Green Options

The weather is getting colder, and we have a handmade holiday on our minds! Handmade gifts have heart, are better for the environment, and, if you opt to buy, it supports independent artists!

If you want to have a totally handmade holiday, now is the time to get started. Over the next couple of months, we’ll be posting about recycled gifts and giftwrap you can make yourself and great handmade finds for sale!

There are lots of ecofriendly gift wrap options out there if you’re feeling the traditional, paper wrapping thing. If you want to branch out a bit, though, you might try wrapping some gifts this year using the traditional Japanese method furoshiki. Here’s how!

In preparation for the steadily approaching launch of their first mass-market electric car—the LEAF—Nissan has produced a series of videos highlighting different aspects of their approach to developing electric car technology.

Less than a week after switchable EV battery pioneer Better Place announced a newly expanded agreement with French car maker Renault, the company’s founder and CEO, Shai Agassi appeared as a guest on Comedy Central’s Colbert Report in hopes of getting that sought-after ‘Colbert Bump’.

The Colbert Bump, as it is known, is a phenomenon wherein people (places, companies, ideas) that appear on the Colbert Report receive a sudden boost in popularity for their cause.

The deal announced by Agassi in Frankfurt builds on an agreement reached between the two companies in August and will be to install the Better Place battery system (and build-out the charging network) for the Renault Fluence ZE for sale in Israel and Denmark. The Fluence ZE was one of four models in Renault’s new line of electric cars unveiled last week at the Frankfurt Auto Show.

Author, activist and eco-crusader Bill McKibben visited the Colbert Report last night to bring attention to the 350 campaign to limit carbon emissions and the October 24 day of action in support of the goal.

Earlier this week we covered the announcement that OriginOil had created a Live Extraction process for converting algae to oil coined, ‘milking’. This is just one of several big breakthroughs the company has had during the past year so I decided to catch up with CEO Riggs Eckelberry to get his take on algae to fuel.

A: Due to the lag in actually building large scale projects, the ability will come long before the fact. Also, we won’t build or produce ourselves, but instead we will provide technology and devices, and help design, build and maintain these sites. The next step is a pilot plant which could occur as early as next year.

I’m well aware that poring over the details of cap and trade can be a little boring. But thanks to the folks at Auto-Tune the News, all that has changed.

Palin’s chain of independent clauses may have sounded a little disjointed to the untrained ear, but not to William Shatner.

Twenty-five workers holed-up in the Vestas facility on the UK’s Isle of Wight for about a week now may have saved their jobs if a proposed deal is agreed upon by both parties - but only if they happen to work in the offshore research division.

While I know the details of climate policy can be a little dry at times, I didn’t know it was quite this sleep-inducing.

U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu visits Jon Stewart at the daily show, and much to the host’s surprise (and unlike other members of the cabinet who’ve visited the show), Chu is alive.

We already know that Fox News’ telepundit Bill O’Reilly believes anthropogenic global warming is real and shouldn’t be ignored. Now we know he’s not a huge fan of a cap-and-trade policy because it would fatten the wallets of Goldman Sachs and Al Gore.