Stuff I've Liked Lately by Erica Schwartz

I'm always looking at new eco-friendly products.  Sometimes I buy them, sometimes I just want to see what new ideas other people are coming up with... inspiration comes from everywhere.  So here are four products I've seen lately that sparked my interest.  Each is not only an intelligently conceived concept but also well-executed and more beautiful than previous attempts to solve the same problem.  These are not products we currently sell in our store, just stuff I like.

1.  Wasara: disposable compostable single use tableware.  Leave it to the japanese to create disposable paper plates that are too beautiful to ruin with american food.  I'm almost afraid that if I tried to eat off it i'd be unable to throw it out afterwards.  I may have to buy some just to play with them, though.  design*sponge ran a cool how-to about dip dying them.

2. Totem Lamp by Lightexture: Brilliant ceramic desk lamp.  Our local stars Avner and Yael, whose products we carry in our shop and previously featured on our blog, have a great new design.  I absolutely love this one!  The inside is painted gold to make the light warmer, the top can be adjusted to change the quantity of light escaping the ceramic shade, and the fixture uses a compact fluorescent. 

 3.  Water Bobble:  The water bottle with a replaceable charcoal filter.  The concept isn't exactly new (think backward britta), but the execution  appeals to me.  This isn't surprising since I  tend to like the simplicity of shapes and bright colors coming out of Karim Rashid's studio.  I actually bought myself one of these and I'm really loving it.   I can refill my bottle from any tap and it always tastes good.  My only criticism is that the bottle isn't particularly durable  If it was made from a plastic more like the BPA-free Nalgene and cost more, I'd be a little happier.
 

4.  iQ Cleaners: condensed cleaning products.  As much as I hate to support something that you can most easily get at Walmart, this product strikes me as one of such brilliance because of its obvious simplicity.  Liquid cleaners are mostly water, so why are we transporting and buying them in their diluted form?  This brand offers a super-concentrated refill to which you add your own water.  Plus the product is eco-friendly and the bottle, which may eventually need to be replaced, is biodegradable. 

And is it just me, or do these last 2 products seem a little quite?  It goes beyond the fact that the images were similarly styled-- these two products are latching onto the same issue and resolving it in a similar way.  You buy an empty bottle, fill it with your own local water, and use a cartridge to make it into what you want.  Use color to identify-- in case one, i get a green bottle and my roommate gets a red one.  In case two, the color of the cartridge and its contents tells me which type of cleaner it is.   I'm not suggesting that anybody puts cleaning solution in a water bottle (thankfully the designers didn't team up and use the same shaped bottle), but I can only hope this suggests that as a culture we're realizing how much energy we waste transporting water in trucks instead of using the water that's readily available in our pipes.