Eco Link Love

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We hope you’re all having a great holiday weekend.

We want to see our cities overflowing with urban gardens, horizontal and vertical, until our cities are thoroughly home-grown. Over at Wired, Clive Thompson is of a similar mind – except it’s victory gardening that he wants to see as the driving force. (Here’s our Vanessa on the same topic).

"You know you’re a shopaholic if a thief steals all your credit cards and goes on a shopping spree, but when you get your monthly bill it’s the lowest one you’ve had in years." So starts Jeff Yeager’s suggestions for a short fiscal fast, over at Daily Green.

Epsom salts – straight in the bath? That would be a shame, when they’re so good in the garden, in the bathroom or even in your car battery. Reader’s Digest has the know-how.

Here’s a boat journey with a difference – the boat’s made from 15,000 plastic bottles and the remains of a Cessna light aircraft. And somehow it’s seaworthy – as it’s just sailed into Hawaii after travelling 2,000 miles in 3 months, to highlight the plastic pollution fouling our sea-lanes. Read the official blog here. (via Grist).

How well do houseplants purify our air? The people at Little Green Blog have been reading B.C. Wolverton’s book on the subject, and have a few suggestions for us. (via Hippyshopper).

However much we love innovative eco-housing, and however much straw seems a terrific idea as a building material…this strawbale cabin gets our "huh?" award for the week. (Let’s hope it’s meant to be Art as opposed to Architecture).

Sea glass pushes our buttons – especially when it’s combined with recycled silver and turned into sea glass jewelry like this, over at Cornwall’s Glasswing. (via Alternative Consumer).

However much you trim down your energy usage, there’s only so far you can go if your gadgets are thirsty for electricity. That’s the challenge for traditional desktop computers (pushed into the shade by energy-efficient laptops)…and Akhter have met it, with the LoCO2 desktop PC. Energy usage: less than a traditional 60W light bulb, they claim!

So planes get turned into rafts (see above) – but what else could they be used for? Eco footwear company Worn Again hit upon the natty idea of turning old Virgin Atlantic airline seat covers into chic bags – and as Smartplanet shows, the results are spectacular. 

Finally, over at Metaefficient the first affordable kinetic motion charger is upon us – and perhaps the start of a very personal solution to our energy problems.

Have a great holiday!

Image: J. Rosario

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.