1GreenProduct.com Eureka envirovac Sweepstakes -- We Have a Winner!!

I am delighted to announce that yesterday morning we chose a winner for the 1GreenProduct.com Eureka envirovac Sweepstakes with the help of Random.org.

In the interest of full transparency, I am posting screenshots from Random.org showing the parameters of the selection process and the actual subscriber number (#577) who was chosen.

Subscriber #577 turned out to be Pamela from The Dalles, Oregon. Congratulations to Pamela!! A new Eureka envirovac will shortly be making its way to Pamela's door.

(Incidentally, Pamela happens to be a fantastic photographer, with a number of great nature images on her portfolio site. You can check out some of her work by following this link.)

In addition to congratulating Pamela, I would like to thank everyone who participated in the Sweepstakes.

I was truly amazed and inspired to read so many great comments and see such overwhelming interest in this energy-efficient vacuum cleaner. In the end, we had more than 750 people sign up for the Sweepstakes.

I hope that many of you who did not win will nonetheless remain active subscribers. Your email subscription will deliver news and reviews 3-5 times per week on great green products that you can buy today.

As long as you're an active subscriber, you'll also be automatically entered in future 1GreenProduct.com sweepstakes drawings - like the one we plan to start tomorrow!

Even in weeks when we don't have sweepstakes drawings, we'll still try to obtain coupon codes or discounts to give you the best deals on the eco-friendly products we feature.

We'll also try to bring you news of other Green contests and sweepstakes from around the Internet.

Again, my sincere thanks to all who participated in the Eureka envirovac Sweepstakes.

- Aaron Dalton, 1GreenProduct.com

Fashion - Beleaf organic cotton tote

For way too long I postponed buying a reusable tote to carry my purchases home from the drugstore, grocery store and other markets.

I reasoned that since I reused the plastic bags as trash bags, I was being somewhat eco-sensitive.

(I certainly didn't want to have to go out and buy plastic trash bags for my apartment...)

Then I discovered biodegradable, compostable BioBags made from corn starch.

Once I started using BioBags for my trash, I no longer had any reasonable excuse to keep accepting plastic bags at the markets.

Fortunately, about the same time, I discovered the Beleaf organic cotton tote bag.

What makes Beleaf a great green product?

1) It's made from 100% organic cotton, which is about a jazillion times better for the planet than conventional cotton as described here.

2) It's Stitched with Purpose™. Yes, that's a slogan, but it's also speaks admirably to both the quality and care with which the bag was built. You can tell this bag was built to last and meant to carry some heavy loads. I'm not saying I'd load up the bag with watermelons (for that you'd want a wheelbarrow), but I feel confident lugging home some milk, cereal and other assorted goodies in my Beleaf tote.

3) It's got a beautiful swirly butterfly design applied using water-based inks. Yes, I'm a man who likes to carry a butterfly bag.

4) The wide straps with some reinforced stitching on the shoulder make it comfortable and natural to carry the bag loaded or empty. There's some smart design at work here...

5) 1% of all Beleaf bag sales go to the nonprofit organization 1% for the Planet. Beleaf's donations are funneled to American Forests to protect, restore and enhance healthy forests.

The Beleaf tote is a simple product, but it also happens to be one of our favorite green products we've found so far. Help cut down on the estimated 100 billon bags Americans throw away ever year. Get a reusable organic cotton tote today.

Where to buy:
Purchase the Beleaf tote online ($36) through the Beleaf website.

Spotlight - Urban Garden Casual / Tomato Casual

Even though we're trying to create a valuable Green resource on the 'Net, we recognize we can't fulfill all your Green needs. So every once in a while, we'll turn the Spotlight on other great eco-friendly online resources. This weekend, we turn our attention to Tomato Casual and Urban Garden Casual.

Before starting 1GreenProduct.com, I ran another blog focused on the benefits of eating locally-grown food.

Buy a tomato (or any other produce) in a supermarket and you've got little control over what pesticides or herbicides were sprayed on your food. Grow a tomato at home and you have control over how it's raised.

Buying an organic tomato at the market may be better from a Green standpoint, but you've still got the environmental costs of transporting the tomato from a faraway field to the grocery store. Grow a tomato at home and the food only has to travel from your back garden to your table.

That's why we're delighted to see our good friend Reggie Solomon, creator of Tomato Casual and Urban Garden Casual get some TV exposure on FOX News for all the great advice he gives home gardeners (and aspiring home gardeners) everywhere.

Congratulations, Reggie!

PS - For those of you born without a green thumb, another good eco-friendly food option might be to join a Community Supported Agriculture program that supports a local family farm. You'll get delicious fresh produce and help preserve farmland in your community.

Food - LaLoo's Goat's Milk Ice Cream

It's hot and steamy in New York City around this time of year.

You could probably fry an egg on the sidewalk, but that would be grody to the max.

Besides, that dirty fried egg wouldn't help you beat the heat. It's far better to cool off with something cool and creamy like LaLoo's Goat's Milk Ice Cream.

According to LaLoo's website, goat's milk presents an easier to digest alternative for folks with lactose intolerance who have problems with cow's milk-based products. The company also says that goat's milk has more vitamins A and D (though less folic acid and vitamin B12) than cow's milk. LaLoo's Goat's Milk Ice Cream also contains both natural and added probiotic 'friendly' bacteria such as Lactobacillus bulgaricus, Streptococcus thermophilus, Lactobacillus acidophilus and Bifidus culture.

From a Green standpoint, we like the fact that LaLoo's has partnered with the Waterkeeper Alliance this summer to help fund the Alliance's efforts to protect watersheds and waterways from pollution. (Look for the Waterkeeper Alliance logo on pints of LaLoo's Goats Milk Ice Cream sold in NY, Los Angels and San Francisco f you want 25% of your purchase price to go toward Alliance programs.)

LaLoo's PR rep sent us an article from Dairy Goat Journal in which LaLoo's founder Laura Howard is quoted as saying that goats are good for the environment. The article goes on to quote Howard as saying:

"Goats eat the dry brush that causes fires and they eradicate poison oak. They don't decimate the land, they are light on their feet and because they are smaller they are the perfect addition to any biodynamic farm. In fact, goats actually help to aerate the soil where they browse and make it suppler for the natural habitat to grow."

(I would have thought that Howard had made up the word 'suppler' instead of using the term 'more supple', but it turns out that 'suppler' is a real word after all as in, "I wish that I was suppler so that I could touch my toes without bending my knees." Who knew? ... Well, apparently Ms. Howard knew actually.)

The same Dairy Goat Journal notes that LaLoo's Goat's Milk Ice Cream is humane-certified, carbon neutral, GMO-free and all natural. Those are all phrases that get our (zero emission) motor running at 1GreenProduct.com.

Actually, we couldn't find mention of these laudable attributes on Laloo's website or on its packaging. Our advice - ditch the modesty and let Green consumers know all the eco-friendly benefits of choosing LaLoo's ice cream.

One Green selling point that is mentioned on LaLoo's packaging is the fact that LaLoo's goats roam freely on 350 acres of Sonoma hillsides.

We applaud this idea of letting animals roam free over the landscape where they can have all sorts of serendipitous encounters with other photogenic creatures.

You probably want to know how it tastes. Well, I can only describe LaLoo's Deep Chocolate by saying it's like diving into a giant tub of chocolatey goodness. Chocoholics who taste this flavor will stop worrying and learn to love the goat.

As for Vanilla Snowflake, I did feel like a bit more of the goat-y tang came through here, probably because it couldn't hide under a chocolate blanket. Personally, we must (guiltily) admit that we prefer the taste of vanilla ice cream made from cow milk, but for more adventurous palates and those who like goat milk cheeses, this flavor could hit the spot.

The only other flavor at our local market was Mission Fig (we did not indulge), but LaLoo's does make some tasty-sounding concoctions like Rumplemint, Capraccino and Molasses Tipsycake.

ps - LaLoo's may not be the ideal diet food, but it is advertised as naturally low fat. As you can see from this nutritional info, the Deep Chocolate variety has about 19% of your daily recommended saturated fat per serving (4 servings per pint). I don't have a premium brand cow milk ice cream in front of me for comparison purposes, but I believe that a slightly larger serving size of brands like Haagen-Dazs® or Ben & Jerry's will often have more than 50% of your daily recommended saturated fat quotient. So...LaLoo's gets our vote in the 'better for your swimsuit figure' category.

Where to buy:

Use the Store Locator on LaLoo's website to find a retail outlet near you. Not surprisingly, Whole Foods Market carries LaLoo's ice cream, but you'll also find the product in many smaller health food and natural food stores.

Sweepstakes Reminder:

Just a few days left to enter the 1GreenProduct.com Eureka envirovac Sweepstakes. The contest ends Sunday night at 11:59 p.m. EDT. Good luck to all!

Outdoor / Home - Windspire wind turbine

We often try to feature affordable products on 1GreenProduct.com, because we believe that everyone should be able to live Green.

But how much would you be willing to pay to cut your monthly energy bill by up to 50%?

Mariah Power is hoping that $4,995 won't sound too steep. That's the MSRP on the new Windspire ® vertical axis wind turbine now available for purchase.

The Windspire includes a high-efficiency generator, integrated inverter, wireless performance monitor and tilt-up monopole. Installation by an authorized dealer costs around $1000 more.

Ideally you'll want a half-acre of land and 12-mile per hour average winds to get the full 2000 kWh of electricity from the Windspire.

If you're fortunate to have such a property, the Windspire may go a long way toward helping you harness the power of the wind to produce clean energy for your home.

PS - Want to take a gander at a Windspire in action before you buy? If you live near Washington, D.C., you're in luck. Stop by the United States Botanic Garden's sustainability exhibition on the Mall anytime before October 13th. Hey, if it's good enough for our nation's Capitol...

Where to buy:
Email your sales inquiry to Mariah Power. The company will match you with a nearby dealer.

FYI, Mariah Power stands behind the Windspire (metaphorically) with a 5-year warranty.

According to Mariah Power, your purchase of a Windspire may also qualify you for various tax rebates or incentives.

Sweepstakes Reminder:

If you haven't entered the 2008 1GreenProduct.com Eureka envirovac Sweepstakes yet, you still have a few more days to participate before the contest ends.

Find out all about the contest and how to enter by reading the Eureka envirovac post. Good luck!

Another Great Green Sweepstakes!

Thanks to everyone who signed up yesterday for the 1GreenProduct.com Eureka envirovac sweepstakes!

If you're feeling generous, we hope you'll share news of our contest with your friends and relations...

Remember that your 1GreenProduct.com email subscription not only gives you a chance to win the Eureka envirovac, but also automatically enters you into any future 1GreenProduct.com sweepstakes as long as you continue to be an email subscriber in good standing.

Of course, you'll also get news and reviews about lots of great eco-friendly products.

Feeling lucky and looking to win more Green products? Why not hop over to one of our favorite other Green blogs - Green Your Decor - to enter the Eco-Creative WayBasics giveaway?

Thanks again for joining our subscriber list. We hope you like our content. Feel free to send us suggestions anytime of ways that we can improve the site and make it an even more valuable eco-resource.

Home / Technology - Eureka envirovac + First 1GreenProduct.com Sweepstakes!

Efficiency - it's a beautiful word.

According to Dictionary.com, efficiency is both:

1) the ability to accomplish a job with minimum expenditure of time and effort

and

2) the ratio of the work done by a machine in comparison to the energy supplied to that machine

Measured against both definitions, the Eureka envirovac™ scores high marks.

In our tests, this vacuum did a great job. Using the machine's hardwood floor setting, we quickly sucked up dust and debris from our floor, then turned to the hoses and attachments to polish off dust bunnies from the window blinds and corners. The machine seems well-made -- easy to maneuver, not particularly noisy. It does the job with a minimum expenditure of time and effort.

(Oh the 25-foot long cord also came in handy. We didn't have to unplug the machine once to vacuum the entire apartment...which gives you an idea of the size of the apartment.)

That's all well and good. But is the envirovac really green? Yep.

According to Eureka, the envirovac's 8-amp motor uses 1/3 less energy than a standard upright vac's 12-amp motor. That makes sense, as near as we can recall from our study of fractions.

The good folks at Eureka have also figured out how to fit the envirovac into a smaller package. The packaging that remains is made of 100% recycled, unbleached cardboard.

Even if you're trying to be green, the world outside your door is still polluting like mad. Fortunately, the envirovac has a washable and reusable HEPA filter designed to trap 99.97% of dust, allergens and other small particles.

Less effort, less energy, less indoor pollution - all of which should help you breathe easy. Here’s looking at you, Mr. Efficiency…

Where to buy:
Eureka has an exclusive distribution with Wal-Mart for the envirovac. You can buy the envirovac online or in stores for an MSRP of just $72.22.

Based on its efficiency and good value, we feel the Eureka envirovac deserves a strong 1GreenProduct.com recommendation.

How to win:

We're delighted to announced the first ever 1GreenProduct.com Sweepstakes. Thanks to the generosity of Eureka, we can offer you the chance to win a free envirovac vacuum cleaner.

As we promised last week, entering the sweepstakes is simple. There's no purchase necessary. Just sign up for a 1Greenproduct.com email subscription using the sign-up box in the upper right hand corner of the screen (underneath the rabbit photo) or by using this link. You must subscribe by 11:59 p.m. EDT on AUGUST 10, 2008 in order to enter the sweepstakes. (Apologies that sweepstakes ending was originally listed as October 10. The actual ending date is August 10.) We will then choose one (1) winner using an Internet-based random number generator at Random.org.

By the way, we don't have a formal privacy policy at this point, but we can promise we will never sell your email address or send any spam. The email address is used solely to deliver 1GreenProduct.com updates whenever we post a new story. Generally, you can expect to receive between 3-5 updates per week depending on how energetic we feel and how many cool Green products come our way.

We hope to run quite a few more Green product giveaways in the future and the good news is that if you sign up for the email subscription list just once, you'll automatically be entered into all future sweepstakes as long as you continue to be an email subscriber in good standing.

Already a 1GreenProduct.com email subscriber? Then you're automatically entered to win. Although of course you're under no obligation to accept this or any prize if you're name is chosen.

Unfortunately, for legal or logistical reasons, we apparently have to limit the sweepstakes to residents of the 50 United States and D.C. who are 18 years of age or older. Apologies to all of our overseas and/or youthful readers...

Looking for a way to improve your odds of winning? If you have your own blog, you can write a post about the 1GreenProduct.com Eureka envirovac Sweepstakes. Include a link to this post and then send us an email with the URL of your blog posting. (Please send us an email from the same email address you used to sign up for the 1GreenProduct.com email subscription so that we can match you against our subscriber list.)

Please feel free to comment on this post - either about the Eureka envirovac or about the Sweepstakes itself - but note that comments will not provide any additional entries into this Sweepstakes.

This is our first 1GreenProduct.com Sweepstakes, so please excuse any hiccups. Also please don't try to 'stuff' the entry box. You can only subscribe once and you can only get a maximum of one additional entry for writing a post about us. To read the complete list of Sweepstakes rules, follow this link.

Thanks for playing. We hope that reading 1GreenProduct.com is its own reward, but we also like to think that giving away great Green products like this Eureka envirovac to our loyal readers helps sweeten the deal.

Good luck! We hope you (yes, you) are a winner.

Update - This sweepstakes has been featured on Online-Sweepstakes.com, SweepsGoat and Sweepstakes Advantage.

Health / Beauty - Eco Lips Organic Lip Balm

Life works in mysterious ways.

I made it all through the New York winter without any lip problems only to develop mysteriously chapped lips in the middle of June.

Go figure.

That's why I was so excited to discover Eco Lips Organic Lip Balms. This company rocks our green world.

Every Eco Lips lip balm contains at least 70% organic ingredients, but most have a much higher percentage. Like the new 99% organic, kid-friendly Pure & Simple balms. All the ingredients in the Pure & Simple balms are actually edible.

We admire the fact that Eco Lips has created such a fantastically diverse and exciting line of products. Vegans can happily spread on the 70% organic Bee Free balm based on organic oils, vegetable wax and organic shea butter.

Glamour girls can pucker up for Eco Tints - naturally glistening moisturizers that use 90% certified organic ingredients including sunflower seed oil, beeswax, castor seed oil and even organic aloe vera. The shimmer in the Eco Tints comes from natural earth minerals like mica.

As for the 98% organic Medicinal Eco Lips balm contains organic tee tree oil, lysine, organic calendula and organic lemon balm. It cured my chapped lips in about 24 hours.

My decidedly non-organic old lip ointment tasted unpleasantly of medicine and carried several warnings. If the balm was accidentally swallowed, I was supposed to call a poison control center. In retrospect, I don't know what I was thinking when I smeared that stuff on my lips.

Now I'm an Eco Lips convert. The products taste great, they work well and they're made mostly (in some cases nearly completely) from organic ingredients.

If you're reading this site, you probably already know why organic agriculture is a good thing, but in case you'd like a refresher course, Eco Lips has a nice overview of why organic is likely better for you and certainly better for the planet.

Eco Lips also points out the risks of buying products with 'natural' ingredients. As used on cosmetic labels, natural can mean pretty much anything. (Paula Begoun also has a nice explanation of the way the term 'natural' can be stretched.) On the other hand, products that carry the USDA Organic seal incorporate ingredients from farmers who meet a range of criteria, including the elimination of synthetic pesticides, fertilizers, herbicides and GMOs.

NPR has a great overview of what 'organic' and 'natural' mean in different contexts. Note that organic claims have to be accredited or certified by a third-party, whereas natural claims do not require such certification. Or as NPR says, "The USDA defines [natural] only in regard to meat and poultry, so what it means on granola bars is anyone's guess."

Back to Eco Lips - besides using lots of edible, safe and organic ingredients, Eco Lips also gets points for making its products in the USA (handcrafted in Cedar Rapids, Iowa), mounting solar panels on its factory, not testing its products on animals and donating 1% of its profits to environmental organizations.

Fun fact - you can tell Eco Lips is a 21st Century company from the way it has adopted Internet traditions like user beta-testing. The Eco Lips Beta-Balm webpage lets consumers order products fresh from the Eco Lips R&D laboratory. Give Eco Lips feedback on these beta products and you could help influence the success or direction of a new lip balm launch.

Need one more reason to support Eco Lips? Well, you may have heard about a little water in Cedar Rapids in June. The bad news is that the Eco Lips factory was swamped. The good news is that Eco Lips employees were able to move valuable raw materials and equipment to higher ground before the deluge. Still, this dislocation will obviously be a challenge for Eco Lips. To help Cedar Rapids recover and help a great green company survive, we encourage all our readers to support Eco Lips.

Besides, based on our experience using Eco Lips products, your lips will thank you.

Where to buy:
You can order your balms ($1.99 - $4.99) directly through the Eco Lips website or at Whole Foods and many other fine retail stores coast to coast.

News Flash - 1GreenProduct.com's First Sweepstakes Starts Next Week!

You deserve a prize.

Yes, we're talking to you.

Why? Because you care about the planet. Because you're educating yourself on the Greenest products that do the least damage to our environment.

Most days, your prize is a hearty virtual handshake and "Keep up the good work!" exhortation from your friends at 1GreenProduct.com.

But starting next week, you'll have the chance to win real, tangible, get-your-hands-on-'em prizes.

And best of all, we're talking about prizes for Green products, like the ones we feature on this site.

How can you win these prizes? We'll post the complete sweepstakes rules next week, but basically all you have to do is sign up for a free email subscription to 1GreenProduct.com using the sign-up box in the upper right hand side of the homepage, underneath the rabbit picture.

Alternatively, you can sign up for an email subscription just by clicking this link.

[Note - Unfortunately, for the time being, we will only be able to give prizes to email subscribers who are residents of the 50 United States or D.C. Apologies to our international readers, but apparently there are legal and logistical hurdles that currently prevent us from offering prizes to our 1GreenProduct.com fans in Vancouver, Perth, Hamburg, Cape Town, Bangkok and points elsewhere.]

Please also note that you have to sign up for the email subscription list to enter the sweepstakes. We'd love for you to subscribe to 1GreenProduct.com via RSS, but RSS subscriptions don't give us any data from which to pull a sweepstakes winner.

Sound good? Here's where it gets even better: By signing up just once for the email subscription list, you'll automatically be entered not just into the drawing for the product we're giving away next week, but for all the subsequent product sweepstakes that we plan to conduct on 1GreenProduct.com. We can tell you right now that we should have at least two giveaways in August.

Feel free to wait until we announce our first sweepstakes prize on Monday, or get a headstart and sign up for the email subscription today. If you're feeling generous, share news of our site and our upcoming giveaways with your friends and family.

We can't promise a free lunch, but a free Green product from 1GreenProduct.com could be in your future starting next week.

Thanks for reading and hope you have a great Green Thursday!

(Update - If you're already subscribed to our email updates, that means you're automatically entered in our upcoming sweepstakes. Of course, no one is ever under any obligation to accept a prize they win. Although we can't imagine who would want to look a gift horse in the mouth...)

Home - Solar Gard window film

One of the best ways to keep your home cool in the summertime - and save energy at the same time - is simply to block solar radiation from entering your home.

You could keep the curtains drawn all the time, but that might seem a little...reclusive to your neighbors.

A better solution could be to try Solar Gard® - a barely visible window film that claims to block up to 79% of solar energy and 99% of ultraviolet light. By blocking solar energy, Solar Gard keeps your home cooler in the summer time, reducing the need for you to run that notorious energy hog - the air-conditioner.

How much energy could you save each year? Results vary depending on many factors (the number of windows in your home, exterior landscaping, etc.) but a Solar Gard representative says that in states like Arizona or California where an ordinary home might have to run the A/C 200 to 250 days per year, a building equipped with Solar Gard might only have to use the air-conditioning on 180 days, perhaps for fewer hours each day.

Since UV light fades fabrics (not to mention damaging your skin) and since Solar Gard blocks almost all UV radiation, the window film can help preserve the color and quality of your furniture (and your skin).

Incidentally, if you like to use a computer near a window, Solar Gard promises to cut down on glare, making it easy for you to use sunlight as your worklight without incurring eye strain.

Public figures are taking notice of Solar Gard's potential. Last year, the Clinton Climate Initiative began partnering with Solar Gard to retrofit and help lower the energy consumption of public buildings.

Where to buy:
Find a dealer on the Solar Gard website who can assess your home, choose the right film for the job and professionally install it.

Travel - Conrad Chicago, Ireland Greenbox, Brooklyn Nu Hotel and Greensboro Proximity Hotel

As you may have read, 1GreenProduct.com recently downshifted from a daily to thrice weekly publishing schedule (Monday, Wednesday and Friday).

We did this in order to have a little more time for our secondary activities like eating and sleeping.

And yet, from time to time, just to keep our readers on their collective toes, we've decided to offer supplementary Green Travel content on occasional Tuesdays and Thursdays!

Why pick Tuesdays and Thursdays? Well, not only are those the only free days on our weekly publishing schedule, but the writer in us also likes the alliteration of Travel Tuesdays or Travel Thursdays...

We know that travel often entails some amount of environmental pollution, but we believe that many people do have a practically irrepressible human urge to travel and that the best solution would be not to suppress that urge, but to mitigate the ecological damage by choosing places and properties that do their part to protect the environment.

We hope that our readers who want to learn about eco-friendly products will also enjoy finding out about Green hotels and eco-friendly destinations like the Ireland's newly designated "Greenbox" region pictured above.

With such introductory fanfare out of the way, we present the first ever edition of 1GreenProduct.com's Green travel roundup:

- We just got back from a trip to Chicago and found ourselves might impressed not only with the vaunted friendliness of the locals, but also with the profusion of trees and flowers blooming around town, particularly on Michigan Avenue. It turns out that Chicago is doing its best to live up to its official motto of "city in a garden".

In 2004, Chicago opened the fantastic 24.5-acre Millennium Park right in the heart of the city. Convinced that green roofs offer numerous environmental benefits including better air quality, energy conservation and stormwater runoff reduction, Chicago now claims to have more green roof space (295,000 square feet and growing) than any other city in North America. Even City Hall has a rooftop garden containing more than 20,000 plants!

A beautiful bike path along Lake Michigan encourages many Chicagoans to bike to work (at least when the weather is not arctic), and the city is doing plenty to encourage this trend by creating an extensive network of bike lanes and trails. By 2015, Chicago hopes to "make bicycling an integral part of daily life in Chicago." According to the city, there are already more than 10,500 city-owned bike racks in Chicago, more than in any other U.S. city. Chicago also is home to a spiffy new McDonald's Cycle Center with 24-hour secure bicycle parking, showers, lockers and bicycle rental and repair services.

We had the pleasure of staying at the Conrad Chicago while we were in town. The hotel is redesigning its lobby to incorporate energy-efficient LED backlighting and detailing. Within the hotel itself, much of the lighting has already been switched over from incandescent to CFL or LED, typically reducing lighting energy needs by nearly 70%. The hotel says that it actively recycles paper, cardboard, plastic bottles and light bulbs. In the kitchen, the Conrad Chicago says it's working to reduce the carbon footprint of its ingredients while incorporating local and organic ingredients where possible. And in a move that might please our friends over at Tomato Casual, the Conrad Chicago apparently hosts an employee tomato garden on its rooftop!

- From Chicago, we head south to Greensboro, North Carolina to bring you news of the Proximity Hotel that opened last November. From its solar hot water heaters to its innovative Otis Gen2 elevator that captures energy and feeds it back into the building's electrical grid, the Proximity is shooting for Gold or Platinum LEED status. You can read the whole list of Proxmity's eco-practices yourself, but some of our favorites include the use of recycled building materials (i.e. reinforced steel containing 90% post consumer recycled content), the water-saving Kohler plumbing fixtures, the low-VOC paints and carpeting, and guest room shelves built from walnut SkyBlend, which Proximity describes as "particleboard made from 100% post-industrial recycled wood pulp with no added formaldehyde."

If you're headed to Greensboro or nearby Winston-Salem, we'd strongly encourage you to look into staying at the Proximity Hotel. Rates for August seem to average less than $200 through Proximity's website and reviews on TripAdvisor are mostly outstanding.

- Ireland is already known as the Emerald Isle thanks to its enchanting, verdant landscape. I recently received notice from Tourism Ireland about a pristine corner of northwestern Ireland n newly labeled the Greenbox. Encompassing six counties (Fermanagh, Leitrim, West Cavan, North Sligo, South Donegal and Northwest Monaghan), the Greenbox is chock full of beautiful natural attractions. For example, the Benbulben rock formation in Sligo apparently has the only arctic alpine orchard in the world left over from the last Ice Age.

While visiting the Greenbox, you can take a hot bath in sustainably-harvested seaweed at SOAK (the seaweed is recycled into fertilizer once you've finished bathing) or practice your Side Camel Pose and enjoy organic food at the Clare Island yoga retreat. Looking for something a bit more upscale? The 4-star Brooklodge & Wells Spa offers mud baths, an on-property organic pub serving organic brews and the only certified organic restaurant in Ireland, The Strawberry Tree.

For more ideas on great green Ireland trips, check out Eco Escapes: Ireland by Catherine Mack. Nearly half of Mack's suggestions are apparently located in the Greenbox. You can also contact Tourism Ireland directly at 1-800-223-6470 or visit them online.

- Finally, we have to mention a new hotel in Brooklyn (our hometown). How new is this place? It's so new that they had to name it the Nu Hotel! (Insert rimshot.)

Other than being cool by virtue of its Brooklyn-ness, we like the Nu for its clean design, the fact that it apparently has hammocks in some rooms and its eco-friendly characteristics including the use of organic bedding materials.

Nu's media reps say the hotel's custom furnishings have been built from FSC-certified sustainably-harvested teak wood. We like the fact that Nu chose to use sustainable, renewable and biodegradable cork flooring. From what we hear, harvesting the cork bark from cork oak trees doesn't even hurt the tree. Oh and cork also happens to have sound-dampening qualities, which should help keep the peace since we hear that Brooklynites (and their visitors) can get pretty wild...

Room rates at the Nu average around $250 night - more pricey than Greensboro maybe, but still plenty reasonable for NYC. At prices like these, we would be tempted to say, "Out with the old and in with the Nu," but we already used up our daily rimshot.

Drink - Bliss Tea

Sexy and cute.

Not exactly words that you would usually associate with canned tea.

But unlike Bliss Tea, most canned teas aren't designed in Los Angeles and made in California.

The slim 8.4-ounce cans of Bliss Tea wouldn't look out of place in an awards show goodie bag or inside a hip club on Sunset Boulevard.

Almost all the ingredients in Bliss Tea are listed as being organic. Of course, the teas themselves are organic. (They're listed as 'Chinese teas' on the can, but Bliss Tea says it sources all its tea from organic certified farms in the U.S.) Other organic ingredients include honey and sugar cane (in both the Green and White flavors) and mango (just in the White flavor).

Personally, we both found both teas to be delicious and refreshing. With just 22 calories in a can of Green tea and 38 in the White tea, you can drink these all summer without worrying about affecting your swimsuit figure.

Bliss Tea says it chose the aluminum packaging for eco-reasons. This makes sense - far more aluminum than plastic is recycled in the U.S. and the lightness of aluminum makes transporting the product a bit less resource intensive.

In this case, the green choice is also the best aesthetic choice. Not only do drinks usually taste better out of aluminum than plastic, but the coldness of the aluminum can feels darn good on a hot July day.

Bliss Tea also touts the added bonus of drinking a beverage loaded with catechins, antioxidant and antiviral compounds found in tea leaves.

We don't really see any drawbacks to drinking Bliss Tea. Purist tea drinkers may object to the addition of any sweeteners, but I thought the flavoring worked well, especially paired with light fizz in the sparkling White tea variety.

Bliss Tea apparently has plans to introduce new flavors and work for wider product distribution outside its California base. Next on the menu - a Mint variety. An organic drink with health benefits that freshens my breath too? Sounds like a winner.

Where to buy:
In Los Angeles, you can find Bliss Tea at Erewhon Natural Foods and should be coming soon to other stores near you. If we can find an e-commerce way to buy Bliss Tea, we'll be sure to post an update here.

Beauty / Bath - LaLicious body products

Beauty products usually don't come with "Please, no tasting!" warnings, but one sniff of a LaLicious scrub, rub or oil and you'll understand why the admonishment is required.

Every product we tried really did smell good enough to eat or drink.

Javaholics will swoon over the aroma of the Coffee Bean Sugar Soufflé Scrub. Pure sugar bean crystals and specks of coffee bean exfoliate dead skin cells while almond oil brings the moisture back.

Meanwhile, anyone who ever licked a bowl of cake batter will have to be restrained from burying their nose into a tub of the LaLicious Vanilla Body Butter. Based on Shea Butter and enriched with aloe, the product delivers a super shot of hydration without any greasy drawbacks. (And let us repeat, you'll probably want to lick your paws like a cat after spreading the body butter on your skin. Just try to emember, these products are for external use only!)

I have to admit that I'm not much of a body oil person. It's just so ... oily. But the guava body oil does smell delish. It made me recall a trip to the tropics and gave me a hankering for glass of fresh guava juice. (A hankering that alas went unfulfilled...)

From a Green standpoint, you'll be pleased to learn that all the made-in-the-USA LaLicious body products are now free of Parabens and Sulfates.

Parabens are chemical preservatives that can apparently mimic the human hormone estrogen with unfortunate results.

As for sulfates, in high concentrations, some of them (i.e. ammonium lauryl sulfate, typically used as a foaming agent in body washes and shampoos) may irritate the skin or eyes.

LaLicious also claims that none of its products have been tested on animals. (Although judging from the FAQ on the LaLicious website, it seems that plenty of canines enjoy sampling the sugar scrubs on their own. LaLicious recommends closing the scrubs tightly to prevent any impromptu dog taste tests.)

Like the idea of being oiled, scrubbed and buttered, but really just want to get clean? Stay tuned - LaLicious plans to introduce a new line of body soaps later this summer.

Where to buy:
Use the "Find Us" page on the LaLicious website to find a spa, beauty store or boutique near you that carries LaLicious products.

Kitchen - Palmolive eco+ gel dishwasher detergent

We human beings have a way of coming up with ideas that seem clever at the time and later turn out to have been a huge mistake. (New Coke, the