In the video above, Sheena Iyengar discusses her groundbreaking research on ideas of choice- how we make choices and how we feel about the choices we make. In this TED presentation, she talks about both trivial choices (Coke v. Pepsi) and profound ones, as well as cultural influences that affect how we view those choices.

In this country, for example, individual choice is celebrated as the principle expression of freedom- think of Burger King’s slogan “Have it your way!” or of Starbuck’s “happiness in your choices.” But those assumptions, she argues, don’t always hold us in my countries and many cultures. In many Asian cultures, for example, being true to one’s self may rely as much on satisfying key figures (or a collective) as it does about addressing one’s own preferences. “It’s a mistake to assume,” she cautions, “that everyone thrives on the pressure of choosing alone.”

At Love Tomorrow Today, we’re thinking a lot about choice, and about this balance between the individual (as in, ‘individual choices,’ ‘individual responsibility,’ etc…) and the collective (as in, ‘community initiatives,’ being a part of a ‘movement,’ etc…). And because we also spend a lot of time in our home away from home (Taiwan), we think a lot about cultural influences. In an ever-increasingly “flat world,” part of the challenge in finding “better products” that help us “live better” is in navigating cultural assumptions that are sometimes at odds. But, in our experience, simple ideas and one degree changes make sense in any language.

[Source: TED]

Iyengar just published her first book, The Art of Choosing, which shares her research in an accessible and charming story that draws examples from her own life.

Five years ago, news that Seventh Generation, a pioneer in the eco-friendly consumer products biz, was making a deal with Wal-Mart would have seemed unlikely. Back then, these strange bedfellows resided on different ends of the responsibility spectrum. But, as we’ve covered in a number of posts on LTT, Wal-Mart has transformed itself into an industry leader in sustainability, demanding greener practices from suppliers, investing in renewable energies at its stores and other impressive green initiatives. Wal-Mart’s CEO Mike Duke, recently emphatically reaffirmed Wal-Mart’s sweeping environmental goals, saying at the company’s “2009 Sustainability Milestone Meeting” that eco-responsibility was no longer optional for companies wishing to be industry leaders.

So, in many ways, the deal makes perfect sense, but for his part, Seventh Gen’s founder Jeffrey Hollender turned to his blog to explain his decision to team with the box store giant.

“A lot of people, some of them among our most loyal long-time customers, will raise an eyebrow (at least!) at this news. Walmart, as we know, has a notoriously checkered corporate past and there aren’t many neutral opinions where the company is concerned. Its reputation hasn’t been great, often deservedly so, and many, including myself, assumed that Seventh Generation and Walmart would never have any relationship. But you can’t see into the future, and it’s always subject to change. Now it has and in ways we didn’t envision.

So why are we selling to Walmart? The short answer is because it’s time and we should. By this, I mean two things:

• First that Walmart is not the same company it was even five years ago. It’s a much different organization that has fairly dramatically and with little fanfare transformed itself into a serious sustainability leader. A few months ago, I wrote a long post about just how much remarkable progress the retailer has made and the tremendous level of positive influence it’s now wielding on its employees, customers, suppliers, and communities. I won’t repeat all that here. Suffice it to say that Walmart has come a very long way and is committed to going a great deal further.
• Second, Walmart’s size means we’ll reach people and places we couldn’t reach before and help countless more families lead safer, healthier lives. From rural outposts to inner cities, we’ll get much closer to fulfilling our mission to help all consumers protect the planet and themselves from harm.”

A couple of years ago, there was a flurry of stories about how the planet would be better off if we all bought used cars instead of new hybrids. It seems counter-intuitive, but actually, if you were to buy a ‘98 Toyota Tercel that averages 27/35 mpg, for example, that new Prius would have to go 100,000 miles to achieve the same carbon savings. As fully electric vehicles hit the marketplace, that argument will hold less weight. And in Ontario, Oregon, 14 year old Ashton Stark and his father have managed to merge the past and the future. They spent a year transforming Ashton’s grandfather’s 1972 VW Beetle into an operational electric vehicle.

The car runs on nine separate 8 volt golf cart batteries-  “Interstate battery made a deal with us,” Ashton explains, “to test their new line of golf cart batteries and collect data on the batteries”-  and can hit a top speed of 45mph. The range is about 50 miles which will cost about 10 cents in electricity costs. The entire transformation process cost around $4000.

At 14, Ashton will be getting his learner’s permit soon. For now, he has to rely on his Dad to know how the car handles on the open road.

[Source: EcoFriend, from: The Argus Observer]

Designer Tim May is asking ‘Can Cardboard Cut it?’ That’s the name of his recent project, which includes an innovative furniture design made of 100% recyclable and already-recycled corrugated cardboard and stainless steel threaded rods and bolts. The chair and the stool/coffee table fits together, and all are covered with a clear varnish to enhance and protect.

As much as we love the Taiwan Cardboard Restaurant, this may be our new favorite ‘cardboard fabulous’ design. Can a place on the Ikea showroom be far off?

[Source: Yanko Design]

Other LTT cardboard-related posts:

Taiwan’s Cardboard Restaurant

Thinking inside the box: Is Boxed Water Better?

Last week, we wrote about the Strata SE1, London’s tallest residential building and the world’s first skyscraper to have electricity-generating wind turbines built into its core design. Not to be outdone by our cousins across the pond, a team of American designers have proposed a sustainable skyscraper for Chicago that can be powered by renewable energy including noise.

Noise, it seems, is an untapped form of energy that is usually absorbed as heat by the surroundings. And, in an urban setting, there’s a virtually unending supply. The team of designers, Ryan Brown, Nathanael Dunn, Daniel Nelson and Benjamin Scholten, has presented designs for the building, dubbed the Urban Transducer, the mixed-use skyscraper that would feature facades laden with acoustic reverberation transducers that can convert noise into electricity for use within the building. The panels are adjusted to react to specific wavelengths of present frequencies. The panels would ‘remember’ the most commonly occurring frequencies and their locations, allowing it to preemptively adjust in order to produce maximum efficiency. If that’s not enough, micro wind turbines integrated into the building would assist in producing added power.

Acoustic reverberation transducers? Could this be the next frontier in urban sustainability? Will we soon be able to hang our ‘A.R.T.’ out the window, next to our hanging garden and our window-box micro-pharmacy?

[Sources: Ecofriend, Evolo]

Just like everyone, LTT enjoys reading about ‘high concept’ innovations- you know, the breakthrough in a lab somewhere that will make it possible to (fill in the blank) someday, the kind we can look forward to a generation from now. For instance, I’m holding out for that all-in-one solar-powered wrist watch cell phone personal computer GPS hair dryer. But what really excites us isn’t the reinventing of tomorrow’s wheel, it’s making today’s wheel better. And when it comes to that, the low-hanging fruit is very often improvements in the supply chain, including the packaging, which is usually the first thing to end up in the trash.

Yesterday, LTT met with Don Droppo Jr, President & CEO of family-owned Curtis Packaging, based in Sandy Hook, CT, to learn more about the ways they are blazing a trail in green packaging. “We’re a true testament to the idea that green business makes economic sense,” Droppo has said. At a time when the U.S. packaging industry has been steadily losing business to overseas competitors, Curtis has seen its annual sales double, thanks in large part to its focus on sustainability.

When cosmetics maker Estée Lauder asked Curtis to package its Origins natural-products line in “the most environmentally friendly paper out there,” Droppo’s research led him to shift the company’s entire business model. “I started to learn about sustainability and asked what my company could do so that we could be as environmentally conscious as possible,” he recently told Fortune magazine.

Curtis began by working with the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) to certify the paper in its packages was only purchased from FSC endorsed paper mills. Next, Droppo says, “we converted all of our energy needs to clean, renewable energy.” Curtis will be buying a total of 4,524,800 kWhs of renewable energy per year for the next 3 years, with the majority sourced through wind power and approximately 30% of the purchase will be a blend of renewable sources including locally generated wind and hydroelectric.

Initially, as you’d expect, Curtis saw its costs rise. But Droppo viewed that extra 10% to 15% in costs as a marketing expense. “Not only are we doing the right thing for the environment, but we’re getting a tremendous amount of exposure because of this.”

The innovations from Curtis now go well beyond “green paper.” The company’s R&D has led to innovations in materials and processing that have lowered cost and reduced environmental impact. “We have signed up new customers because of our ‘green’ commitment,” Droppo explains. “Hopefully after hearing the positive impact this has had on our business, other business owners or corporations may follow suit to do their part to help sustain the environment.”

Companies like Curtis Packaging are, in many ways, the unsung heroes of the sustainability movement. An innovation in screen-printing on compostable foil isn’t quite as sexy as a breakthrough in photovoltaic technology, but its measurable impact on our lives is considerably larger, at least today. We’ll continue to keep our eye on Curtis and other leaders in this space.

Some other recent posts on eco-friendly packaging:

Eco-Friendly Packaging Replaces PVC With Cardboard

Aveda’s New Bottle Cap Recycling Plan

Pulp Lamp: when packaging becomes the product

Brands: Frito-Lay’s Compostable Bag

“Why grow homes?” famed architect Mitchell Joachim asks in a recent TED presentation. “Because we can.” In the above clip, Joachim presents his vision for sustainable, organic architecture: eco-friendly homes and villages made from plants and, uh, well…meat. These “fab tree habs” literally fit in the environment- they ARE the environment, he says. An entire village could be grown in 7-10 years, entirely renewable and capable of even reducing CO2.

“Right now America is an unremitting state of trauma,” Joachim explains, “and there’s a cause for that. We have McPeople, McCars, McHouses. As an architect I have to confront something like this.”

“Wrapping your bike around a lamppost” used to suggest some gruesome accident. But thanks to Kevin Scott’s new Bendy Bike, it’s not always a bad thing. Scott has designed a bike that doubles as a bike lock. In place of the top and down-tubes, the bendable bike has segmented sections that allows the bike to wrap completely around a pole, small tree and the like. A ratchet mechanism on the seat-tube cranks the segments tight, stiffening the frame so it can be ridden.

[Source: Wired, Inhabitat]

Ahhh, July 4th weekend. If you’re lucky, you avoided traffic, ate an entire watermelon, didn’t blow a finger off lighting a bottle rocket and- if you’re really lucky- didn’t have to look at your watch once. For most people, having a vague sense of the time- as in, “I think it’s roughly 11-ish”- is directly linked to feeling relaxed. Here’s an interesting design, from Andreas Dober, that manages to capture that “approximate time,” while blending a mechanical art aesthetic with a spirit of sustainability.

The Catena Wall Clock is literally upcycling. A vertical bicycle chain, attached with brass numbers, rotates in a clockwise direction. At the top of every hour, the time appears at the zenith of the rotation. As the picture shows, you’ll know when it’s “roughly 11-ish.”

The only drawback to the Catena- which, incidentally, gets its name from the Latin word for “chain”- is the price tag. This clock can be yours for a cool $2300.

[Source: Spot Cool Stuff, Unica Home]

When OK Go was planning its most recent viral video (profiled on this blog back in March), the band enlisted the help of Adam Sadowsky, president of Syyn Labs which has a reputation for merging art and technology to create interactive projects. The band knew it wanted a Rube Goldberg machine as the video’s key element. As Sadowsky explains in his TED presentation, a Rube Goldberg machine is a deliberately over-engineered machine that performs a very simple task in a very complex fashion, usually including a chain reaction. It’s a fascinating look behind the scenes of one of our favorite viral videos, and, in a way, it helps to explain our interest in it: as we all strive to lead more considered lives, we navigate this line between complex issues, chain reactions and simple tasks.

The truth is, LTT actually strives for the opposite of the Rube Goldberg machine- we look to address complexities through simple, one degree solutions. But what we really love is seeing where innovation, creativity and resourcefullness all meet up for a drink.

As solar technology advances, we’re seeing more ways to harness the sun’s rays to recharge everyday appliances. From the practical, such as iPhone covers that have photovoltaic panels- although, I’d like to talk to someone who’s successfully done that without overheating their phone- to the experimental, like the solar car that won the Aussie desert race, product designers are integrating panels into virtually everything and anything. The latest to catch our eye, by industrial designer Weng Jie, is the Solar Camera Strap.

The Solar Camera Strap is just like the one you already have, except with the addition of PV cells, this camera strap can recharge your camera as you sightsee. Don’t you hate it when you’re on safari and your camera runs out of juice just as the cheetah takes down a gazelle? Or when your daughter is about to score the winning goal and your battery dies? No? But isn’t it nice to know there’s a preventative measure? And a sustainable one, at that.

[Source: EcoFriend]

As we noted earlier this month, BP’s Deep Horizon oil spill appears to be the worst man-made environmental disaster of our lifetime. The damage to the Gulf Coast, the ecosystem, the economy, people’s lives, is difficult to fathom. But the disaster also provides an interesting case study in the do’s and don’ts of 21st century branding. The era of “Beyond Petroleum,” BP’s $200 million re-branding effort to convince consumers that environmental concerns were central to shaping business operations, is surely over. Jim Gregory suggests in TalentZoo, “BP provides a case in point of a brand that got way out front of its business process and culture to produce tremendous exposure to risk.” As the above video shows to brilliant effect, that glaring disconnect between how the company was branded and how it actually operated is now so easily ridiculed.

Thanks to the Upright Citizens Brigade for eviscerating BP’s response to the spill. Nothing makes a point quite as effectively as satire.

As Brian Wansink explains in his book, Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think, it’s remarkable how little thought goes into what we eat, why we eat it and how we eat it. Now, diet plans and weight loss programs are a big industry, so clearly we must put some thought into it, right?But there are significant factors most plans don’t consider, says Wansink who is the John Dyson Endowed Chair in the Applied Economics and Management Department at Cornell University, where he directs the Cornell Food and Brand Lab. Wansink and his colleagues study the psychology behind food behavior and have found that a variety of subconscious factors influence our decisions in surprising ways. Environmental conditions, for example how well lit a room is or its temperature, can influence a person’s eating choices. One study, in particular, reveals why some have called Wansink the ‘Sherlock Holmes of Food,’ and demonstrates the influence visual cues have over our food behavior.

The “bottomless bowl” study observed 54 normal-to-obese participants eating soup. The subjects were told the study was to evaluate the taste of the soup. Instead, the study was evaluating how much soup the participants consumed based on visual cues, such as the emptiness of the soup bowl. To test this, Wansink and his colleagues designed the bowls to refill slowly from a tube at the base of each bowl. The bowls never reached the bottom (and the participants wouldn’t notice the refilling), so the researchers were able to observe which participants stopped eating based on how they “felt” and which participants continued to eat based on visual cues. Participants who were unknowingly eating from self-refilling bowls ate 73% more soup than those eating from normal soup bowls. Perhaps more telling, those participants didn’t believe they had consumed more or rate themselves as being more full than those eating from normal bowls.

Dan Pardi, MS CEO, Dan’s-Plan

According to Dan Pardi, Bay Area-based neuroscientist, wellness expert and founder of Dan’s Plan, the study’s findings are “consistent with the notion that the amount of food on a plate or bowl increases intake because it influences expectations of when it is normal to be full (i.e., I’ll be finished eating when the bowl is finished instead of listening to my body). When one depends on external visual cues, it lessens one’s reliance on self-monitoring. It seems that people use their eyes to count calories and not their stomachs.”

Wansink describes one study that asked French participants to explain when they knew they had eaten enough. A standard reply was “I know I’m done eating when I’m full or when the food no longer tastes good.” The study posed the same question to 150 Chicagoans, the majority of whom responded by saying “I know I’m done eating when everyone else is done or when my plate is empty.”

Pardi suggests that, “in our culture of food abundance, where you are likely to be served more food than you need each time you eat, it’s important to..become a better listener to fullness signals. Keep striving to implement quantity-monitoring strategies and do your best to be in tune with what your body is telling you!”

To take Pardi’s advice further, many of our daily decisions (from eating, to driving, to watering the lawn and more) can so easily become mindless. Studies show again and again that when we think multi-dimensionally about each decision (big and small), we make better ones.

[Sources: Mindless Eating, Dan's Plan]

Magnolia: Vermont’s first “certified green” restaurant from lovetomorrowtoday on Vimeo.

LTT’s One Degree TV visits Magnolia Bistro in Burlington, VT to see how Vermont’s first “certified green” restaurant is making it work. Co-owners July Sanders and Shannon Reilly talk about how they blend their own business interests with those of their community. “It’s not rocket science,” says Reilly, but “it’s really just a lot of thought behind little things” that makes the difference.

Here’s another interesting idea via the design blog Yanko, this one from designer Cheol Min Park. The “Saving Energy And Safety Line Glow Tape”- may we suggest a catchier name?- is a sticky tape that glows at night and, well, as the name suggests, saves energy and provides a glowing safety line. You can turn off the lights, confident in the knowledge that you can protect your shins from the sharp edge of the coffee table.

Click here for some past concepts we spotted on Yanko.

It’s hard to talk about the excesses of our technology addiction without sounding like an old fogey. We love technology, and we love the future possibilities it helps us envision. But, as this video reminds us, inspiring our children to consider the natural world requires actually getting them out in it. As Charles Jordan of The Conservation Fund suggests, “what they do not know, they will not protect, and what they do not protect, they will lose.”

At a time when children play more behind screens than outside, PLAY AGAIN, from Oregon-based Ground Productions, unplugs a group of media-savvy teens and takes them on their first wilderness adventure, documenting the wonder that comes from time spent in nature and inspiring action for a sustainable future. As the filmmakers explain,

One generation from now most people in the U.S. will have spent more time in the virtual world than in nature. New media technologies have improved our lives in countless ways. Information now appears with a click. Overseas friends are part of our daily lives. And even grandma loves Wii.

But what are we missing? And how will this impact our children, our society, and eventually, our planet?

American kids spent 90% of their time indoors, and 63% of their weekly activities are spent behind screens. Play Again investigates the consequences of a “childhood removed from nature.”

For more info, check their site and find them on Facebook.

For most people who visit the urban sprawl that is Los Angeles, the lasting impression is often traffic. Cars, smog, concrete… these are as indelible to the landscape as the Hollywood sign, sunshine and botox. But is the traffic really any worse than, say, Washington DC? San Francisco Bay Area? New York? Boston? The size of Los Angeles- it really goes on and on- and the fact that few people know about the public transit options let alone use them, helps perpetuate LA’s image as the city of traffic jams. Ross Ching, a director living in LA, created the above film. Using time-lapse photography, Ching re-imagines life there without cars. Will these streets ever be this empty? No, but it’s an interesting exercise, fantasizing about what our cities could be like if the lasting impression is something other than traffic.

Ching explains on his site,

I live in Los Angeles. I drive in Los Angeles. I think about traffic a lot in Los Angeles. A few months ago, I discovered Matt Logue’s Empty LA photographs. I didn’t think much about it at the time, but every time I was stuck in rush hour all-hour traffic, I found myself thinking, “What if tomorrow everyone’s car disappeared.”

What would that scene look like? How would people react? How quickly would the atmosphere rebound from centuries of fossil fuel emissions?

So I took Matt Logue’s still photography concept and applied it to something that I do best — time lapse. I built a story around the idea of us being shackled to this ball and chain; this love-hate relationship with whom we spend so much time with here in LA.

LTT spent time with Peter Johnson, owner and innovator at Pete’s Greens in Craftsbury, VT. Pete talks about his remarkable four-season organic farm, how the local food movement is helping to revive this area of Vermont and how, if they can do it, anyone can!

Pete’s Greens: at the heart of the locavore movement from lovetomorrowtoday on Vimeo.

Piotr Redinski for NY Times

It turns out recycling is good for us. Well, we always knew it was good for the planet, but it seems it can also be good for our emotional well-being, at least according to David Belt, a developer with a flair for the dramatic and keen sense of how to make us re-think the most familiar of things. His company, Macro Sea, has built a fascinating portfolio of projects, transforming spaces in unconventional and often surprising ways, from creating a recreational area under a freeway viaduct to installing do-it-yourself swimming pools made from Dumpsters in Brooklyn. His latest project, called “Glassphemy!,” is once again re-imagining our relationship to trash and demonstrating that the recycling of glass can be a wholly visceral experience.

Billed as a “psychological recycling experiment,” the Brooklyn installation consists of a 20×30 foot clear box made of steel and bulletproof glass. People stand on a high platform over-looking the structure and throw empty glass bottles into it. The spectacular displays of shattering glass form both a live art experiment, a recycling process and the result of a satisfying release of NYC aggression. As Melena Ryzik explains in her piece for the NYTimes, “the idea is to make recycling a more direct, visceral experience and to purge some New York aggression simultaneously.” The video that accompanies Ryzik’s piece captures this type of ‘eco-therapy’ in action.

From NY Times:

Piotr Redinski for NY Times

With bottles donated by neighborhood bars, “Glassphemy!” will officially open on May 20 to invited guests. The shards of glass collected will be recycled onsite. To finish out the project, ReadyMade magazine will run a contest asking readers for their best recycling ideas, and Mr. Belt’s company, Macro Sea, will make the discarded glass into the winning design. A few potential reuses have already been explored: designers from Hecho, a Brooklyn company, developed a DIY glass polisher out of a cement mixer that is powered by a couple of bikes chained together; the smooth, colored shards created after hours of pedaling are pretty enough to become part of lamps that light the space. Another machine will pulverize the glass into sand for use in the beer garden that Mr. Belt plans for the site, the sort of add-on that helped make the Dumpster pools a must-know-about spot last summer.

During his recent presentation at a TED conference in Los Angeles, celebrated chemist and Harvard professor George Whitesides closes with two quotes; “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” (Albert Einstein) “You know you’ve achieved perfection in design, not when you have nothing left to add but when you have nothing left to take away.” (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)

For Whitesides, these two quotes serve as aphorisms for ’simplicity,’ a concept he attempts to distill in his presentation. It’s a subject we’re particularly interested in here at LTT. In a modern day world, we’ve become experts at embracing complexity and losing touch with the basics. Studies about ’simplicity,’ he explains, are almost non-existent, whereas complexity is a highly developed field of science. We all crave simplicity in our lives, Whitesides suggests, but we’re rewarded for trying to understand and explain complex things.

He begins to define ’simplicity’ in terms of stacking- things that are so basic, so repeatable, so predictable, so reliable that they can be used for building things. Stones, for example, are simple, but taken together they can be shaped and stacked to create cathedral, breath-taking in its complexity- see Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia. He also suggests ‘the internet’ is remarkable in its simplicity- driven by binary code, ones and zeroes- despite the fact that the systems it supports are constantly changing and complex.

It’s a lot to wrap our brains around- perhaps especially on a Tuesday morning- but as we wrestle with this notion of ‘pace, space and interface,’ part of our focus is on this relationship between innovation/progress and simplicity. They’re not mutually exclusive concepts, as Whitesides suggests. In our daily lives, in the way we approach modern challenges, simplicity just might be a worthwhile goal.

In honor of Mother’s Day- thank you to all you Moms out there, where would we be without you?!- LTT goes back to the basics. Responsibility, consideration, care, these are concepts first taught to us by our mother,s and, whether we’re conscious of it or not, each time we act thoughtfully we’re paying tribute to them. Perfection was never a goal she set for us- Mom knows better- instead, she encouraged us to try our best, think about how our actions affected others, learn from our mistakes, take at least one bite of the broccoli, even if the smell of it made you gag. Ok, that’s my experience, but I’m guessing you recognize that motherly approach to ‘one degree changes.’ Moms are the first line of defense, the first teachers of what we now call ‘considered living.’

Some Mom-isms:

“Don’t leave the water running while you brush your teeth.” - As usual, Mom was right. According to the EPA, you can save up to 8 gallons of water a day simply by turning off the tap while you brush your teeth in the morning and at night. Do the same while you shave.

“Eat everything on that plate, mister. Don’t you know there are starving children in Africa!” - Mom was right about this, too. According to an article on Next Generation Food, food wasted in the US and Europe could easily bring the remainder of the world where food is scarce up to basic nutritional requirements. In the United States, food waste has increased by 50% since 1974. As much as 40% of all the food produced in the U.S. is thrown out.

“When you leave a room, turn off the light!” - Maybe Dad would say this too, in which case this should be second nature by now. And while it’s not all about money, converting that waste into allowance money terms can be pretty powerful. For example, if you were to burn a 100 watt bulb for 10 hours, you’d use up 1,000 watt-hours of electricity, or 1 kilowatt hour. In the U.S., 1 kilowatt hour costs about 12 cents. So, that 100 watt bulb left on for 10 hours used 12 cents worth of electricity. Let’s say your kid leaves a few lights on- bathroom light, bedside light, TV room, and, for the sake of argument they each stay on all day while you’re out. 36 cents a day, that’s about $127 a year you’ll dock their allowance. Whoa! Time to start shutting off lights.

You get my point. Mom was right- of course. And, odds are, every time we think twice about being wasteful, we hear just the faintest echo of Mom’s gentle reminder. Happy Mother’s Day!

One of our readers sent us an iPhone pic (below) of a man-made island, built from recycled plastic bottles. The brain-child of British eco-pioneer Richart Sowa, Spiral Island II, as it’s called, is actually his second recycled island (the first one, made of 250,000 plastic bottles, was destroyed by Hurricane Emily). Spiral II, which sits in the waters of Isla Mujeres near Cancun, is 20 meters (60 feet) in diameter, with plants and mangroves built and weaved into the structure. It contains about 100,000 bottles, boasts beaches, a house, 2 ponds, a solar-powered waterfall/river, and solar panels.

His ultimate goal? To build the island bigger and bigger and finally float out to sea, traveling the world from the comfort of his own private paradise.

One man’s trash truly is another man’s treasure. More to come about our reader’s visit there this week.

courtesy of vactioning reader, Kevin & family

In another webisode of One Degree TV, we pay a visit to Burlington, VT-based Lunaroma to talk with owner Leila Bringas about some of the benefits of botanically-based essential oils and how mainstream synthetic alternatives are not only confusing our senses but also posing health risks.

The guiding philosophy at Love Tomorrow Today is that positive change in our lives begins with small decisions. It’s daunting and unrealistic to make sweeping and swift changes to our daily lives, to our economy, to our manufacturing, to our health. But, as Leila suggests, pausing to consider small decisions can help guide us in a healthier direction. Or as we like to say, one degree changes…everything.

For more info on the amazing products on offer at Lunaroma, visit them in Vermont and Hawaii or at their web site. Stay tuned for part two, where Leila helps us create a Love Tomorrow Today ’signature scent.’

Lunaroma: Part One from lovetomorrowtoday on Vimeo.

This is almost TED meets Monty Python- you can hear John Cleese saying, “and now for something completely different.” But here’s Derek Sivers, founder of the successful indie music retailer CD Baby, showing some unusual footage that reveals a few valuable lessons about what it takes to start a movement. Interestingly, while he acknowledges the importance of the founder/leader, it’s the courage of that first follower to stand up and join in that most impresses Sivers.

[Source: TED]