The ‘Star Wheel’ was created by Paul Cesewski and weighs 2000 pounds and stands 22 feet in the air. It took Mr. Cesewski 6 months and $7000 to put this together and unlike it’s carival counterpart, it requires no diesel engines to make it go!

So, how does this crazy thing work then? Well, there are three seats inside the middle of the wheel and each rider/driver peddles — the peddlers drive themself around the inside of the wheel causing the outside of the wheel to move forwards!

I read about this and immediately thought I would love to try this thing out… until I saw this video. Not so stable at all, huh? Maybe after a trip back to the drawing board this could be viable!

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1. Diapers: …and not just the cloth ones. Did you know that, on average, a baby will go through about six thousand diapers before they’re potty trained? Well, a company called ‘Knowaste’ makes disposable diapers that can be recycled.
2. Soap: That’s right — soap! A non profit organization called ‘Clean the World’ collects leftover soap and shampoo from hotels and donates it to those in need.
3. Caskets: This one nearly blew my mind yesterday and, you know, I don’t know why cause you’d think this was a no-brainer: Why not be buried in something that will easily biodegrade or is made from recycled materials? Seems silly not too, but I suppose that’s just my opinion. And besides being eco-friendly, it’s also much less expensive, too!
4. Running shoes: I am a big gym-goer so I own several pairs of running shoes, cross trainers, ones with shock absorbtion, etc. When you’re done with running shoes that are still in relatively good shape, they can be donated to the less fortunate. But the thing is, for me anyway, they’re so incredibly pricey that you can be sure that I use them until they can no longer be worn. The good news is, they can still be made into building materials. Check out RecycledRunners.com to find out where you can bring your old runners.

After chatting with staff about the spa’s commitment to the environment, I took the opportunity to check out what the facility had to offer first hand. Sorry, I’ve got no pictures for you as (I should have known, of course) the spa has strict rules against phones and cameras on site.

I was quite impressed! While the spa lost a few points for handing out bottled water to guests and two clean towels each, I was very impressed by their floor to ceiling windows for all natural lighting during the day and their dim indoor lighting and bright outdoor solar lighting at night.

Their brochures were all packed to the brim with informatiton on recycled paper, the toilets were all low flush and used greywater, and all of the steam rooms and saunas were run on timers as to not unnecessarily waste energy and electricity.

Everywhere you looked their were bins seperated into waste, paper, plastic, and food (for composting) — all done in very tasteful ways to incorporate it into the theme of the spa.

A lot of the spa was outdoors using nature instead of building facilites — like the hammocks and chair swings — all of which were tethered to trees instead of having a separate building for those who wish to lounge.

An outdoor fireplace stood in the middle of the outdoor pool area instead of a wasteful electric fireplace like I’ve seen in so many other public buildings.

And to top off everything, there were rainwater collection barrels scattered throughout the lot — a great use of all that space! They use the rainwater that’s collected to water the plants. Perfect.

Before this experiment I would have never noticed any of these things, I’m sure — but I’m glad I did. I’m definitely becoming more eco-concious and am certainly aware now that in a facility like that, if there’s no attempt at sustainable development and operation, it could easily be a hugely wasteful place! I was glad to see Le Nordik make such a great effort to not only be as eco-friendly as possible, but to make sure that their clients aware of these efforts, too.

Kudos, Le Nordik!

On a personal note, I highly recommend spending a day at this place — it’s beautiful! And there’s nothing like a steam bath and then a jump in a 4 degree (celcius) water fall to make you feel… alive (and so, socold)!

Today while in Chelsea, Quebec on a top secret mission, I’m scheduled to visit the nice folks at Le Nordik Nature Spa and sit down and chat about their promise to act responsibly towards the environment through ‘eco-friendly actions’.

Here are some of their eco commitments:

• Recuperation of all recyclable material for reuse
• Recycling of paper, plastic and other materials
• Recycling of waste water to be reused in flushing systems
• Energy and electricity management with timers and software systems
• Recuperation of rain water to be used for watering the plants
• Printing on recycled paper for certain documents
• Use of renewable energy

And soon they’ve promised that they will be composting of plant and natural based waste and using geothermy throughout each of their buildings.

I’m hoping to talk to them about what motivated them to make this commitment to the environment and sustainable development as well as, of course, checking out what their facilities look like! I’ve never been there and I’m glad that’s about to change. And maybe we’ll become great friends! I could really use some good friends with a spa, heh. I’m looking forward to meeting you and chatting about your top notch eco-friendly spa, Le Nordik!

I’ll be trying out mobile blogging on location again so stay tuned for pictures and tidbits from my sit down with Le Nordik!

Recently I was reading an article in my favourite magazine — Scientific American — about how endangered species are sold on the black market.

Apparently poachers often use official lists of endangered species as a sort of shopping list — clamoring for these extra rare animals for illegal pet collectors and zoos.

A perfect example is of the Javan hawk eagle found in Indonesia on the island of Java in its increasingly scarce forests. These birds went almost entirely unnoticed before they were put on the endangered species list in 1993. Since then they’ve become quite a popular bird — zoos want them, collectors want them, and more than 30 have been spotted in Indonesian markets, illegally, since.

Ironically, by listing animals as endangered and rare we’re making them a target; pets, meals, or worse yet — hunting trophies. It’s everywhere, too. Just this year, in fact, NY State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) got involved in a four-year covert operation to catch poachers and collections red handed in a project called “Operation Shellshock” where they were specifically looking out for illegal trading of lizards, turtles, frogs, and snakes. It was successful in finding more than 400 animals including poisonous snakes and endangered turtles — 26 people were arrested.

So what do we do? Stop listing which animals are endangered?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the matter — leave me a comment!

Alright, this might be the coolest news story I’ve read all week: A report released by the Institute of Mechanical Engineers is claiming that a building covered in algae are awesome for the environment. Now that’s a green building!

“…sealed containers of algae photobioreactors could be integrated into the sides of buildings to produce biofuels and sequester carbon…” (Inhabitat)

And what’s more?

• using algae for biofuels means that it can use waste water and ocean water making spills or leaks relatively harmless
• algae grows much faster than corn or soy
• photobioreactors are expensive, but could very easily be integrated into our existing structures

It’s really good to see the wheels turning — to see engineers really starting to think about these kinds of things. Very encouraging!

How would you feel about your apartment building being covered in algae? I think done well it could look pretty cool, personally. And with all those benefits, I hope to see this in the near future!

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Yummy sustainability

We know by now that Brad Pitt is crazy about sustainable living and being green friendly, with his deep involvement in rebuilding New Orleans’ lower 9th Ward with his Make It Right foundation and his work on the green hotel project in Dubai.

Well now the hunky actor is involved in a green project in Aviles, Spain that’s looking to boost environmental sustainability. Brad Pitt apparently went to visit the site recently and is excited to support the project.

“Brad is interested in supporting the project, both in cultural and architectural aspects” said the mayor of Avilés, Pilar Varela. “He is interested in building with innovation, novelty, and especially sustainability.”

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The Nature Conservancy has just published a kind of calculator that crunches numbers and calculates percentages to figure out exactly how global warming will affect you.

The ClimateWizard is the first of its kind, giving people access to statistics and information that while having been readily available for a long time, is hard to read and understand. The ClimateWizard looks to facilitate that.

“The state-by-state, country-by-country temperature projections are part of a new tool called Climate Wizard that allows people to use an interactive map to explore past and projected climate change data on their computers,” The Nature Conservancy states in its press release. “With Climate Wizard, users can zoom in on any location to quickly see how temperatures and precipitation may change by month, season or year under different emission scenarios.”

Read more here

I was really surprised to find out that they really are all the rage.

When I think of Miami, I think of 5-star resorts, yachts, beaches with scantily clad men and women, and fake tans. I definitely don’t think of Miami as a hugely environmentally concious place, but maybe that’s me believing in stereotypes.

Apparently zen lifestyles are all the rage – and that includes being kind to each other, 100% natural products, organic foods and materials, and cruelty-free products. Spas like Uhma Spa, Emena, or Mandarin Oriental Miami are all eco-chic urban santuaries.

Mandarin Oriental Miami’s spa plant a tree in the nearby Everglades National Park for every single time that they perform an “Herbal Thai Compress Ritual” on a client. What a great idea!

Now that’s a fad I can get behind.

That’s right — interesting little tidbit I’ve just run across. Though it might not be news to you regular Apple fans, in an effort to save paper and be more environmentally friendly, the Apple Store actually offers to email you your receipt instead of automatically and mindlessly printing it out and stuffing it in the bag like many other stores.

I’m not personally on a crusade against paper receipts, but only because it really hadn’t dawned on me exactly how many of my receipts that I actually just crumple up and throw to the bottom of my purse.

Apple, as a whole, is not doing so well on the big green scale (according to Greenpeace), but hey – this is a start, right?