Eco Links to Green Your Weekend

daisy-chain

PhotobucketFirst up – is there really such thing as a green gadget? Answer: define “green”, says Wired. And is it really cheaper to recover gold from junked electronics than to mine it out of the ground? (Amateur gold panners, please form an orderly queue at your local landfill.)

PhotobucketThings doubling up as other things afterward – we like. So Paul Clark’s design for a plant pot doubling as a birdhouse – seen here at designspotter – is an intriguing idea (and perfect for my allotment-mad corner of the world).

PhotobucketA holiday with a difference – you’re stuffed into a sphere and slung into the trees. In fact, this prospect is far from nightmarish, as Twilight Earth explains.

PhotobucketHandmade goods are doing great: the economy, well, not so much. The Etsy revolution (and that really is beginning to look like the right word) currently represents around $90 million of commerce every year and growing. Clive Thompson takes a fascinated look at Wired, via Apartment Therapy.

PhotobucketEco-friendly heater upgrades: brilliant idea. And lots of money up front. Ouch. So it’s nice to see the new administration is keen to lend a helping hand, in the form of very welcome tax credits.

PhotobucketOh PETA. Why, PETA, why? Again and again, you make us feel older than our years. And now this? Can we get back to the business at hand, please?

PhotobucketFashion websites should absolutely drip with style, yes? The same way dentists should have good teeth. Take a look at Smashing Magazine’s round-up of the most beautiful sites out therevia The Steel Closet – and attempt to resist their formidable charms. (Bet you can’t.)

PhotobucketYou can do anything with LEDs. Even – prepare yourself – Extreme Sheep Art. You heard me. Or how about this?

PhotobucketWe’ve been following Josh Dorfman – a.k.a. The Lazy Environmentalist – for a while now, and we were delighted to hear about his new book The Lazy Environmentalist On A Budget: Save Money, Save Time, Save The Planet – and he’ll be on the Sundance Channel this June, as Ecorazzi reports.

PhotobucketIf you want to make your business sustainable – truly sustainable – it’s about utilizing creativity, cutting-edge business practices and more interdependency than ever before. It’s about facilitating small-scale “minipreneurs” so they can thrive. It’s a new business model for a new era.

PhotobucketMeet the latest tool in the fight against pollution – chickens! Or rather, what chickens leave behind. As Planetsave reports, it turns out that chicken poop seems to act as a catalyst for the breakdown of crude oil in the soil.

PhotobucketWhere do you think you rate on the Global Rich List? Higher than you expect.

PhotobucketIt’s the weekend – time to switch off the computer and get out into the “real world”? Except that line is getting awfully blurred. Do you Twitter? Use a Blackberry? So when exactly are you actually offline? As Max Gladwell quips, who needs Second Life when the everyday world is getting just as wacky and wired?

PhotobucketAnd lastly…true love has rarely had such dire consequences!

Image: masochismtango

Mike Sowden

Mike Sowden is a freelance writer based in the north of England, obsessed with travel, storytelling and terrifyingly strong coffee. He has written for online & offline publications including Mashable, Matador Network and the San Francisco Chronicle, and his work has been linked to by Lonely Planet, World Hum and Lifehacker. If all the world is a stage, he keeps tripping over scenery & getting tangled in the curtain - but he's just fine with that.