Gothamist features a great interview with Benjamin Van Leeuwen, the man behind the Van Leeuwen Ice Cream Trucks currently spreading their wholesome, creamy goodness throughout New York City. The company, as Gothamist points out, focuses on good practice as much as good ice cream; serving cups are made of a chemical-free fiber derived form sugar cane, spoons are made from cornhusks, and all their ingredients are sourced with sustainability and quality in mind. Their commitment ...

The wind turbines that we’re most familiar with are tall, slim, shiny and sleek. And while they only account for about 1% of America’s power generation, they’re being popularized by presidential nominees McCain & Obama, General Electric’s eco-friendly Olympics broadcast (even through their controversial air-conditioned outdoor set {can you blame NBC’s anchors for wanting to stay semi-comfortable in buisness suits, wearing makeup and under hot camera lights?}) and petroleum companies like BP & Exxon Mobil ...

Boxed wine has always been looked down on as the cheap way to consume the most elegant of alcoholic beverages. However, an opinion article from the New York Times says that this image should change considering the carbon footprint created by trucking around glass bottles. The vast majority (90% +) of American wine is produced on the West Coast, but then shipped to the East Coast where the majority of wine consumers live. This trucking ...

Even though physical phone book usage is on the decline, phone companies continue to print and deliver 540 million unsolicited directories a year. In our era of easily accessible online information, you would think they would get the hint. But no, the lucrative $13.58B phone book business keeps chugging along, wasting paper, space and electricity. To stop this madness, check out Yellow Pages Go Green. It’s like a do not call list for phone books. ...

I always wonder what’s going to happen to my trash when I dispose of it in public places. Will it get sorted and recycled, or end up wasting away in a landfill? Most restaurants and public places in the US have sorry recycling systems in place. The Copenhaganize blog has given me hope. This image, taken at a McDonald’s in Sweden, shows the advanced recycling efforts going on over there. There is no single, big ...

The LA Times has an article to suggest that consumers are heeding the message that corn-fructose is bad for your health - but that the big soda brands are unable and unwilling to retool to adapt to the trend. The newspaper says that consumers are demanding products that are sweetened with sugar rather than the processed sweetener that your body doesn’t understand, your body can’t process properly, fools your body into believing that it’s still ...

The Five Dollar Comparison aims to show how far you can get with a crisp Lincoln - a length that varies drastically depending on where you are. The site features user-submitted photos of things around the world that can be bought for five US dollars, ranging from a feature film at a theater in Lima, to a gallon of gas somewhere off the Highway 101 in California. It wasn’t until we dug around the site ...

The Give-It -Bag was the brain child of a German couple living in Cape Town, Philip and Regina Booth. It looks like a miniature rubble bag (the kind you get on building sites) and is made from recycled shipping bags that have made their way to South Africa. Part of the fashion appeal is the randomness of the graphics as the makers are dependent entirely on what materials come in - the ViralCool packaging shown ...