Sundance Channel

Philips Microbial system fuels your home with your crap – literally

Blair Pfander — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 18:00:21 +0000

Do you fantasize about living your life like a microbe of waste-producing bacteria? Well, now's your chance. Unveiled during Dutch Design Week, Philips' latest home design concept, The Microbial Home, takes inspiration from naturally occurring processes to create energy-saving kitchen, dining and bathroom devices. According to the designers, "'we view the home as a biological machine to filter, process and recycle what we conventionally think of as waste."

New cycling campaign says “thank you” to bicyclists

Jeff McIntire-Strasburg — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 18:00:37 +0000

While bicycling hasn't hit the kind of critical mass we see in other countries, it's certainly taking off in the United States. As with any new trend, "cool factors" come into play. Whether it's the hardcore athletic cyclist decked out in brightly-colored Lycra or the hipster on his/her single-speed cruiser, biking has become a means of sharing one's sense of identity, as well as a healthy, low-carbon means of transportation.

Bidder 70

Robert Redford — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 15:44:51 +0000

In 2008 a young environmental activist named Tim DeChristopher bid on 13 parcels of land quietly put up for auction by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in the waning days of the Bush Administration. This land was part of a larger offering by the BLM of federal public land in an attempt to open it up to oil and gas exploration. The majority of the land was near national parks in southern Utah.

A log cabin on wheels

Perrin Drumm — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 19:04:10 +0000

Modular, mobile living was a big theme in design this year, from prefabricated, shippable houses to small temporary rooms that can be set up anywhere you like, in the backyard or the backwoods. The front runner, however, has to be the log cabin designed by Piet Hein Eek.

Sex toys to celebrate Earth Day

Em and Lo — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 17:00:58 +0000

Fun Factory's rechargeable Delight

What better way to celebrate Earth Day today than to experience those earthly delights that come from safe, environmentally friendly sex toys? Just remember what eco-qualities to look for when choosing your party stick:

Safe materials: You want toys made from non-toxic, non-porous, hypoallergenic, medical-grade, pure materials. Avoid phthalates at all costs (those plastic softeners that make a toy wreak like a vinyl shower curtain or a new car). And just because the packaging mentions silicone doesn't mean it doesn't have a bunch of toxic additives. Look for toys made from 100% silicone, surgical steel, safe metal, solid glass, hard plastic like acrylic, or wood.
Rechargeability: Consider all the batteries you'll never have to use and throw away when you invest in a rechargeable toy, like Fun Factory's Delight. Even better: the self-powered, hand-cracked Earth Angel vibe!

How to make your love life green and sustainable

Em and Lo — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 20:00:18 +0000

In honor of the 40th anniversary of Earth Day coming up tomorrow, April 22nd, we had a chat with Stefanie Iris Weiss about her new book Eco Sex: Go Green Between the Sheets and Make Your Love Life Sustainable. How does going green improve your sex life? If your sex life has gone stale, greening it up instantly relights the spark. Green is healthy, and being healthy automatically grants you a superior sex life. You'll have more stamina, a heightened libido, a slim, sexy body. What could be better? How can you make dating more green? When prepping for a date, use paraben-free products made from USDA-certified organic ingredients, or even better, go DIY and make your own. When it comes to the traditional dinner date, choose restaurants that serve locally grown, organic, sustainable and fair-trade food. Try a vegan or vegetarian restaurant or a homemade feast of raw or vegan food to seduce your lover. And when you're on your way to meet your date, opt for public transportation, bike, or walk to your rendezvous point. Leave the car at home -- you can find a new version of the back seat if you get that far.

Josh Dorfman speaks about Season 2 of THE LAZY ENVIRONMENTALIST

Josh Dorfman — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 18:30:41 +0000

Josh Dorfman gives advice to professional martial arts athlete Jason Moontasri in Season 2 of THE LAZY ENVIRONMENTALIST Season 2 of THE LAZY ENVIRONMENTALIST premieres Tuesday, April 20 at 8PM E/P. Over the next couple of months, I plan to share some thoughts here based on the upcoming season of "The Lazy Environmentalist." In many ways, Season 2 has enabled me to bring to fruition the goals I'd set seven years ago when I founded Vivavi, a modern design, green products retail company, to rebrand environmentalism as appealing and attractive. To do so you've got to have outstanding green solutions. You’ve also got to be able to frame those choices in ways that get environmental skeptics — and the otherwise apathetic or indifferent — excited about them. To achieve the former you've got to know where to look and you've got to count on green entrepreneurs to constantly improve their products and services to the point where they pass my green litmus test: would people want them even if the products and services weren't green. To achieve the latter, I've had to do a lot of reflection about what really makes people tick and what gets them excited — or at least somewhat enthusiastic — about embracing new choices. In other words, I've had to a lot of thinking about how to present green choices so that people perceive them to be in their own self-interest. It's not my environmental values that I'm trying to impose on others. Instead, it's getting them to see that their own self-interest is best served by the best green options available today.

Isabella Rossellini returns with spawn of GREEN PORNO: all new video series, SEDUCE ME

Sundance Channel — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 13:30:27 +0000

Image from the set of SEDUCE ME Prepare to be seduced by Isabella Rossellini and her glorious new web series for SundanceChannel.com, SEDUCE ME. Very much the spawn of her multiple Webby Award winning series, GREEN PORNO, SEDUCE ME continues Isabella’s explorations of the wild kingdom, only this time concentrating on the courting rituals of [...]

FULL FRONTAL FASHION highlights

Sundance Channel — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 22:39:44 +0000

Bread shoes by Remigijus and Egidijus Praspaliauskas Think of this as your FULL FRONTAL FASHION cliff notes. Check out the quirky creation that’s sure to curb your hunger for fashion — available in multiple sizes and grains. Bon appetit! Cator thawed out in Miami for the Art Basel Bash. Vena Cava celebrates their collaboration with [...]

Time Freaking Magazine covers green sex accessories

Em and Lo — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:00:09 +0000

Earth Angel Hand-Powered Vibe featured in Time’s eco sex piece Damn it! Why, or why, didn’t we get off our asses and pitch Time the “Sex and the Eco City” piece in this week’s issue? It’s all stuff we’ve covered before! [Shameless self-promotion alert:] Vegan condoms? Check. Hand-powered vibrators? Check. JimmyJane products? Check. Phthalates? Check? [...]

Jimmyjane’s new Iconic vibes

Em and Lo — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 16:00:16 +0000

As far as good ideas go, this one is right up there with sliced bread and TiVo: 1) Take the best, most popular vibrators that ever existed. 2) Make them out of hygienic, non-porous, phthalate-free material (unlike all their knockoffs). 3) Give the vibes a cool design touch by making them all white. And voila! [...]

The Gentleman’s G-Spot Massager

Em and Lo — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 16:00:04 +0000

We Naked Love bloggers are suckers for a decent sex toy, especially if it’s made by Lelo, the Swedish “pleasure objects” company with impeccable taste and an eye for ergonomics. They’ve just come out with a new gizmo for guys — yes, guys — butchly named “Billy.” Apparently, men were enjoying another one of their [...]

Farmers’ marketing and markets

Bradford Shellhammer — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 18:36:57 +0000

Living in both San Francisco and New York the past decade has allowed me to take advantage of some fantastic farmers' markets. So it came as a surprise for me to learn that only 1% of the total food produced in the U.S. comes from farmers' markets. (Perrin seemed just as confounded in her post about the New Amsterdam Market.) Why aren't more people enjoying these bounties?

Dumpster Dive

Bradford Shellhammer — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 16:33:42 +0000

New Yorkers don’t have pools. We just don’t have the space. But all of that is changing thanks to MacroSea, a design firm that is reinventing the swimming pool. Taking recycling to the next level the group has remade three trash dumpsters, converting them into swimming pools. The concept of taking existing storage containers and [...]

THE LAZY ENVIRONMENTALIST : Lazy Brother

Josh Dorfman — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 18:19:15 +0000

THE LAZY ENVIRONMENTALIST, hosted by Josh Dorfman, screens Tuesdays at 9PM on Sundance Channel. It’s been “interesting” to witness the varying degrees of interest on the part of my immediate family members to my Lazy Environmentalist endeavors. I mean, I’m pretty sure my Mom has read my books, but I can’t say the same for my dad or my brother. And while it’s pretty simple to sign up for a subscription to Sirius Radio, no one in my family ever did so during the two years I hosted my radio show on that network. But things changed as soon as I made the Lazy Environmentalist TV pilot. “Josh” was no longer just “off doing some weird-eco-save-the-planet-thing even though he has an MBA and could be cashing in by now.” To the contrary, suddenly everyone wanted to watch what the Lazy Environmentalist was up to. And not just once either; they wanted to watch it over and over again, share it with guests on holidays and with pretty much whoever else visited my folks’ house for any reason whatsoever be it to deliver the mail or even exterminate bugs.

Berlin brothel encourages johns to go green

Em and Lo — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 16:00:50 +0000

photo by Tony the Misfit Urban Outfitters aren't the only ones trying to make bicycles sexier. A brothel in Berlin, Germany, where prostitution is legal, is now offering discounts to customers who arrive by bike or a verifiable form of public transportation: 5 euros off a 70-euro 45-minute sesh.

THE LAZY ENVIRONMENTALIST : Lazy Driver

Josh Dorfman — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 20:58:32 +0000

THE LAZY ENVIRONMENTALIST, hosted by Josh Dorfman, screens Tuesdays at 9PM on Sundance Channel. From a Lazy Environmentalist perspective, I have to admit that I’m not altogether unhappy to see gas prices rising again. For better or worse, the most effective way I’ve encountered to convince people to make environmentally sound choices is to appeal directly to their wallets. So when gas prices rise, fuel-efficient alternatives start to look much more appealing. In “Lazy Driver” I’m working with a really busy courier service - delivering on the order of several hundred packages around Los Angeles per day - to figure out how to boost the fuel economy of their cars (to reduce greenhouse gas emissions), reduce fuel costs and still enable deliveries to be made in time.

Robert Redford on Paul Newman, Sundance and the Increasingly Crucial Fight to Save the Earth

Sundance Channel — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 15:25:30 +0000

Speaking about his long-time friend and mentor, Robert Redford told a crowd in New York City that he learned a great deal from the late Paul Newman, especially generosity. "Back then it was really about actors playing roles. It wasn't until later that it became more about actors' personalities," Redford told a packed theater at Lincoln Center. The crowd enthusiastically hung on Redford's words. This was no doubt because of the star power of the great actor, director and Sundance Institute creator (particularly because the audience skewed toward his generation), but perhaps even more so because the crowd was packed with committed environmentalists. This was a special, intimate conversation between Redford, a longtime green leader, and veteran radio journalist Bob Edwards (formerly of NPR and now of Sirius radio), hosted by the New York-based Natural Resources Defense Council (Watch video of NRDC head Frances Beinecke accepting a 2009 Heart of Green Award).

THE LAZY ENVIRONMENTALIST : Lazy Mayor

Josh Dorfman — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 18:00:24 +0000

THE LAZY ENVIRONMENTALIST, hosted by Josh Dorfman, screens Tuesdays at 9PM on Sundance Channel. Working with John Tran, the mayor of Rosemead, CA, was particularly fascinating. To be sure, The Lazy Environmentalist typically focuses on helping individuals conveniently make environmentally conscious choices that fit their lifestyles. However, this same philosophy can also be applied to a town or city. In fact, sometimes the best way to help people easily and enjoyably reduce their environmental impact is to focus on making changes at the municipal level. For example, Rosemead’s recycling rates are very low; only about 25% of recyclable trash is diverted from the landfill and actually recycled. So in “Lazy Mayor” I present Mayor Tran with a municipal recycling solution that can lower the town’s costs while also making it easy, convenient, and financially rewarding for Rosemead residents to sort the recycling in their homes. It’s the kind of win-win-win solution that saves taxpayer money, financially incentives people to participate in environmental action, and benefits the planet in two major ways: 1) it reduces greenhouse gas emissions and 2) it reduces our demand for virgin natural resources from which to make new products.

THE LAZY ENVIRONMENTALIST : Lazy Bride

Josh Dorfman — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 18:00:29 +0000

THE LAZY ENVIRONMENTALIST, hosted by Josh Dorfman, screens Tuesdays at 9PM on Sundance Channel. In this episode I’m challenged to help green a wedding that’s already well into its planning. The challenge itself was really fun especially because the groom shared my aversion to all things both “eco” and “beige.” That was one of the first rules that the couple set – no beige at the wedding no matter what. And thank God! I see no reason why environmentally friendly choices shouldn’t be outstanding and make a wedding even more beautiful or tasty or memorable precisely because of the fact that they are eco-friendly. To my way of thinking, green should be an experiential enhancer.

THE LAZY ENVIRONMENTALIST : Lazy Principal

Josh Dorfman — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 17:50:55 +0000

THE LAZY ENVIRONMENTALIST, hosted by Josh Dorfman, screens Tuesdays at 9PM on Sundance Channel. Episode two is definitely one of my favorites. In “Lazy Principal” I get to hang out with kids, gauge their point of view, and see how effectively I can engage them in environmental action. I’m also helped by my good friend and outstanding green innovator and teacher, Mike O’Brien, who I call upon to help me implement change in a classroom and in other areas around the school.

THE LAZY ENVIRONMENTALIST : Lazy Family

Josh Dorfman — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 19:30:20 +0000

THE LAZY ENVIRONMENTALIST, hosted by Josh Dorfman, screens Tuesdays at 9PM on Sundance Channel. I’m really excited for this first episode. I think that viewers will hopefully find this show to feel different than many other environmental shows that they’ve watched before. One of the primary reasons is that in this show we don’t engage in “green show and tell” by which I mean simply presenting eco-friendly options for the camera without anyone being able to evaluate them. Instead, I set out to see how well many of the most cutting-edge environmental alternatives perform under real life conditions based on the feedback and opinions of our “heroes” who are trying out my suggestions in each episode.

Celebrate the Earth with HOME, a film by Yann Arthus-Bertrand

Sundance Channel — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 19:15:45 +0000

HOME is a travel notebook, showing landscapes captured from a bird’s eye view above. This film calls for a new awareness, inviting the viewer to stop for a moment in order to look at our planet and realize how we treat her treasures and her beauty. Directed by internationally renowned French photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand, produced by world famous director Luc Besson and narrated by five-time Academy Award® nominee Glenn Close, HOME aims to change the way people see the planet and their impact on it. Shot in high definition in 54 countries and 120 locations over 217 days, the unique and first-time ever all-aerial filming style highlights the Earth’s wonders as well as its wounds and provides a necessary perspective to approach the changing environment.

HIGH LINE STORIES – In the beginning…

Sundance Channel — Fri, 29 May 2009 18:30:25 +0000

Robert Hammond and Joshua David, co-founders, Friends of the High Line In conjunction with our new digital shorts series HIGH LINE STORIES, Sundancechannel.com caught up with the very busy co-founders of Friends of the High Line, Robert Hammond and Joshua David and learned more about how two citizens of New York City's Chelsea neighborhood, who had never previously met, joined forces to save and re-purpose the High Line. Learn the transformation of this elevated railway as New York City reinvents the urban oasis.

High Line Stories – New York City Reinvents the Urban Oasis

Sundance Channel — Tue, 26 May 2009 21:10:28 +0000

Sundancechannel.com is excited to present HIGH LINE STORIES as part of our original programming in Digital Shorts. The series tells the story of the High Line in New York City, profiling those involved in transforming this 1.5 mile elevated railway along the west side of Manhattan into a park in the sky. From celebrities to [...]

Chris Jordan, Gyre – woodblock prints out of trash

Matthew Rodriguez — Thu, 14 May 2009 19:03:12 +0000

Artist Chris Jordan built this amazing 8' x 11' reproduction of Hokusai's famous woodblock print, the Great Wave made entirely from just plastic trash collected from the Pacific Ocean.

The most dangerous species in the Mediterranean

Matthew Rodriguez — Wed, 06 May 2009 21:28:01 +0000

A PSA from the Government of Catalunya in their effort at keeping the Mediterranean sea clean with this neat ad by Klas Ernflo. Click here to see larger version.

Cruelty-free, lactose-intolerant condoms

Em and Lo — Mon, 04 May 2009 20:00:06 +0000

Being a vegan is hard sometimes: going out to restaurants with friends makes you as high maintenance as Meg Ryan in WHEN HARRY MET SALLY, stand-up comedy is usually not a career option, and finding a condom made without animal by-products like milk protein is damn near impossible. Thank goodness for Glyde Condoms, then — [...]

10 futuristic green corporate buildings

Matthew Rodriguez — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 15:04:12 +0000

Some of these buildings exist only on paper (or rather a computer hard drive), but this is a list of 10 large office buildings “that are not only bold, beautiful and futuristic, but ‘green’ too.” I’m especially impressed by the “Cactus Building,” a new government building in Doha, Qatar. As the name suggests, it “draws [...]

Tantus is a Titan among sex toys

Em and Lo — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 16:00:49 +0000

photo: Delta Vibrator from Tantus We’re big proponents of high quality sex toys made from body-safe materials, which is why we’ve always been big fans of Tantus — they’re a relatively small American manufacturer of 100% medical grade silicone toys. They recently sent out this training video to their retailers in order to help sales [...]

Sundance Film Festival and Brita Filter For Good

Sundance Channel — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 23:34:19 +0000

Thanks to Brita and Nalgene, the 2009 Sundance Film Festival will reduce the need for 50,000 bottles* of water. Drinking water is a known remedy to altitude sickness, so at this year's Sundance Film Festival, you can support a green cause by hydrating yourself with Brita filtered water.