MyHab Cardboard Tents Now Available

Festival goers in the UK will have a new eco-friendly camping option this year with the official launch of the MyHab service on 7 May 2008.

The two-person tents, which are made from tough recycled plastic and water proof cardboard, are now available to book at several UK festivals this year, including Reading, Leeds, Latitude, T in the Park, Wickerman, and the End of the Road festival - and the aim of the MyHab accommodation is to reduce the amount of abandonded tents left at these festivals.

Once booked the MyHab's will be assembled ready for arrival and Myhabers' will also have access to showers and toliets within the MyVillage - a service which could be worth the rental fee alone. Once the festival is over the tents will be dismantled for reuse or recycling.

myhab.com

Kew Gardens to Open Botanic Gallery

With the Spring bulbs beginning to bloom there's already plenty of reasons to visit Kew Gardens, one of the world's largest public botanical gardens, yet in April the gardens will add another colorful attraction with the opening the Shirley Sherwood gallery of Botanical Art - the world's first gallery dedicated to botanical art.

The gallery will exhibit works of art from Kew’s collection of over 200,000 items, many of which have never been on public display before, including works by masters of botanical art such as G.D. Ehret, the Bauer Brothers and Redouté, together with nineteenth century artists such as Walter Hood Fitch.

The Gallery will host three exhibitions a year and the inaugural exhibition will combine some of the highlights of the Kew and Dr Shirley Sherwood collections, providing an overview of the most significant artists from c1700 through to contemporary artists.

kew.org

Eden Sessions Set to Return

Cornwall's Eden Project offers one of the most unusual settings for live concerts - with the stage, surrounded by vegetation and tropical bio-domes; and the concerts will kick off this year with a performance by the Verve on 27 June.

The Verve split in April 1999 and vocalist Richard Ashcroft, once called “the greatest singer in the world” by Coldplay’s Chris Martin, forged a successful solo career with the release of three albums, but last year it was announced that the band would reform with the original line-up.

This will be the seventh year of the Eden Sessions, and previous years have featured Muse, Amy Winehouse and Pulp. Due to their setting the gigs will also be fairly eco-friendly, as they will follow Eden Project policies such as 'waste neutral', their effort to ensure everything possible is recycled or reused.

edenproject.com/arts/3280.html

UK to Build World's Largest Butterfly Attraction

London is set to become home to over 100,000 butterflies at a new tropical rainforest visitor attraction.

Plans for the new Butterfly World were announced this week, and the project promises to become one of the UK's top environmental attractions.

Butterfly World will be built on a butterfly-shaped site near St Albans in Hertfordshire and will feature a translucent dome, similar in style to the Eden Project domes, forming its centrepiece 'eye' to house exotic butterflies. Wildflower meadows and gardens designed to attract naive butterflies will also surround the dome.

Work on the project is expected to start this month, and the first areas of the attraction will open in June 2009, will further areas opening over the following years.

Clive Farrell, the property developer and butterfly enthusiast behind the project, said: "I wanted to build one more butterfly house but on a gigantic scale and incorporating everything I have learned in 30 years about butterflies and the idea of a massive dome emerged.

"The dome will be big enough to contain seven Stonehenge sites and it will have in it the replica remains of a lost Mayan city and a tropical rainforest. It will be surrounded by the best wildflower meadows in Britain and 12 competition gardens which will change annually and incorporate the latest thinking on sustainable, contemporary garden design."

According to the Daily Telegraph the recreated rainforest will have ponds, waterfalls, and rope walk-ways overlooking the rainforest canopy while below ground level sections of the dome will be submerged to incorporate caverns featuring creatures such as giant spiders and scorpions.

Green Tint to Heathrow's New Terminal

The Queen officially opened the new terminal five at Heathrow Airport today, and while any expansion of air services can never be described as green, the terminal does have some eco-friendly features.

The building, for instance, has glass walls to let in natural lighting, rainwater will be harvested and excess heat from the airport's power station will be piped in to heat the terminal.

The layout of the terminal has also been designed to cut down taxiing and waiting times for aircraft, and later in the year travelers will be able to make use of the new ULTra system - personal rapid transporters that will carry passengers from the car lots to the terminal.

The driverless, electric powered pods run along a guided track at speeds of up to 25mph and can carry four passengers with their luggage. The system will eventually replace the use of buses at the terminal, but it won't be completed until late 2008 and will initially only have 18 pods.

Around the terminal thousands of trees and shrubs are being planted, and dedicated cycle lanes leading to the terminal have also been built - any passengers cycling to the airport will also be able to leave their bikes in secure facilities for up to 90 days.

With Heathrow's annual passenger numbers rising from around 68 million to 95 million, however, the environmental impact of the airport is still considerable.

terminal5.ba.com

United Nations Launch Green Travel website

By 2020 it is estimated that the global number of tourists could reach 1.6 billion annually, a number which will obviously have a significant environmental impact. This week, in an effort to help reduce that impact, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has followed our footsteps here at Jamble and launched a green travel tips website, called Green Passport.

The site offers green advice on areas including planning, getting there and climate change, and rather than suggest everyone heads to an eco-lodge or organic farm for their next vacation, the tips focus on small changes that everyone can make. For instance, the site advises that tourists should avoid buying souvenirs made from wild species, use solar rechargers instead of disposable batteries and eat local food wherever possible.
Achim Steiner, UN-Under Secretary General and UNEP Executive Director, said: "Many consumers are now making green domestic choices from sourcing electricity from renewable sources and choosing eco-friendly investments up to buying leaner and greener cars. Packing a Green Passport along with airline tickets, the swimming costume and the sun lotion means tourists no longer need to leave their green credentials at home but can make them part of the holiday of a life-time."

The website has a smart look, is easy to use and has great advice; all aimed at mainstream rather than 'extreme green' travelers, and is a definite step forward for the image of green travel.

unep.fr/greenpassport/

BoltBus to Launch WiFi Budget Coach Service

Long distance bus travel in the US doesn't have a great reputation, and we know from personal experience that late night stop overs at remote bus terminals are rarely a pleasant experience; but it is of course an eco-friendly way to travel.

Now, a new coach service called Boltbus is aiming to improve the image of bus travel with the use of modern, free WiFi enabled coaches. The company is launching its first budget service between New York and Washington DC on March 27th, using online ticket booking that will offer seats for as little as $1.

As with other similar ticketing models, prices rise the closer it gets to departure date; and the use of online ticketing may help the service attract a more student, internet savvy clientele. Frequent users will also be able to join a program that will reward them with a free journey once they have completed eight trips on the bus.

Budget services such as these are already a huge hit in the UK, where obviously journey times are much shorter,and the Megabus service, which operates in the UK and midwest US, has now expanded its service to the west coast too. No matter how cheap the tickets, however, both these services have a tough challenge to overhaul the image of coach travel in the US.

boltbus.com

Fosters Go Green With Eco-friendly Beer

Australian beer giant Fosters are the latest brewers to climb aboard the green bandwagon, with the launch of a new beer named Green Cascade.

The lager, brewed at the Foster's owned Cascade brewery in Tasmania, is 100 percent carbon offset, bottled in the light weight glass bottles and packaged in a 100% recycled carton, printed with vegetable inks. With only $150,000 to be spent on carbon offsets over the next year, however, Fosters appear to be aiming to achieve the bare minimum required for a 'green' label.

Reports that Green Cascade is Australia's first eco-friendly beer are inaccurate, however. The Barefoot Brewery, for instance, already produce the carbon neutral Barefoot Radler beer, and the Mountain Goat micro-brewery in Victoria produce a range of organic beers in an eco-friendly brewery that makes use of solar heated water and greywater recycling.

goatbeer.com.au

Cyclists’ Sat Nav Launched in Loire Valley

Tourist offices in the French wine region of the Loire valley have grouped together to launch a satellite navigation guided cycle route for biking visitors.

The Cyclopedia sat nav unit can be hired for a deposit of 250 Euros from tourist offices along the “La Loire à Vélo” - a long distance cycle path that follows the Loire river. The unit currently maps 40 miles of the Loire route and as well as allowing cyclists to pinpoint their exact location, it carries an extensive database of local highlights, including châteaux and wildlife hotspots within a UNESCO World Heritage site.

The Loire à Vélo route itself carries on for another 60 miles, and is part of the European Rivers Cycle Route scheme, a program launched in 2005 which will eventually link Nantes, on the Atlantic coast, to Budapest and later on to the Black Sea, a 1500 mile long journey.

loire-a-velo.fr

New, Cheap Wind Up MP3 Player Launched

Power Plus, a company that produce wind up torches and radios, have followed in the footsteps of the Trevor Baylis fronted eco-media player, and launched a wind up MP3 player.

Unlike the Baylis device, which comes with a price tag of around £150 ($300), the power plus Verio gadget will retail at only £40 ($80) and is equipped with a one gigabyte memory.

Around one minute of winding will result in 15-20 minutes of play time, and a full charge with the USB charger achieves up to four hours of play back time. The wind up charger can also be used to give a power boost to a cell phone or for a few minutes of light using the in built torch.

Gadgets such as the Verio seem great in theory, as they will of course save the use of hundreds of batteries over their lifetime, and mean users never run out of juice; but the reality of a frantic minute of winding every quarter of an hour may put many people off.

The Verio is currently on sale in the UK from the Tango Group.

Eco-friendly 'Floating Village' to be Built in UK

A floating complex of eco-friendly buildings, resembling an ancient marshland village, was announced today as the winning design for a new visitor facility for Brockholes wetland and woodland nature reserve in Preston, UK.

The winning concept, created by Adam Khan Architects, was selected over five shortlisted entries in the RIBA design competition, and is based on a cluster of buildings constructed largely of wood and other sustainable materials. It has been designed as part of wider plans to regenerate the former quarry site into a major visitor attraction.

Brockholes is part of the Newlands program - a unique £59 million ($118 million) scheme that is reclaiming large areas of derelict, underused and neglected land across England’s Northwest, transforming them into thriving, durable, community woodlands.

No details have yet been given, however, on when construction will begin on the visitor center, or on specific eco-friendly features of the building.

New National Park Opens in Denmark

The first of five new National Parks has opened in Denmark, in a move by the Danish government to further help protect the country's natural environment.

The new Thy National Park, a 24.3 hectares stretch of dunes, sand heaths, plantations and lakes along the West Jutland coast, attracts millions of migratory birds that gather to rest and feed there en route to and from their breeding grounds twice a year.

Hikers will be able to follow the West Coast Trail, a marked hiking routes following the coast and dunes; while cycle routes are available further inland on smaller public roads and forest roads throughout the plantations. Numerous campsites, around a day's walk apart, line the route, and the area is also one of the best in Denmark for sampling organic food such as marsh-reared lambs, which impart a salty tang, and for joining guided mushroom gathering tours.

A further four national parks at Mols Bjerge, Skjern Å, The Wadden Sea and Kongernes Nordsjælland have also just received approval from the Danish government and will be opened during 2008 and 2009.

Virgin's Bio-diesel Test Flight a Success

Critics had claimed that a plane couldn't fly at 30,000 feet when fueled on bio-diesel, but yesterday's flight by a Virgin Boeing 747 from London to Heathrow proved them wrong.

The aircraft flew using a biofuel composed of babassu oil and coconut oil, which Virgin Atlantic state are environmentally and socially sustainable as they don't compete with staple food sources, and no modifications were needed to either the aircraft or its engines to enable the flight to take place.

Technical advisers on board the plane collected data in order to analyze the efficiency of the fuel, but according to Richard Branson this is just the first step towards finding an alternative fuel source. Speaking after the flight he said "as a result of what's happened today, we can now start developing bio-fuel for the future that hopefully the whole of Virgin Atlantic can use, and other airlines too.

"The particular fuel we are looking at working on is algae. Algae can come from sewage plants, we can then turn it into fuel, and fuel the planes of the future without any effect to our environment."

Virgin Airlines' Mile High Green Club

Virgin Atlantic have launched a new booklet this month, aimed at encouraging passengers to join the mile high green club.

The in-flight pamphlet, 'Change the World at 35,000 feet', has been produced by We Are What We Do, the environmental group who published the very successful 'Change the World for a Fiver' book, and as well as being printed on recycled paper and being carbon neutral, it offers Virgin passengers some ideas on 'little things' they can do to get greener, such as eating local, a task where they advise to "be adventurous, imagine you're a hunter gatherer exploring a whole new continent. Gather it into your tummy."

For any eco-minded readers there's nothing new in the booklet - but it's aim is not to preach to the converted, but to reach a new audience, and it does so with cheeky illustrations and sassy style rather than a worthy know-it-all approach.

The one-off booklet will be placed on Virgin Atlantic flights for passengers to peruse - and although it doesn't suggest that passengers should fly less in an effort to be greener, this booklet is yet another step in the right direction by Virgin, and we applaud it.

wearewhatwedo.org

Intelligent Eco-buses Headed For San Fran

As a free roaming city explorer bus travel is often the best way to get around a city, but as most backpackers will have experienced, bus travel in a new city can often be confusing and disorientating, as bus fares are rarely simple and bus tops are easy to overshoot. New bus technology unveiled in San Francisco this week could help change that.

The new eco-friendly 'Connected Bus' is a mobile Wi-Fi hotspot, and as connection is free bus users will be able to use laptops and PDAs as much as they like. For travelers without their own gadgets, interactive touch screens will be available for use. These will display real time information such as bus waiting times for connecting routes, the current bus location on a map and users can even play with a green calculator to work out how much carbon their journey is saving. As for fares, these can be automatically deducted from a smart card - avoiding the awkward moments with bus drivers who demand exact change.

The bus itself is 95% emission free, thanks to its hybrid engine, and it also boasts a traffic signal priority system, which will reduce the amount of time spent waiting at red lights. The connected bus will be on trial for the next 12 months in San Francisco, and looks certain to make bus travel far more appealing.