Plant Plastic: Drinking soda is bad for you, yes, but petroleum-based plastic bottles bad for everyone. In 2012, Pepsi will drop the world's first fossil fuel-free plastic bottle, made from 100% plant-based materials like switch grass, pine bark and corn husks. Bike Share, Yo: Inhabitat reports that Brooklyn will join Washington D.C., Boston, Denver, and Minneapolis as the first cities in the......read more
With 36,000 photos, 40 blocks of ice, and 40 timelapses of 4 hours each, French filmmaker Christophe Thockler manages to make the humdrum process of ice melting look rather incredible. The poetic clip, made for the Mimi Goese & Ben Neill song, "Cusp," features ice-blocked objects melting and, er, unmelting in stop motion. The objects are taken from the special edition......read more
Predicting the effects of climate change is tricky business, and nowhere is that more evident that in the oceans. In 2011, sea levels actually declined sharply, before going up again in 2012. Despite the year-to-year wonkiness, there is scientific consensus that we are in the early stages of what is likely to be a substantial rise in sea level. But how fast it will happen--and how high they will......read more
Sometimes you have to take matters into your own hands. When the Eyjafjallajkull volcano erupted in Iceland in April, Los Angeles photographer Sean Stiegemeier was so unimpressed by the "mediocre" pictures in the news that he decided to fly to Iceland to shoot it himself. After hard-fought battles with cancelled flights and bad weather, Stiegemeier had a day and half to capture the......read more
Geothermal power is like the neglected stepchild of renewable energy, seemingly always left in the shadows while the press (ourselves included) spouts off on the latest solar and wind projects. With these awe-striking images of a geothermal plant in Iceland, from London photographer Dan Holdsworth, we hope to give some shine to renewable energy's forgotten form. Like all of Holdsworth's......read more
One day we'll knock Iceland off of our travel bucket list. Until then, we'll have to make do with these photos, which pretty much fulfill our vision of what it looks like, minus the strangely beautiful, blue-eyed inhabitants. Shot by Czech travel photographer Marcel Musil, the pics capture the island nation's volcanic mountain landscape in all its pastel splendor. Timely too, with Iceland's......read more
Though we've never been there, Iceland is a bit of an obsession 'round SHFT. The official video for "Holocene" — the standout second single off Bon Iver's eponymous second album — does nothing to temper our fixation. Director Nabil Elderkin represents the Icelandic landscape as a sort of fairy tale land (precisely what we imagine it to be in real life), through which a wool-clad boy......read more
There are no shortage of novel engineering ideas for slowing or halting global warming (anyone remember space sunshades?), but a new joint American-Icelandic experiment may actually hold some promise. The team of scientists involved int he project are proposing to pump carbon dioxide deep into limestone bedrock, where they hope it will be locked away for good. The carbon sequestering project......read more
Shot in Iceland (trending!), the video for "Amor Fati" pairs Washed Out's emotional synth pop with a good old-fashioned travel film. The video, directed by Yoonha Park, features fellow musician Luke Rathborne rambling around the Nordic nation, chasing livestock, bathing with a beautiful woman, and generally re-creating the delerious sense of wonder and isolation one gets on a solo......read more
Ugh, it's been way too long since we hit the road and visited some new places. Whenever we feel that way, it's good to look at some travel photography to partially satiate the feeling. These gorgeous film pictures, from young Swedish photographer Hedda Selder, document her summer sojourn through Norway and Iceland. Love the grainy feel of these photos. More here. For more from......read more