A weekly roundup of EcoSalon’s top stories.

Places & Spaces: Canvas Hotel is a visual vacation, never mind a cyclist’s dream hideaway. Based in Southern Norway, the adventure starts the moment you arrive.

Lady Gaga on EcoSalon? In Shade Grown Hollywood: The Conscious Mind Of Lady Gaga, writer Kathie Butler says “Lady Gaga is on the way to becoming an icon of post-feminist sexuality. But is she a confident cultural attaché to our own fantastical fantasies? Or she is more of a mouthpiece of modern times, a voice raging against homophobia and discrimination?” We explore Lady Gaga, aka Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta’s level of consciousness.

With Japan still reeling in the wake of an 8.9 magnitude earthquake that sent a 30-foot wall of ocean water onto the Fukushima-Daiichi plant on the coast of Japan, we find ourselves asking if there are more viable options than nuclear as we watch radiation leaking from core reactors. In The Nuclear Option, writer Stephanie Rogers reviews the pros and cons.

In her weekly Green Plate, writer Vanessa Barrington’s column Is Urban Farming The Next Green Cottage Industry? asks if urban farming is a viable career for our younger generation and a dependable source of food for city dwellers.

This week, our editor’s column The Insider’s Guide To Life: Bite Me dives into female bullying, giving important tools to empower one to bite back. Ost writes: “Who on earth are these people? Tina Fey called them Mean Girls, and they are everywhere, no matter how grown up we get. Naively, I had approached my very first bully with the plucky optimism of a community fundraiser. Soon, she needed me and my reliable niceness, and when you get to that point it’s a short trip to toast. I was but the earnest wheat germ, she, the flaring toaster.”

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Boeing must think radioactive waste is mighty tasty. After all, they’ve allowed plenty of it to sit at one of their research facilities and seep into the surrounding community. So naturally, some students who want the company to clean up its toxic mess at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory thought that offering a bribe of “˜meltdown morsels’ and other radioactive sweets might do the trick.

But the “Teens Against Toxins”, a group of tenth-graders at Oak Park High School in Southern California, must have realized that what Boeing wants above all is money, since the company recently filed a civil lawsuit in an attempt to get out of paying for cleanup of the site. They held a “bake sale meltdown” and presented the company, which made over $68 billion last year, with a gigantic check for the proceeds. The grand total? $99.31.

Shocker: Boeing didn’t show up to accept the money. After 30 minutes of waiting around outside the Santa Susana Field Laboratory, the students, some parents and community members were informed that a Boeing spokesperson was camera-shy and that as a private company, Boeing can’t accept donations.

The 2,859-acre Santa Susana Field Laboratory was once home to 10 nuclear reactors, which experienced a partial meltdown in 1959 when it was run by Rocketdyne. Thirty years later, an environmental survey revealed shocking toxic and radioactive contamination. Boeing bought the site in 1996 and shut it down in 2006.

A state senate bill passed in 2007 set strict cleanup standards for the site, which is set to eventually become state parkland. But a Boeing spokesperson told MichaelMoore.com that the law “singles out the site to meet cleanup requirements that go far beyond what is required to protect citizens elsewhere in California under generally applicable state law.”

Apparently those delicious Uranium Cakes and Peanut Butter Plutonium Treats were just too bitter for Boeing to swallow – but it’s okay if everyone else eats them.

Image: lavocado

They said a dental office had to be a bland and benign, pastel-painted suite, where soothing visuals meant polyester contract furniture, framed school degrees and prints of egrets wading in marshlands. It’s all so relaxing until you inhale the fumes of old decay being excavated by a rotating drill bit and submit to the discomfort and dangers of a full mouth x-ray.

But at least one dentist isn’t taking what the old industry feeds us lying down. Dr. Namrata Patel has established the first serious green dental office in San Francisco, opening wide to the notion of improving the dental office environment as we know it. And guess what? Her patients are biting, all 700 of them!

“Even the air you breathe in the office is filtered,” she tells me on a break between seeing patients. “We have a lot of clients who are sensitive to chemicals, and when you come in you can’t even tell it’s a dental office. It doesn’t have that chemical dental smell.”

Instead, her million-dollar investment in the retail dominated Union Square district adheres to the best in LEED design, which calls for operating near mass transit and having a public parking garage nearby.

The architectural firm of Ruth and Kanieri walked Patel through the process of green modes and codes. The space emerges as a well-appointed, eco-smart Manhattan townhouse with responsibly harvested wood floors and architectural panels made from reclaimed vinyl and eco-resins – all insulated with organic acoustic fibers from recycled denim jeans. You can tell by looking at the hallway and waiting room (above), this is a pretty painless place for kicking back.

“If I’m going to live like this at home, I’m going to make my workplace the same because I spend so much time here,” says Patel, who left her village of eight families in India at the age of five and graduated from USC Dental school with honors. She says a green consciousness was ingrained in her as a child but she didn’t recognize it at the time.

“I thought my parents were really cheap because they wouldn’t throw anything away and all of our food had to come from the farmers market,” she remembers. “They weren’t green but our religion is Jainism and it means everything has value, even bacteria. Even the bacteria you are killing matters and you are conscious of that.”

Patel attacks bacteria with biodegradable sterilization solutions, which are used to clean the chairs after exams. Here are a few other steps she takes to remain sustainable:

Digital imaging technology replaces X-rays to reduce radiation exposure by 90 percent.

Instruments are cleaned with steam-based, surgical-grade sterilization rather than harmful chemicals and water use.

The environmentally-sound disposal of old mercury fillings through the installation of a special water filtration system. This offsets the health hazards from ingesting mercury vapors and prevents further pollution of local waterways.

Going paperless with digital signatures for patient payments and substituting disposable Dixie cups for rinsing with old-fashioned bar shot glasses.

Patel says her fees are in the 70th percentile, but the fact she prioritizes prevention should keep patients out of her office more often. “Not everyone is interested in the detail and care we give,” she says, alluding to her passionate lectures on flossing to offset wasting time and money on oral hygiene.

To that end, she has created a new website called Toothhugger, reaching out to consumers by dispensing free advice on everything from finding natural toothbrushes to battling stains from coffee (she tells us to sip our brew through a natural straw!).

“I got my inspiration in dentistry through my work with nonprofits, treating field workers who were poor and out of touch and experiencing a lot of pain,” she shares. “Being there for them made a big difference. They’d come back with oranges for me or a Kit Kat bar.”

Dr. Patel

It seems Patel is also making a difference in the industry. Will other dentists follow suit? Guess that depends largely upon the demand. I say, let’s raise our shot glasses and toast to it!