The Treehotel in Sweden features unique, futuristic camp sites.

Imagine the scene: you’re walking through a forest in northern Sweden, when suddenly you come upon a collection of bizarre objects suspended from trees: a mirrored cube, a UFO, a giant bird’s nest. Have you been abducted into a Dadaistic art installation?

Relax, it’s n0t a flashback to a youthful overindulgence of banned substances, a sojourn through William S. Burroughs’ Interzone or even a Trekkie bootcamp. It’s a 21st century designer eco-hotel-camp called Treehotel.

Treehotel’s green credentials are exactly as you’d expect for a Swedish hotel set in a forest: renewable energy provided by hydroelectric power from the nearby river, LED lighting and water-efficient sinks, and combustion toilets. In most units, waste is heat-blasted at 600C; in the Mirrorcube, your poop gets frozen, while the heat from the freezer’s element is used to heat the room in winter. Dead smart, those Swedes.

The five ”treerooms,” designed by leading Scandinavian architects, are all different inside as well as out, with simple furnishings. The UFO, accessed by a ladder underneath has spacey print fabrics, while the ultra-realistic Bird’s Nest is circular with tiny round windows in its pale wood walls. The Cabin is much more conventional, but also larger - a rectangular box with huge windows and an outdoor deck, while the Blue Cone overlooks the river.

The Mirrorcube is like a live work of art. Its outer surfaces show constantly changing images of trees and sky, which you can appreciate from a roof terrace, a more zen alternative to watching TV. Another building houses a sauna and hot tub (this is Sweden, after all). The bad news: this is also where the showers are located, since none of the treehouses has its own tub or shower. This is the Swedish idea of glamping: fab interiors offset outdoor plumbing.

Meals are served, and guests greeted, in a guesthouse run by one of the owners named Britta.

Rates from $573, including tax, breakfast and unbeatable dinner table stories.

Photos: Peter Lundstrom, WDO; Frank Updates via Harper’s Bazaar

An eco-friendly alternative for your picnic needs.

Peeved at the thought of filling a landfill with plastic picnicware? Fear no more. Aspenware, Inc., a Lumby, British Columbia-based company, produces a line of all natural, ergonomically-designed, compostable wooden forks, soup spoons, knives and spoons designed to take the sting out of “disposable.”

The lightweight, yet strong utensils are manufactured from fast-growing but “short-lived” trees harvested near the end of their lifespan. The packaging, produced from 100 percent plant and wood fiber, is also compostable. After your next barbecue or birthday party, just throw the used utensils on the compost pile and smile. Cleanup is done.

Look for Lustables daily at EcoSalon. 100% gorgeous green finds, and never sponsored. Submit your favorite to tips@ecosalon.com

Image: Aspenware

There are good entertainers and great ones. Be great with an imaginative coffee table diversion.

Put these hand-printed replenishable hardwood blocks on your coffee table and you will not only be the most stylish host/cool-aunt around, you will be doing a tremendous service to your aesthetic sensibility. The kit, which includes 25 ultra-colorful blocks, comes with several ideas to get your creative juices flowing—be it a graphic pattern, funny monkey, or emergency coaster.

A great living room addition for a home with kids, or adults with a creative spirit. From Miller Goodman for about $85.

Look for Lustables daily at EcoSalon. 100% gorgeous green finds, and never sponsored. Submit your favorite to tips@ecosalon.

These limited edition, hand-crafted beauties are worth writing home about.

You won’t find Takumi Macinari’s wood pens and mechanical pencils at Staples or Office Depot. Care of IDEA International, they are available for your list-making and letter-writing pleasure for a limited time only. With the exception of the ink refill in the pen and lead in the pencil, these handmade writing instruments are crafted entirely from wood, a labor-intensive process that results in producing only 100 of them each month.

Unfortunately, due to the time and cost associated with producing pens and pencils using this old-world style, they’ve been discontinued. The (ball)point is, now’s the time to claim yours.

The story behind the pen is an interesting one. Designed by motor vehicle engineer, Hosei Suzuki, he wanted to showcase wood as an industrial tool as well as a crafts material. The result is streamlined, sexy and ink worthy.

$45

Look for Lustables daily at EcoSalon. 100% gorgeous green finds, and never sponsored. Submit your favorite to tips@ecosalon.com

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A new trend of craftsmen communities is taking center stage worldwide.

Forget plastics, the future is in craftsmanship. The world over, former clock-watchers and desk jockeys are leaving their traditional 9-to-5 jobs to make functional, artisan quality pieces for the home. Even Popular Mechanics picked up on the trend and gave it a sexy spin by dubbing it a hidden underground of craftsmen communities.

I prefer to think of them as New Artisans, neo-traditionalists who dropped the commute and took up tools to pursue a more sustainable way of being. We reached out to five such artists – a couple of engineers, a magazine editor and former academic among them – and discovered that they are not so much a part of an underground phenomena as they are heralding a new trend.

Here’s our prediction: as clients seek out more local – and thus green – craftsmen and women, the future of the New Artisan is a burgeoning one. With the exception of Hendzel + Hunt who are crafting it up across the pond in the UK, all of the artisans featured here are from the U.S. which is particularly good news: we’re actually starting to make things again.

Quentin Kelley of Infusion Furniture

“I could never sit in front of a computer all day long.”

“Coming out of school, I was really interested in international development work and that was my career path at the time. But woodworking had always been in the back of my mind. The work is always challenging and never boring because I wear many hats: designer, builder, mechanic, marketer. And it just blows my mind that you can take a pile of lumber and turn it into a beautiful piece of furniture.”

Alyssa Ettinger of Alyssa Ettinger Design

“I like plain, white things. Modern Country.”

“I’d been a magazine editor for many years, and I lost my last magazine job in 2002. I looked and looked for new positions, but couldn’t find any. In the meantime, I joined a friend at her ceramics class, something I’d not done since college. Once I was back at the wheel, I was hooked. Mostly, I take items I like in real life and find a way to translate them into porcelain.”

Donna Brady of Re-Surface

Are you a new artisan? “Yes, I likely fit the bill.”

Based in Brooklyn NY, Donna Brady opened RE-SURFACE, a boutique factory and design studio, when so many other businesses were shutting down. “My impetus for leaving the 9-5 world was the change in the economic landscape after 9-11.” Until then, Brady, who studied architecture at Columbia, was working as a freelance graphic artist and web designer. “Freelance work almost completely dried up for me.” So she opened up shop and now produces hand-crafted lighting and interior décor objects with “Art at heart, and design in mind.”

Jan Hendzel of Hendzel + Hunt Studio

“I have always been into creating objects.”

“There is nothing more satisfying than making your ideas become reality. And then seeing the reactions of people engaging with our products, it is a very rewarding process. A little quote by Thomas Edison: ‘Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety nine percent perspiration.’”

Sean Schieber of Myrtle Grove

“I entered my late 20′s still unsure of what career path I would take. In my mind I knew I was biding time in corporate America.”

“I have an undergraduate degree from Hampshire College and a Masters in Liberal Studies from Georgetown University, where I studied Classics. My head was in books, especially poetry books. I enjoy designing and building furniture for some of the same reasons I enjoy writing. There is an ongoing process of refinement, of seeking the most sculptural line to construct a coherent whole. It is at once meditative and active, requiring attentiveness to the smallest details.”

Image: AntwerpenR

The Vidje lounge, created by Norwegian designer Iris Djupvik, is a study in contrasts.

The Vidje lounge chair is the work of Norwegian designer Iris Djupvik who was inspired by both the fine craft of crochet and the kind of dependable sturdiness only a simple wooden chair could provide. What the designer wanted to know was whether wood could be crocheted and to “investigate the contrasts that arise from the interaction” between the two.

She also sought to explore the contrasts between the feminine and the masculine, light and shade, positive and negative.

In essence, the Vidje (especially when illuminated), “interacts” with the room it is in. Djupvik constructed the chair, which was featured at the Stockholm Furniture Fair 2011, out of locally sourced laminated wood.

Look for Lustables daily at EcoSalon. 100% gorgeous green finds, and never sponsored. Submit your favorite to tips@ecosalon.com

Every now and then I stumble into (okay, accidentally “˜click’ into) a store that I love. I mean, really love. Today I will share one of these rare little shops with you; a delectable petite boutique in New York – Canvas. Felt, ceramics, glass, textiles, and wooden delights begging to live under your roof.

I have been dreaming of a reclaimed and salvaged wood hand-made butcher block counter for (literally) years. Until I get better acquainted with power tools (oh, and actually own a counter) – here’s a gathering of natural wood charms to hold me over. I got completely lost in the gorgeous cellulose commodities at Canvas, a beautiful place to rest the eyes. Infuse a little earth, nature, and warmth into your kitchen with the beautiful products above.

Clockwise from top left: Anglewood Chopping Board ($22 – 33), Birch Bowls ($72 – $210), Hand-Made Wood Cutting Boards ($48 – $115), and Round Wood Trays ($18 -  $115).

And just in case you need somewhere to rest your derriere in addition to resting your eyes, consider this Reclaimed Wood Seat ($290) complete with gorgeous grain and natural patina.

The entire gathering of products at Canvas is fairly perfect and worth perusing (I cannot even form the words to describe the degree to which I am pining after this sofa – swoon).

Yet more news from the what’s-on-your-smartphone front: For those of you who moved lightening quick on the iPhone4, Trunket‘s got you covered with some salvaged American Rosewood.

These grainy veneers come in six colors, ranging from “sea blue” to “blood red” to “jet black.” The overlays are “designed to sustain years of wear and tear and should acquire a natural, aged patina over time.” The stains are fade resistant and, here’s the part I kind of like, to “rejuvenate your overlay and keep it looking fresh for years to come,” you’re encouraged to do some “occasional buffing.” Nice.

Putting it on is simple: Wipe the phone clean with a provided alcohol pad, make sure the phone is dry and doesn’t have goop or dirt on it, remove the protective film from the back of the Trunket and just stick it on. Although it’s removable, they don’t encourage a bunch of on again, off again action. But, then, who ever does?

Each Trunket cover is made from real wood and is pretty much a “rescue.” ”We acquired a large inventory of aged veneers from a luxury car customization company that was in the process of winding down its operations as the owners decided to retire,” explains Trunket co-founder Jay Chowdhury. He notes, too that his process has “kept sustainability in mind in the selection of treatments, finishes and packaging materials.”

The company, by the way, is a member of the Arbor Day Foundation, and will allocate $1 from each sale towards the goal of replanting 50 trees per month in areas of need starting October.

So put this option in your what’s-an-iPhone-to-wear pocket, along with this one and this one and, oh, yes, all of these and “¦

There are plenty of stylish solutions for storing wine, but many of them assume that you have tons of space and a wine budget that would rival the gross domestic product of a small country (sorry, but that towering wine rack looks pretty sad with a few lonely bottles of Three Buck Chuck).

Not the Modern Cellar Mini Wall Panel ($160).

This wall panel holds up to six bottles at a time and takes up zero counter space. It’s made of walnut hardwood with sporadically placed holes, so it adds a nice decorative element to your walls. This configuration also makes it easy to turn the bottles and keep the cork moist.

All of Modern Cellar’s products are proudly made in the U.S. too. (They’re based in San Diego with products available online and in select stores.) A simple, yet sophisticated way to store wine and support an indie business? We’ll toast to that!

Now it’s your turn. Tell us which wines would you store in this wall panel. Maybe a juicy Cabernet or a sweet, sparkling wine? What do you think of this wall panel?

The Deepwater Horizon disaster has leaked more than one million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. The magnitude is so large that many people are struggling to put the numbers into tangible context. Cutler J. Cleveland, a Boston University professor of Geography and Environment, and the editor of the Encyclopedia of Earth, has calculated the energy equivalents for EcoSalon readers to better grasp the enormity of this disaster. Dr. Cleveland is also a Senior Fellow at the National Council for Science and the Environment.

The energy content of one million barrels is about 5.8 trillion Btu (British Thermal Units), which is equivalent to:

1. Years of energy used in a single average America home: 61,117

2. Number of miles that could be driven by a Prius: 2,320,000,000

3. Number of airplane round trips between London and Louisiana that could be taken by BP CEO Tony Hayward: 198,352

4. Hours of motor gasoline consumption for the entire United States: 3

5. Minutes of world energy use: 6

6. Minutes of energy that could power the entire country of Ghana: 22,252 (about 15 days)

7. Members of the Chinese population whose energy consumption could be met for year: 98,472

8. Number of Americans whose energy consumption could be met for year: 17,211

9. Dollars of GDP produced in China: $210,893,753

10. Dollars of GDP produced in the United States: $743,971,267

11. Amount of energy harnessed from 3,385,540,566 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches

12. Number of acres of corn needed to produce the equivalent amount of ethanol: 159,928

13. Number of Tour de France races that Lance Armstrong could complete burning an equivalent amount of food energy: 81,408,631

14. Years of energy use in Boston’s John Hancock Tower: 30.3

15. Equivalent amount of energy in tons of firewood: 494,459

16. Tons of steel that could be produced: 354,393

Images: Steve Punter, (A3R) angelrravelor (A3R), goldberg, Kossy@FINEDAYS, futureatlas.com, RaSeLaSeD – Il Pinguino, nova3web, cathyse97, lauren keith, docsdl, scalleja, spcbrass, Lars Plougmann, malias, Adam Pieniazek, smith, on1stsite.