In the world of sustainable food, Austin, Texas is known best as the home of Whole Foods, the natural foods giant that first opened there in 1980. But it's another Austin-based retailer of local and organic food that has people talking these days. The store, called In.gredients, is looking to lay claim to the title of America's first ever "package-free, zero waste grocery store." The idea......read more
By standard definition, "local food" is that which is produced within 100 miles of where it's sold. BrightFarms wants you to forget that. The New York-based greenhouse company aims to shift our understanding of local-ness by bringing rooftop gardens to the place where consumers buy food: the supermarket. Launched in January 2011, BrightFarms' vision is to convince grocery retailers to grow......read more
It was green on Greene this weekend in Soho at the pop-up gallery put on by Adrian Grenier and film producer Peter Glatzer’s eco-focused website SHFT, and pureDKNY—the latest, eco-friendly scent from Donna Karen. The exhibition was focused on sustainable or recycled materials, products for sale as well as over 50 pieces of art on display. The connection between the items being sold......read more
SHFT.COM, an eco-conscious Web site with a high-profile pedigree (the actor Adrian Grenier and the film producer Peter Glatzer are the founders), is presenting a pop-up gallery in New York in a tie-in with pureDKNY, a scent that is packaged in recyclable glass and features the eco-activist model Angela Lindvall in its ads. ...read more
SHFT has curated the green section of Wired magazine's pop up stores for a few years running. Finding sustainably designed products, gadgets and items and contextualizing them within the Wired shop led in many ways to SHFT's own SHOP section. It's what first got Peter and Adrian, SHFT's founders, excited about the bergeoning green sector and inspired everyone at SHFT to......read more
Adrian Grenier, actor, and Peter Glatzer, producer, helped host the Wired party launching its Manhattan pop-up store, standing by a display of cool green products they'd selected. The co-creators of Alter Eco, the green living show on Discovery's Planet Green, looked delighted to be discussing an hybrid electric bicycle and an LED table lamp made with what looked like foam peanuts but......read more
A lifelong friendship with fellow chess enthusiast Marcel Duchamp inspired Man Ray to create his unique chess set in 1920. In his set, Man Ray offers a personal interpretation of each character on the chess board: an Egyptian pyramid for the King, a medieval headdress for the Queen, a flask for the Bishop and the carved scroll of a violin for the Knight. Made of solid Beech wood, each character......read more
Portland General Store's Whiskey Aftershave is infused with a light whiskey scent, "reminiscent of an ol' yachtsman relaxing below deck at the end of a long day on the wild ocean, a favorite Scotch in hand." Right, okay. Actually the scent is really good, and although it's definitively masculine the list of ingredients is decidedly not -- sea kelp extract, blue-green algae, organic aloe......read more
E-readers are handy, but can a Kindle do this? At Type Books in Toronto, the books come to life after hours, dancing in choreographed stop-motion to spread a positive message about the printed word. "The Joy of Books," created by Toronto ad man Sean Ohlenkamp, his wife, Lisa Blonder Ohlenkamp, and 20 volunteers, has set the internet ablaze, with two million plus views to date. If,......read more
During President Barack Obama’s weeklong, three-country tour of Africa, he took the time to play some soccer, but with a far-from-ordinary ball. In Tanzania, Obama introduced locals to The Soccket, an energy-generating soccer ball created by recent Harvard alums Jessica Matthews and Julia Silverman. With every kick, the kinetic energy of the ball’s movement is converted into stored......read more