Epuron and the German Ministry for the Environment have gotten their heads wrapped around this whole advertising as art thing. A recent campaign to promote, something (I won’t say what, you have to figure it out, though it’s not rocket science) combines the love of minimalist French direction and classic Chaplin-esque plot to create an enjoyable new campaign, which I hope we’ll see more of. Watch and listen carefully and enjoy the thick French accent.

California Assemblyman Lloyd Levine will soon be introducing a bill requiring California to ban the use of incandescent lightbulbs throughout the state, instead requiring businesses and homeowners to switch to compact fluorescent bulbs, those nifty little jewels that may just play a major part in saving this here planet full of ingrates. Consuming only 25% of the energy which conventional bulbs require, CFLs put off almost equal, if not higher quality, light and saves a good chunk of money (among other less trivial things).

Read more: California to ban conventional light bulbs?

Big Lord of the Rings fan AND environmentally conscious enough to want to build your own low-impact and sustainable home? Then look no further than Simon Dale’s incredible low-impact home recently built by himself and his father-in-law in Wales which he’s detailed via plans and build photos for the world to share and reuse. Recessed within a small hillside, the home provides extremely stable shelter and insulation thanks to the mud and stone surrounding the home. All of this was designed and built by Dale for the EXTREMELY low price of around 3000 BGP (5,791.51 USD / 4,454.13 EUR). Talk about sustainable and interesting living, the home feature solar and wind powered electricity (hopefully CFL bulbs), earth cooled refrigeration and water supplied by gravity via a nearby stream.

Features of the low-impact home:
* Dug into hillside for low visual impact and shelter
* Stone and mud from diggings used for retaining walls, foundations etc.
* Frame of oak thinnings (spare wood) from surrounding woodland
* Reciprocal roof rafters are structurally and aesthaetically fantastic and very easy to do
* Straw bales in floor, walls and roof for super-insulation and easy building
* Plastic sheet and mud/turf roof for low impact and ease
* Lime plaster on walls is breathable and low energy to manufacture (compared to cement)
* Reclaimed (scrap) wood for floors and fittings
* Anything you could possibly want is in a rubbish pile somewhere (windows, burner, plumbing, wiring…)
* Woodburner for heating - renewable and locally plentiful
* Flue goes through big stone/plaster lump to retain and slowly release heat
* Fridge is cooled by air coming underground through foundations
* Skylight in roof lets in natural feeling light
* Solar panels for lighting, music and computing
* Water by gravity from nearby spring
* Compost toilet
* Roof water collects in pond for garden etc.

Read more: Build your own low-impact home (Thanks Clemens)

Being a North Carolinian I couldn’t resist mentioning this. I always find it fascinating when cargo containers fall off ships, causing whatever they were transporting to either sink to the bottom of the ocean or float until it meets land. We saw it years ago with the rubber ducky tests which oceanographers used to track ocean currents, and we’ve all heard of everything from cars to Nike’s being washed overboard on the high seas. This time a cargo container carrying a shipment of Doritos brand chips fell off of a ship and cracked open, leading to hundreds of bags of Doritos to float freely through the Atlantic Ocean. The container, along with the Doritos washed up on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, with most of the Doritos packages still in-tact thanks to the airtight packaging. What followed was a minor small-time news storm, as scavengers descended upon the cheesy goodness, the media swarmed into to film those filling shopping bags full of chips while a handful of scrooges gave interviews complaining about the American way and stealing and season of giving, but everyone is taking and blah blah blah.

Read more: Doritos container spills, washes up on North Carolina beach

The current trend in green-living is reducing your consumption and usage of resources. One of the many ways that we can do that is by tweaking the power consumption of our portable devices, laptop computers especially. How you ask, enter the ever inspiring Guide to Green Living with a useful How-To on reducing the energy consumption of everyone’s favorite mobile computing device, the laptop. From lowing your screen’s brightness, to disabling the auto-saving feature on Word, there are several easy changes that you can do to lower the overall power consumption of your laptop’s battery, which in the end lowers the amount of time you’d need recharging.

[Conserving your laptop's battery power]