divine green: Sustainable Home, Beauty, & Lifestyle

The Sundance Film Festival, the annual crème de la crème of independent film festivals in Park City, Utah, was a little greener and smelled of French Fries this year, thanks in part to the debut of Fields of Fuel, a documentary about the alternative fuel biodiesel. The film’s creator Josh Tickell and crew descended on Park City this weekend with their Veggie Van, a hippie-style VW run on vegetable oil or animal fat (pictured left), and helped educate people about how biodiesel works and its environmental benefits–all before the Sundance premiere of the film.

(The film features environmentalist-actor Woody Harrelson and Solayzme, a California company that makes biodiesel fuel from algae.) 

According to Tickell’s blog, Sunday “afternoon saw a greasy, french-fry-smelling version of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade…Overheard from Park City fans: ‘Look, it’s the Veggie Van! Do you smell that? It’s making me hungry.’”

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If you’ve been reluctant to ride a bike to work because of the fear of breaking a sweat in office clothes, then this electric two-wheeler could be the answer. HighTekBikes, a Petaluma, Calif.-based startup, is one of several companies selling bikes with electric motors to help push you up that hill. The company displayed its products last weekend at the Green Festival in San Francisco.

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A few years ago while still in college, James Dudra spent a summer detailing cars in Australia, where he found that people don’t use water to wash their trucks and family sedans. Rather, they wipe cars clean with a bottle-spray formula.

And it’s no wonder. The average car wash can suck up between 80 gallons and 140 gallons of water. Drought-ridden Australia certainly can’t afford that extravagance, and neither can places like Georgia.

So last year, Dudra founded the New Hampshire-based company Eco Touch to adapt the idea for the United States. Unlike other waterless cleaners–which can use harsh chemicals like silicones and kerosene that can run into water systems unchecked–Eco Touch is a water-based formula with organic soaps and plant-based surfactants that wick away grime, Dudra said.

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