This is definitely a unique and creative way to sell some salads. The advertising folks over at McDonald’s came up with this billboard near Chicago that actually grows it’s message in lettuce and judging from this picture were quite successful. Fresh lettuce growing from a billboard probably can’t last long, but it’s still a cool idea and looks really appealing. I’m almost tempted to go there and buy a salad myself, ok not really, but if you find your self stuck there a salad is probably the way to go.

“McDonald’s came to us with a specific assignment,” said Avery Gross, a writer and creative director who worked on the salads billboard. “It’s an ad that celebrates freshness.”

Leo Burnett’s creative team worked closely with a horticulturalist to create a billboard that could start with 1½-inch spouts and grow into lush leaves. The garden appears to be safe from being plucked apart by birds because there is no place for them to perch and peck.

More from this at chicagobusiness.com

I’m sure the birds could get to it if they wanted, they could easily perch on the lettuce itself. I wonder if it is organic?

Check out this video of the billboard’s message growing in.

More about the environmental costs of bottle water from Tucson’s KUAT 6. Follow the link to see the video.

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This is a really interesting documentary about working toward no waste, making products that are truly recyclable or compostable, buildings that respect the occupants and the land, and doing it in a way that is beneficial to business.

Man is the only creature that produces landfills. Natural resources are being depleted on a rapid scale while production and consumption are rising in na­tions like China and India. The waste production world wide is enormous and if we do not do anything we will soon have turned all our resources into one big messy landfill. But there is hope. The German chemist, Michael Braungart, and the American designer-architect William McDonough are fundamentally changing the way we produce and build. If waste would become food for the biosphere or the technosphere (all the technical products we make), produc­tion and consumption could become beneficial for the planet.

http://www.vpro.nl/

Mark Edwards, PhD, Arizona State University

Burning 100 million tons of our primary food for fuel is unsustainable and wastes non-renewable resources, especially water. Growing massive amounts of corn represents ecological suicide as it drains trillions of gallons of non-replenishable groundwater, spikes food and fuel prices, decimates food exports and threatens millions with starvation from a food cascade.

Biowar I inflicts costs, casualties and catastrophe in a magnitude far greater than a conventional war. Taxpayers are forced to pay $43 B annually to subsidize erosion and pollution of our air and water for a tiny, 2.4%, replacement of foreign oil. America has insufficient disposable cropland, water or energy to waste on a policy that fails its objectives.

Compared with biofuel alternatives:

• Corn requires more water, land, fertilizer, herbicides and pesticides

• Severely pollutes air, soils, rivers, lakes and well-water

• Degrades and erodes soils at the rate of 6 tons per acre

• Grows slowly and produces a low energy biomass yield, 3%

Corn ethanol is not sustainable. It consumes too much water, land, fertilizer and energy. The direct and indirect costs of the ethanol industry are neither sustainable nor sensible for farmers, consumers, taxpayers or food support recipients.

Biowar І offers sustainable alternative to corn ethanol, algae which does not compete for food cropland, uses 0.001 as much water and creates an ecologically positive footprint. Algae is over 30 times more productive than corn and can be made into higher value products such as jet fuel and green diesel. The coproducts from algae, proteins and carbohydrates, may have more value for food, medicines, animal feed and low energy input fertilizers than the oils used for making jet fuel. See more about Biowar І at www.biowar1.com .

• Biowar I Summary and FAQ

We all like stuff, gadgets, gizmos, tools, whatever, but whenever we buy something new it’s creating demand for more stuff to be produced. Why create this demand when you can get lots of great stuff for free? Many of us also have quite a bit of old junk (to us) that we need to get rid of. Most of it isn’t anything we’re going to sell, but we still hold on to it. Turns out there are some great websites out there to help us find free stuff and to give us a place to give away our stuff.

Freecycle is a great website to go to find free stuff and to give stuff away for free. Once there you just search for a group near you and get signed up on the mailing list. The lists are Yahoo groups so they’re very easy and probably somewhat familiar to a lot of people. Once you’re signed up you can receive emails with all the stuff people are giving away or you can just check the group whenever there is something specific you need. The Phoenix group connects you to over 13,000 people and Tucson over 9,000 people, so there a lot of people giving away free stuff and looking for free stuff in Arizona.

Paper Back Swap - No need to buy new books, you can swap books with someone else. All you have to do is pay for postage.

Swap a CD - Similar to Paper Back Swap, but you pay .50 cents for each CD you order.

Re Use AZ is much like Freecycle except geared more towards business and construction. There you will find construction, landscaping materials, and much more. Unlike Freecycle everything is listed on the website, so no need to sign on to a group list.

What other sites are out there to help with this? Lets us know!