The Beijing skyline will be the subject of many establishing shots during this summer’s Olympics, but in the years to come all eyes might shift towards Tianjin. BoHai Bay in China’s third largest urban area will be the future home of the 1,174 foot tall SinoSteel International Plaza. Slated to be completed in 2011, it will become the city’s most dominating architectural feature. The towering hexagonal honeycomb structure was designed using an innovative and energy efficient form of climate modeling. It helps to regulate both the temperature and daylight thanks to the variations in the size of each cell’s window. Not content just to scrape the clouds, the complex designed by Beijing’s MAD architects will also feature an adjacent hotel that will have similar eco friendly design.

Via Inhabitat

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If we ever wanted to create a nursery with an “Animals Our Children Will Never See” motif, this Global Warming rug by the Mexican design team at NEL (and available at Spanish retailer Nanimarquina) would certainly tie that room together. Maybe you can’t see it, but they surely intended this to be a Big Lebowski environmental metaphor: you see, the carbon-spewing corporations, those are the “carpet pissers.” Society is like the Dude, who just wanted his rug back. And Al Gore? We’d like him to be Walter, but see him as more of a Donny.

Your favorite cotton tee might make you feel all warm and fuzzy, but it’s secretly plotting to destroy the Earth. Growing cotton produces tons of toxic runoff, and in an effort to fight the effects of farming the fabric of our lives, Knowledge Cotton Fashion Apparel has launched The Earth Count, a new unisex T-shirt line made from 100% certified organic cotton. Across the front is “I Am Person [BLANK]” filled in with a unique number. Plug in that number at TheEarthcount.com to see how much chemical and pesticide waste your simple purchase has saved. Kind of nifty, even if the focus is a little egocentric. The shirts will be available in stores and online beginning on September 15th.

If you’ve ever wanted to add the fancy term “Hotelier” to your business card but lack the capital to actually open a hotel, here’s your chance. Our Planet Retreats, an eco-friendly company aimed at providing truly unique accommodations, is relying on donations from people just like you to get their project off the ground. For a scant $30 donation you can become a shareholder, creating a rare travel experiences for eco-tourists while boosting the local economy. Each retreat consists of 12 rooms that are more or less spheres in trees that house four people apiece, giving travelers an incomparable connection to their surroundings. Each retreat location comes with activities tailored to their environment: whale shark diving, bird watching, turtle conservation projects, or surfing, among others. The current goal is to set up four locations in Vanuatu, the Philippines, and Papua New Guinea within the year. Maybe it’s time you got in on the ground floor.

Paper or plastic? Whatever you choose, the bags are inevitably getting tossed in the garbage. The fashionably eco-conscious minds at Ameico think it’s time you and everyone else got a brand new bag — or two. Their line of TwoBag vinyl shopping bags (available at Velocity Art and Design) give shoppers an alternative to wasting valuable resources. The unique design includes an outer bag that shuts completely with the help of a pair of hooks, and an inner bag that secures with a double hand grip. Plus it’s vinyl, so you don’t have to worry about the bottom falling out and dumping your month supply of Hungry Man dinners all over the floor. Not that that’s happened to us.

Tappening’s “Message In A Bottle” campaign against bottled water was a roaring success. The tap drinking crusaders collected one million water bottles to send to Coca Cola CEO Muhtar Kent to protest the pollution caused by bottled water consumption. But at the last minute Tappening had a change of heart. Rather than expend the environmental resources to send a truck to Atlanta and dump the bottles on Coke’s doorstep (giving the soda giant a positive publicity boost when they simply recycled them) they made Tappening Bags. The duffles are made from 100% recycled plastic water bottles and yogurt containers, and remind you the next time you reach for a Poland Spring or Dasani to “Think Global, Drink Local.”

If the terms “progressive” and “eco-friendly” were in third grade, they’d walk around holding hands and spend their entire recess period together talking about alternative fuel sources. Even though they’re not school aged-children they still go hand-in-hand, as they relate perfectly to Organic Stereo, the new apparel brand from Brighton-based designer Marie Rendina. After spending the last 12 years honing her craft across the English Channel, freelancing for the likes of Mambo, Fat Face, and Criminal, Rendina struck out on her own to create clothing that reflected the quirky yet relaxed lifestyle of her adoptive British backdrop that was also environmentally conscious. Her collection utilizes components such as chemical free dyes, organic cotton and buttons made of recycled paper, to assemble attire that maintains an amicable relationship with mother nature. Organic Stereo also deserves extra ethics points for belonging to 1% for The Planet, an organization that donates a percent of their gross revenue before tax to charitable causes around the world.

We write about T-shirts a lot on this blog. And, why not? They’re in our closet, they fit — our jeans would be lost without them. However, we’re much more keen to write about tees that help African children get much-needed school uniforms. Common Threadz uses the same spiel other hip T-shirt moguls do about about up and coming artists creating eco-friendly shirts for celebrities that like their shirts arty and eco-friendly. But, the cash you’re dropping on these shirts directly funds children who can’t afford this expensive necessity. And these kids aren’t going to expensive prep schools — the fact is without a school uniform, they’re not allow to get an education. If you’re thinking about heading over to Threadless this morning (of which we’re big fans), detour and spend the same amount to do a bit of good.

Disclaimer: no polar bears or snow leopards were harmed during the creation of these shoes… National Geographic imagery meets sneaker design in this collaboration between PUMA, Atmos NYC, and Japanese photographer Mitsuaki Iwago. Through two releases– the Polar Pack and the Asia Pack, sneaker buffs will be treated to a series of kicks inspired by Mitsuaki Iwago’s famed wildlife photos. The outsides of the shoes capture the unique characteristics of various animals, and each (removable) insole sports Iwago’s actual photos on them. The final touch is that both the name and habitat of each animal is printed on the reverse tongue and on the outsole in both English and - you guessed it - Japanese.

The Polar Pack will be on sale only at Atmos NYC and Ubiq in Philadelphia beginning on June 28th, and you can expect the Asia Pack to drop later this summer.

We came across Nori Morimoto’s light sculptures and were floored by their beauty and simplicity. Beyond their raw aesthetic value, Nori's creation of wood sculptures from sustainable sources adds a couple extra gold stars to his name. It is nice to see some progressive design getting back to its roots– literally. Now if he could only strike a deal with IKEA to get these out of the wild and into my living room!

Via Inhabitat

Now that summer’s in full swing, it’s pretty much a given that there’s going to be a lot of grilling going on. If you don’t have a gas grill, odds are you might have to employ the traditional combination of hot coals and lighter fluid to get the party started. Unfortunately, that often leads to a fluid-infused food flavoring. If you’d like to avoid that taste mingling with your marinade, break from the Kingsford tradition and grab a Baja BBQ Firepack from Mike and Maaike, available at gourmet grocery stores. Their chemical-free charcoal packaging makes starting your fire simple. Thanks to its 100% biodegradable paper pulp makeup, all you have to do is light the box and voila. The two pounds of natural lump coal contained within take a mere 15 to 20 minutes to be in perfect cooking condition with the aid of the package’s integrated chimney design. All you have to worry about now is overcooking.

One look at the Aptera, and you’d swear that it could fly. Coming off as a cross between a single engine Cessna and something George Jetson could be seen flying around in, this spectacular new breed of plug-in electronic hybrid vehicle sets our design obsessed, eco-friendly hearts aflutter. While this sweet ride may not be able to take to the friendly skies, it will save you a boatload of valuable gas money, getting over 230 miles per gallon. Not only does this awesome automobile set entirely new standards for environmental safety, but it does the same for passenger safety, employing a safety cage similar to that of a formula one racecar. It also contains an “eyes forward” vision system that gives the driver 180 degrees of rear sight. It may not be exactly ready to hit the road just yet, but for those living in California, you can reserve yours today. So if you inhabit the Golden State, want to be ahead of the environmental curve, and at the same time convince your neighbor that he or she overslept by about a hundred years, perhaps you should invest in an Aptera.

Time for some hard numbers. More than two million people die every year from water-related diseases and there are a billion people in the world who live without clean water. That's "billion"... with a "b." Think about that the next time you take a 45-minute shower. Singer Jewel and Virgin Unite want to change all that. Teaming up to support Project Clean Water, an organization Jewel founded in 1997 to provide safe water on a global scale, the not for profit foundation of the Virgin Group and the acclaimed singer-songwriter are looking for you to show you care with their latest campaign, Give A Drop.

The idea is beautifully simple; show you "give a drop" by donating at least $2. For most of us, that's less that what we'd spend on the average bottle of water. Add your name, location, and personal message to your donation and your drop appears on the homepage. Messages range from humane ("Clean water is a basic human right") to the truthful ("Because good intentions alone aren't very hydrating") to the hip ("I dropped it like it's hot").

All those drops can add up to make a big difference, with all donations going towards Project Clean Water's work creating sustainable solutions for villages around the world to access fresh, healthy water.

We keep killing our plants. It’s nothing personal, but remembering to water them just doesn’t rank as high on our list these days as making sure we’re home in time to watch women’s rugby. Thankfully we can finally buy the Vitamin I.V. plant pot. It will do everything, making us feel less guilty about our neglect. Just pop your little O2 producing buddy in the white pot (or in the limited-edition black version), set the watering schedule, and the I.V. drip attached to the adjustable metal rod will keep your flora green … until the bag runs out. Unfortunately, it doesn’t refill itself. That’s what’s we have ASIMO for!

The magic of e-mail (aside from instant delivery) is that all of your unwanted spam can be disposed of with the click of a button. If only there was a button to erase the heaps of unwanted paper junk mail that arrives at your front door every day. Wait. Is there one? The geniuses behind Earth Class Mail have come up with a new system for virtualizing your snail mail, so you have a say on whether or not those pesky catalogs wind up wasting space in your house. Their service asks users to forward their mail to one of 18 P.O. boxes, where their envelopes are scanned and posted on a secure website and allows the user to decide whether or not a certain letter is trash or treasure. From there, users can also decide whether they’d prefer to recycle, shred, ship, or open and scan the contents so they can be read online. Not only is Earth Class Mail a seemingly simple solution for eliminating unwanted letters, but it’s also an eco-friendly way to figure out what to do with that inevitable mess of mail.