborough? Each 50-minute episode of the 11-part series covers a specific geographical region and/or wildlife habitat (mountains, caves, deserts, shallow seas, seasonal forests, etc.).
Without being overtly political, the series maintains a consistent and subtle emphasis on the urgent need for ongoing conservation, best illustrated by the plight of polar bears whose very behavior is changing (to accommodate life-threatening changes in their fast-melting habitat) in the wake of global warming--a phenomenon that this series appropriately presents as scientific fact. With this harsh reality as subtext, the series proceeds to accentuate the positive, delivering a seemingly endless variety of natural wonders, from the spectacular mating displays of New Guinea's various birds of paradise to a rare encounter with Siberia's nearly-extinct Amur Leopards, of which only 30 remain in the wild.
Got any post-Super Bowl TV viewing plans? Don' t miss the final episode of "Living with Ed" on HGTV.
In this episode, Ed drops by to visit his environmentally conscious neighbor, none other than Bill Nye the Science Guy! (I LOVE that guy!) Evidently, the two get a little competitive over who lives a greener life.
Also in this episode, Ed and his wife Rachelle head to Sundance for the eponymous film festival.
Living with Ed airs on HGTV at 10 p.m. EST tonight, Sunday, February 4th. It'll re-air on Feb 5th and Feb 17th. Check HGTV for TV listing.
Set your Tivos. In the latest sign that green has gone mainstream, HGTV is debuting a new "green reality show" focused on the everyday life of celebrity-cum-environmentalist Ed Begley, Jr. Living with Ed, which debuts on HGTV tomorrow (Jan 1) at 1 p.m. From the official blurb:
From his electric car to his white picket fence made out of recycled milk jugs to his outdoor oven powered by the sun, Ed Begley, Jr., isn't just an actor — he might also be the greenest man in Hollywood. Green living is easy for Begley, but for his wife Rachelle, it's another story. Sure she cares about the environment, but if she wants a long, hot shower, Ed times her and what seems like a normal task is anything but in this household. Want toast? Ed's stationary bike is connected to his solar-power supply, so each morning he rides to make more electricity. Meet the Begleys and laugh out loud as you get a glimpse of what it's like Living With Ed.
Fast Food Nation, the movie, launches today at theaters nationwide. We are big fans of Eric Schlosser's bestselling book about the fast food industry. The film, co-written by Schlosser and director Richard Linklater, is timed to coincide with the 100-year anniversary of the publication of Upton Sinclair's groundbreaking book The Jungle. The story is a fictionalized version of the book, with a star-filled cast of characters including Wilmer Valderrama, Patricia Arquette, Bruce Willis, Ethan Hawke, Kris Kristofferson, and Avril Lavigne.
We haven't seen the movie yet, but according to The New York Times' Manohla Dargis, it's the "most essential political film from an American director since Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11." You want fries with that?
Imperial Eco-Tours: Stars Wars-The Environmentalists Version Parodies the Green Movement
Got any post-Super Bowl TV viewing plans? Don' t miss the final episode of 
Set your Tivos. In the latest sign that green has gone mainstream, HGTV is debuting a new "green reality show" focused on the everyday life of celebrity-cum-environmentalist Ed Begley, Jr. 
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