Patagonia is one of those companies that’s ahead of the competitor pack. Many of the clothes and other merchandise it produces is made from recycled and sustainable materials. And now Patagonia is revealing details about where its garments and other merchandise is manufactured. The Footprint Chronicles is a Google Maps listing of the company’s supply chain including textile mills and factories. You can see how many people work at each location, what languages they speak on the job, and what merchandise, such as baselayer or accessories, is produced at each location.
Nike recently put together a sustainability site with a similar goal of providing information for customers and investors.
Patagonia Official Website
Patagonia The Footprint Chronicles
[via TriplePundit: Patagonia Maps Out Its Supply Chain For Even More Transparency]
Want to watch a little TV after a day of wandering the English countryside? You’ll have to pedal for your screen time. That’s right, there’s an exercise bike in the room that powers the TV. The Cottage Lodge in the village of Brokenhurst in the south of Great Britain. The bed & breakfast just installed a bike with a trainer in its “Standing Hat” room. 
Last week Nike released its Sustainable Business Performance Summary, in interactive form. This report is meant for consumer consumption and really illustrates the efforts the company is making to reduce, reuse, recycle and be responsible. It’s worth taking a look.
We have seen a few attempts at creating a way to peddle at the desk? Most of these hybrid desk chair/bicycles would probably seem out of place at most offices however. Belgium’s We-Watt has taken the concept in another direction, putting a fresh spin on it.
Who says the concept of a minimal shoe should be confined to running? Much like compression clothing, minimal footwear now represents relaxation and recovery as much as it does competition.
This week Waterloo, Wisconsin-based announced that its pilot program Materials Innovation Technologies has cycled more than 70,000 lbs. of carbon fiber in the year since the program was first initiated. Since April of last year, all manufacturing scraps, non-compliant frame components, and select reclaimed warranty frames undergo processing at Material Innovation Technologies’s South Carolina facility for repurposing in reinforced thermoplastic applications, including aerospace, automotive, medical and recreational applications.
Carbon fiber is a wondrous material, but it has some shortcomings including the fact that it isn’t that easy to recycle. However, last week came word that the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory was working on a way to transform used plastic bags into carbon fiber, and this composite could even be fine-tuned, allowing different types of carbon fiber to be created for specific applications. 
We’ve seen a few gyms that are trying to turn the burn into juice to power the place. Now Energia had become the first private gym in Massachusetts to use energy from fitness as energy. The gym’s owners estimate that each person can create 70-130 watts of energy per hour, so a class in motion could generation about 50 florescent lights.
Making something waterproof isn’t all that hard. But making something waterproof that is free of aerosols, fluorocarbons or volatile organic chemicals is another story. But Nikwax does just that, and all of its products are fluorochemical-free, derived from nature-based ingredients, not tested on animals, and biodegradable. Heidi Allen, Marketing Director of Nikwax North America, tells us how they do it!
While that polystyrene foam – sometimes called by the brand name Styrofoam – does a great job protecting consumer electronics while in the box, the white stuff typically ends up in the garbage. But now the foam is seeing new uses as a surfboard.
We’ve seen a variety of new materials in snowboards, and one company is looking to get on board with nature fibers. XBoards, Inc. has announced the availability of the limited edition BioBoard, the first snowboard made from all-natural flax fiber composites.