surfrider foundation: catch of the day.

This is smart. Super smart. It’s getting more and more rare to see an actual, honest to goodness guerilla campaign that involves both a surprise and an insight tied together with a purpose. Slapping decals on the hand-rests of escalators just isn’t enough anymore.

To bring some attention to ocean pollution and just how disgusting it really is,  Surfrider Foundation teamed up with Satchi & Satchi LA to create “Catch of the Day.” Simply and brilliantly, they collected actual trash from beaches around the U.S., packaged it like food, and left it on display at farmer’s markets. It’s site-specific, appropriate, impacting, meaningful, shocking, and an actual consumer insight into the very act they’re in the middle of. Someone about to buy fish from the same ocean as the trash in their hands can’t help but be at least a little more enlightened as to how pollution isn’t someone else’s problem.

Condom Strips – Newport Beach, CA

Butts-n-Bits – Venice Beach, CA

Plastic Surprise – Galveston Beach, TX

Styrofoam Bites – Long Beach, CA

Aerosol Valu-Pack – South Padre Beach, TX

Thanks to Jessica at Thoughts Punctuated for the tip.

anna garforth: mossenger.

UK designer Anna Garforth has gone above and beyond green-washing to create a truly biodegradable and all natural graffiti. With “Mossenger” she’s created living, breathing, and sustainable outdoor art. Fashioned from a common moss that thrives on brick walls, she took a quote from poet Eleanor Stevens, carved the moss, and glued it to the wall with a mix of totally biodegradable ingredients.

As the moss grows it will begin to spread out and the words themselves will literally spread themselves, in all their green glory, across the wall and melt into a field of green. Part of an on-going project experimenting with public space and street art, I’m majorly interested to see what Garforth will be up to next. Perhaps the next lines of the poem will strategically find themselves on walls across the city?

Via It’s Nice That

wwf canada: “zero carbon”.

Smart. So so smart. This definitely goes down into the “wish I had thought of that” file. And it’s Canadian to boot.

Taking the concept of recycling into a more virtual realm, WWF Canada’s latest spot, “Zero Carbon”, is “the world’s first zero-carbon TV ad”. It’s made up of recycled video clips (some as old as 60 years), was created during virtual collaboration sessions, and for any in-person meetings the people behind it took public transit to reach each other. Just to make sure nothing was missed, environmental consulting engineer Steve Lapp even did an emissions audit on it’s production. and carbon off-sets were bought for any energy that was used.

The icing on this cake is the old skool appearance of some vintage Shelley Long at 0:22…

(Agency: DraftFCB Canada.)

Via Stimulant

mathieu lehanneur: flood restaurants.

In his ground-breaking new interiour design for Paris’ Flood Restaurants, visionary designer Mathieu Lehanneur has taken the integration of ecology and experiential design to new heights.

Sleek round aquariums sit throughout the space, each filled with 100-litres of Spirulina Plantesis. The micro algae creates oxygen through photosynthesis, aided by the large bright windows nearby. Besides their eye-popping futuristic vibe and awesome visual quality – the aquariums seem to almost glow with an organic phosphoresence – the pure, fresh oxygen they release into the air adds to a full-sensory, holistic experience. The design goes beyond what you can touch and see to improving the environment of the very atmosphere inside the space. You may not be able to consciously sense it, but undoubtedly your body will know.

I love the pure, retro-minimalist feel of the entire design. Besides the algae aquariums, Lehanneur dip-coated all the chairs and tables in PVC to give them an ultra-smooth, wet touch to the skin. The lighting takes the oxygenated concept even further – each fixture has an atmospheric, almost molecular look to it. As if each one is about to burst with air or float away.

Via Snell at Lost At E Minor.

adidas grün: “guerilla gardeners”.

I’ll spare you my usual brand-cult diatribe about how I worship the ground Adidas walks on…oh shit, too late. So Adidas is the king. Once again, they go beyond merely creating and marketing a product to integrating it into a lifestyle and entertaining you while they demonstrate it.

Adidas Original’s new Grün line (German for “green”, dontcha know…) is their foray into the environmentally aware / sustainably created game. Sure, there are the old standbys like making the rubber soles from recycled tires, but Adidas is also investing research into creating shoes and clothing out of renewable, eco-friendly resources like bamboo. We all know that recycling is good, but reducing the amount of what needs to be recycled in the first place is where the future of the planet lies, and Adidas is taking steps to make that happen.

Knowing that environmentalism is a mind-set, not just a selling point, their Grün campaign has kicked off with “Guerilla Gardening”. For all intents and purposes, it’s graffiti with plants. The aim is to take a neglected, off limits urban space and turn it into a thing of beauty – be it with spray paint or with grass. Check out the “seed bombs”…

The line divides into three facets: “Made From” features track suits and apparel made from sustainably grown bamboo, cotton, crepe rubber, hemp, and rice husks.

All of the clothing in the “Reground” range is fully biodegradeable – right down to the zippers and buttons. One of the shirts in the Women’s “Reground” collection is made from from a mix of organic soybean and cotton fibres, and the neckline is inlaid with sunflower seeds.

Finally, everything in the “Recycled” line is exactly what it says – shoes and apparel made from 100% recycled plastic soda bottles, rubber, and others materials that otherwise would have sat in a landfill for eternity.

To prove it’s point, Adidas has taken the organic push and put it into more traditional marketing channels – like these green billboards made mostly from living plants and flowers:

Shoe pics via Sneaker Freaker

mtv switch: “3650”.

MTV’s Public Service Announcements (PSAs) are always beyond kick ass. They find the ideal blend of visual style, music, genuine emotion, and entertainment that all companies should aspire to when trying to hit home with the much sought after 16-30s. From their mind-blowing (literally) HIV/AIDS awareness ad “Shot” to the shocking realism and quiet truth of MTV Think’s “Subway” and “Family Room”, they consistently get it bang on. The mix of message, meaning, and art is unstoppable.

This spot, directed by duo Ubik for MTV’s environmental awareness campaign – MTV Switch – is pure win. The animation is sharp and eye-catching, and rather than ramming some bombastic message into our faces it’s just simple and lovely and allows us to make its emotional feeling our own emotional feeling. This is an ad you can embrace. Love love love it. Ubik won “Best Animation” at the BTAA Craft Awards for this and were just nominated for “Best Film and TV Graphics” at the British Animation Awards. They deserve it big time.

The YouTube version is right here, but to truly get the nuanced quality of the animation, I suggest watching the high-res version here.

(Agency: Ogilvy & Mather)

While you’re at it, check out these equally awesome PSAs from MTV Switch.

Via The Denver Egotist via Motionographer

twitchen: lampshade.

Daddy likey. I realize that to some this might tread a little too close to a 1989 Blanche Deveraux nouveau Miami vibe, but to me the quality of the print gives just the right organic feel. If anybody would care to donate $325 to me so that I can buy it, feel free to email me.

Check out the lamp’s specs (or buy one) here.

Via BLTD

caroline wetterling: gro.

Ok, so let me try and explain the many reasons why I love this. Firstly, at the risk of understatement, plants are awesome. I read once that you should try and have a living thing in every room of your house, and plants give you some ecological energy and fresh O2 to burn.

Secondly, I love forward-thinking design that merges the organic with the modern; finding new ways to harness the beauty of botanical growth with the tech-geeky joy of owning something that looks like you could take it on a space ship. Thirdly – I’m into compartmentalized packaging. One of my guilty pleasures is airplane food. I have an almost Pavlovian response to the sound of that jangly trolley being wheeled down the aisle, and then those trays with the little boxes, neatly laid out for maximum efficiency and somehow and leaving you wanting more.

So, when Swedish designer Caroline Wetterling created Gro – a living, single-serving plant whose growth is displayed inside a sleek, futuristic glass egg – it’s three times the joy for me. Designed while she was still a student at Beckman’s College of Design, she said, “The greenhouse can host the three initial stages of a seed’s development, from seed to shoot to the development of true leaves. Plants like Forgetmenot, four-leaved clover and wild strawberries have enough space to flourish inside the capsule. In the bottom of the capsule, a set of bars is placed to keep the right level of moisture in the soil. The spout acts as a ventilation hole – it allows for oxygen to come in, condensation to come out, and keeps the proper temperature inside the capsule.”

And it’s cute as fuck.

honda: “plant this letter”.

Green is the new Ad. As part of it’s new drive to raise the green-cred on it’s lawn and garden vehicles, Honda sent out a direct mail letter that literally grows. Once soaked in water and planted in soil, the seeds inside the paper itself grow into wildflowers. Though one could fairly easily argue the environmental implications of a direct mail letter (the creation of more paper, regardless of it’s biodegradability or green purpose, uses chemicals and expends energy… I’m just sayin’) the romantic in me loves the beautiful idea of this letter:

Brain-stormed by London, UK agency Inferno and copywritten by Jaime Diskin, they really seem to have walked their talk on this one: the envelope and paper were 100% recycled and acid free and the inks were green-friendly as well.

There’s a certain green simplicity going on here that I really love. Keep in mind this isn’t the first time something like this had been done; earlier this year Bogle Bartle Hegarty Asia created plantable tags for Levi’s Eco Jeans (made from 100% organic cotton) that had the whole paper-with-wildflower-seeds thing going on. Still, an idea this cool deserves to be re-envisioned. Plus, the concept of viable seeds embedded in paper existed before either of these campaigns and neither of these agencies invented it, so I think it’s fair game to find new ways to use such an eye-catching concept.

nike trash talk.

Promoted as the brainchild of Nike star endorser and big time environmentalist Steve Nash, last month Nike released the Trash Talk – the first high-end running shoe made not just out of environmentally friendly first-run materials, but literally out of scraps that would otherwise have been tossed.

Check out the details on exactly what Nike is (and isn’t) doing to walk their trash talk, as well as read the various soap-boxing of environmentalists claiming to see right through this, at the must-read Treehugger.