Responding to current economic, social and environmental crises, London’s NEF (the new economics foundation) have recently launched plans for “The Bigger Picture: A Festival of Interdependence,” a series of creative activities and events, including lectures, film screenings and art exhibitions, beginning in autumn 2009. The festival will culminate in a large-scale, public event in central London on 24 October 2009 (11:00AM-18:00PM) when an interactive, living exhibition will be staged in the dramatic post-industrial setting of the Bargehouse on London’s South Bank.

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After an energetic launch in 2008 that saw a huge mix of designers, strategists, chemists, policy writers, clients and agitators, the Greengaged sustainable design hub returns for its second year at the Design Council for London Design Festival 2009. Following the unveiling of a new website, Greengaged co-founder Sophie Thomas (also of thomas.matthews) announced that five guest curators had been selected to each invent and host a day based around their expert subject arena. “This year brings an exciting program where we will be mixing it all up once more building on emerging themes from last year,” explains Thomas.

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The Firewinder is an innovative outdoor light solution, powered entirely by the wind! Inspired and developed by young British inventor Tom Lawton, the Firewinder spins as the wind blows, turning into an eco-friendly night light. Lawton developed the light with a wish to highlight the invisible beauty and endless resource of alternative energies, and what a great job he did! Find out more about the Firewinder light here, and get your hands on one from the Guardian EcoStore for a mere £99.95.

+ Firewinder

+ Guardian EcoStore

Pitched to be this year’s most talked-about climate change film, The Age of Stupid is a new movie from director Franny Armstrong (of McLibel) and producer John Battsek (of One Day In September). In this epic tale, Pete Postlethwaite stars as a man living alone in the devastated future world of 2055, looking at old footage from 2008 and asking: why didn’t we stop climate change when we had the chance?

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Here at Inhabitat we are big botanical architecture fans, but we also love seeing ideas that stand to add an extra bit of foliage to our lives. So, if you are a fan of Patrick Blanc’s Vertical Gardens or even Mass Studies’ Foliage Covered Botanical Building and you fancy your very own extra bit of wall-mounted greenery, the team behind ELT Easy Green have the perfect solution in a whole range of beautiful Living Wall products. Their beautiful modular panels are made from 100% Recyclable HDPE and they’re a great way to add a little bit of green to your home.

+ ELT Living Walls

+ ELT Easy Green

Recently the Green Marketing Manifesto by John Grant was announced as the winner of the Environmental Award at the 2008 British Book Design and Production Awards. Designed and delivered by sustainable innovation practice More Associates, the hardback book reflects its content by reducing its embodied carbon and waste impact through its production methods.

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Hay may be for horses, but straw bales also make an excellent sustainable building material. Constructed by former accountant Carol Atkinson, The Straw Bale Cabin in East Yorkshire is the UK’s first straw-bale holiday home! The cabin has been built with locally grown straw and other renewable materials, and it generates its own energy with a micro wind turbine, solar panels and a whole host of other eco-friendly features.

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Founded in June 2007 by Nicko Williamson, Climatecars is London’s eco-alternative cab service. Although the popularity of cycling around the UK capital is significantly rising, the Climatecars service is sure to help improve awareness to many Londoners who still need to use taxi services. With an ambition to combine ecology, economy and innovation, the Prius hybrid car service cuts the carbon footprint of iconic black cab rides from 243g/km to 104g/km.

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We are big fans of Reestore here at Inhabitat – over the last year we have showed you Annie, the shopping-cart-turned-chair and Silvana, the washing machine drum-turned-table. Just when we thought their eco-ideas couldn’t get any better, the latest member of the Reestore family has blown us away! Meet “Deborah”, the recycled airplane wing desk!

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Salvaging materials and signs from ten-foot-high, thirty thousand pound scrap piles, Rhode Island based artist, Boris Bally has created a magnificent collection of reclaimed metal products! From tables and chairs, to kitchenware, photo frames and house numbers, Bally’s experimentation with recycled signage really illustrates the potential elegance of this otherwise discarded aluminum.

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Here at Inhabitat, we have a soft spot for all things green. But we have to make an exception for this rather colorful “Christmas tree” that took center stage on the ground floor reception at communications agency, AMV BBDO throughout the month of December. The rescued dead tree was given new life with the help of graphic designer Alex Ostrowski and illustrator and set maker Hattie Newman who thought to embellish the branches with colorful paper leaves.

Founded by designer Sarah Ratty, Ciel is a UK-based environmentally conscious fashion label with a festive party style, and a celebrity client list to match — including Cate Blanchett, Sienna Miller, and Zoe Ball. The current Fall/Winter collection features shimmery evening satin looks, super soft organic cotton t-shirts, and cozy, hand-knit items to warm the body on the chilliest of days.

We are seeing some significant achievements in environmental change — and we hope that with public art works like this large-scale environmental art installation by French art duo HeHe (Helen Evans and Heiki Hansen) that greater eco-consciousness will characterize 2009. Last February, HeHe installed a Nuage Vert, or “Green Cloud”, across the skies of Helsinki. The installation used laser tracking to project a green illumination onto the chimney emissions of the Salmisaari power plant. The illumination adjusts its shape and size to the contours of the vapor, reflecting the electrical consumption of residents in Ruoholahti and neighboring Lauttasaari.

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Reducing waste by reusing beverage cartons, Swiss-born Tanja Burgdorfer’s “Recycled Magic Wallets” creatively makes use of what would normally be discarded. With a little bit of elastic and a few staples, Tanja turns old beverage cartons into contemporary and useful wallets for the environmentally-conscious consumer. Current selection in her etsy shop shows luscious fruit prints. Each wallet is entirely hand-crafted and is available ready-made or bespoke upon request.

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We’ve shown you lots of inspired eco takes on the traditional Christmas tree this holiday season, but this one takes the cake! This gorgeous “Ice Tree” sculpture is made from 300 recycled water bottles suspended in the air. Created by graphic design studio Paprika, the provocative installation is hanging in the window of Montreal’s furniture store Domison throughout the holidays. We love how the inspired sculpture casts and reflects beams of light, creating an eye-catching display that raises awareness of the possibilities of recycling.

From Future Present, by Jane Rosie

With Christmas just around the corner (a mere 4 days away!), it has probably crossed your mind that wrapping presents is not the eco-friendliest practice. That’s why we’d like to share a couple of ways you can eco-ify your wrapping technique this holiday season. The first is presented by London-based design recruitment agency, Represent, who shares with us twenty different tape-free ways to wrap your gifts, through their project Future Present.

High-quality and low-volume is the MO of textile product line, Zumos. In producing what they call “pocket products”: scarves, ties, tablerunners and document carriers that all feature a pocket, the line also stands behind quality production that offers fair income to the workers that create them. The line is a collaboration between Norwegian designers Heidi Strøm and Johan Rye Holmboe, and a team of Maya Tz’utuhil weavers from San Juan La Laguna in Guatemala. ‘Zumos’ translates to strength, essence, vigor and vitality– qualities inherent in the women who make the products and also in all of the products. Fabulous!

These gorgeous pieces of FSC certified wooden furniture were created by German design company Woodloops. Founded in 2003 by product designer/carpenter René Mueller and forester Nina Griesshammer, Woodloops strives to “covey our original views to common behaviors, weaving known circumstances into new and curious concepts”. We love the way their furnishings celebrate the integrity of raw materials, showcasing the wood grain and unique features of each piece.

Alexena Cayless of British design collective Farm Designs recently exhibited her wonderful fly-tipped furniture collection at Eco Age and Beyond the Valley in London. Alexena scours the streets for unloved and discarded furnishings and then gives them a brand new lease of life. These white-washed pieces serves as blank canvases for Alexana, who is interested in the interaction of human memory and furniture.

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Early on a sunlit mid-September morning, on the banks of The Grand Union Canal in London, 25 designers, writers and academics from London Design Festival’s Greengaged hub, took residence on the Beauchamp ‘Electric Barge’ to take a trip to Powerday waste recycling plant in west London. Docked at Little Venice in Paddington, the Beauchamp is a silently-running and environmentally-sound answer to canal travel. Inhabitat writer Kate Andrews was on the trip and shares her insights from the experience.

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What once was lost is now found in Lost & Found’s Upcycled Furniture, a collection of stools and tables. Designed by UK-based design studio, &made, each piece features a brightly-colored base rescued from becoming trash coupled with a rough and irregular tree stump for a top. The rather unusual and unexpected combination represents &made’s goal desire to spark dialogue about our contemporary throw-away culture.

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Inspired to extend the ephemeral life of newspapers, David Stovell’s Sunday Paper products consist of tightly rolled newspapers strapped together into stools. We love how the pieces make smart use of dated headlines, creating complete pictures from carefully arranged rolls of paper. They were featured at the London Design Festival’s Greengaged hub this month, where [re]design took the opportunity to showcase an excellent sustainable seating feature.

Young British design graduate Zoe Murphy is a rising star we discovered at this month’s TENT London design exhibit. Inspired by her seaside home of Margate, Zoe has created a collection of fabulous bespoke furniture and textile pieces. Zoe exhibited her ‘Margate Collection’ during this year’s London Design Festival, at ‘talentzone’and TENT London and was chosen as one of Dezeen’s most talented design graduates of 2008.

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Designed by Tom Raffield, co-founder of Sixixis, these beautiful Ash Pendant lamps are formed from 80 meters worth of locally-sourced FSC-certified English ash. Their delicate interwoven shades are steam-bent, and each is illuminated by a giant low-energy bulb. The design was recently featured in [re]design’s Lighten Up exhibition.

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One of the highlights from this year’s London Design Festival was LIGHTEN UP, an illuminated exhibition that featured 64 innovative lighting solutions from UK designers. Presented by [re]design at this year’s 100% Design, the event focused upon “Looking beyond the bulb” and showcased a variety of ways that “sustainability is driving the evolution of new technologies, aesthetics, materials, and interactions”. Read on for a selection of our favorite designs!

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Composed entirely from damaged PET bottles and an eclectic assortment of found bottle caps, CAPtivate is an innovative lamp designed by London based studio and gallery Lula Dot. A gorgeous re-use of recycled materials, the design took center stage at 100% Design as part of [re]design’s “Lighten Up” exhibition (the follow up to 2007’s Sit Up exhibition).

Did you know that recycling a single ton of paper can save 7000 gallons of water, 17 trees, 380 gallons of oil, 3 cubic yards of landfill space and 4000 kilowatts of energy!? Statistics like these were key points at a sustainable print and paper workshop at the London Design Festival’s sustainability hub, Greengaged. The workshop, hosted by UK-based nonprofit enterprise Three Trees Don’t Make a Forest, set out to explore how different print processes affect the paper’s recyclability, and how you can reduce the impact through the design process.

A beautiful and functional piece of kitchen ware, the ‘Eco Cooler’ by DeWeNe (Designs We Need) was introduced at the London Design Festival earlier last week. Cressida Granger, founder of DeWeNe gave a short presentation at London Design Festival’s sustainability hub, Greengaged. In addition to their inspiring Hook & Go trolley, Cressida showed their most recent project, this hand-made terracotta fruit bowl and root vegetable storage pot.

Is there a need for bottled water? On Thursday, we questioned whether Fiji’s eco-friendly efforts were really that green. And it seems that the folks at the London Design Festival were thinking about the bottled water controversy as well. At the Greengaged best practice case studies earlier this month at the London Design Festival, Joshua Blackburn presented a pro-tap water campaign developed by communication design agency, Provokateur. With a desire to bring about positive changes in consumer behavior, WeWantTap is both a campaign and product line. The campaign is simple, though the ambition is big, as Joshua explained: “We want to develop an initiative to take on the bottled water industry.”

This Monday morning the London Design Festival’s inaugural sustainability event Greengaged kicked off with a big-bang breakfast debut. The event’s pièce de résistance was Goldsmith University graduate Oliver Bishop-Young’s sustainability skip installation, complete with turf, steps, a hornbeam tree, signage from sustainable communication design agency thomas.matthews and [re]design’s WEmake bench. Located outside the Design Council offices in London’s Convent Garden, the skip introduced a breath of fresh air into the urban landscape while encouraging discussion about the importance of sustainable design.

Echoing the structures of Buckminster Fuller’s Geodesic Domes, Danish Architect Kári Thomsen and Engineer Ole Vanggaard have created Easy Domes, a series of quick assembly, low-energy homes! Following the success of the first Easy Dome home built in 1992 for the Greenland Society on The Faroe Islands, a number of dome-shaped cottages were erected as tourist getaways. Since then, the buildings have been put into production and delivery of these fabulous prefab buildings was initiated early this summer!

We can’t wait for this year’s London Design Festival, and we’re excited to announce that London-based furniture design company Formtank will be launching a series of sustainable table designs at 100% Design next week! Using a single sheet of industrial steel in the most efficient way possible, these cutting-edge “2d3d” tables are constructed to maximize yield while minimizing waste to less than 4% per linear meter.

We can hardly believe it is September once again, which can only mean one thing for the design calendar! That’s right, The London Design Festival 2008 is set to kick off on Saturday the 13th and will run until Tuesday the 23rd of September. Kate Andrews and Antonia Halse of Inhabitat’s London team will be scouting the events this year to bring you the latest and greatest, but for now here is a preview of some exciting eco highlights coming up in the schedule!

In the mood for a night out in the UK capital? Why not try out one of the premiere sustainable restaurants in London! Acorn House is pitched as London’s first truly eco-friendly training restaurant and describes itself as “set to alter the image of the restaurant industry as well as transform the way in which people eat out.” The innovative restaurant employs an excellent set of sustainable strategies including composting and recycling all of its waste, sourcing local and seasonal ingredients, and training generations of young chefs in the finer points of eco-friendly cuisine. These features have led UK Newspaper The Times to describe Acorn House as “the most important restaurant to open in London in the past 200 years.”

Pitched as having over 800 uses, the Palmyra Palm (or Borassus) is recognized as one of the most important trees in Cambodia and India. Earlier this year, Indian born architect Bijoy Jain of Studio Mumbai illustrated the ecological potential of the palm when he designed and built the beautiful Palmyra House. Constructed entirely from locally sourced and sustainably harvested palmyra, the home is sited on a working coconut plantation in the West Indian coastal town of Alibaug.