【推荐1】The traditional tent cities at festivals such as Glastonbury may never be the same again. In a victory of green business that is certain to appeal to environmentally-aware music-lovers, a design student is to receive financial support to produce eco-friendly tents made of cardboard that can be recycled after the bands and the crowds have gone home.

Major festivals such as Glastonbury throw away some 10,000 abandoned tents at the end of events each year. For his final year project at the University of the West of England, James Dunlop came up with a material that can be recycled. And to cope with the British summer, the cardboard has been made waterproof.

Taking inspiration from a Japanese architect, who has used cardboard to make big buildings including churches, Mr. Dunlop used cardboard material for his tents, which he called Myhabs.

The design won an award at the annual New Designers Exhibition after Mr. Dunlop graduated from his product design degree and he decided to try to turn it into a business.

To raise money for the idea, he toured the City’s private companies which fund new businesses and found a supporter in the finance group Mint. He introduced his idea to four of Mint’s directors and won their support. Mint has committed around ￡500,000 to MyHab and taken a share of 30 per cent in Mr. Dunlop’s business. The first Myhabs should be tested at festivals this summer, before being marketed fully next year.

Mr. Dunlop said that the design, which accommodates two people, could have other uses, such as for disaster relief and housing for the London Olympics.

For music events, the cardboard houses will be ordered online and put up at the sites by the Myhab team before the festival-goers arrive and removed by the company afterwards. They can be personalized and the company will offer reductions on the expense if people agree to sell exterior(外部的) advertising space.

The biggest festivals attract tens of thousands of participants, with Glastonhury having some 150,000 each year. Altogether there are around 100 annual music festivals where people camp in the UK. The events are becoming increasingly environmentally conscious.

【推荐2】Zulema Munoz collects seaweed in a small coastal town 100 miles south of Santiago, Chile. A good week may see her cut 1,100 pounds of seaweed from the rocks where it grows.

Muftoz is one of the 30, 000 people for whom Chilean seaweed industry provides a livelihood. Throughout Latin America, the cultivation (种植) and collection of seaweed are gaining a support both as a source of food and as a means of ensuring food security in a region where 34 million people are food insecure and poverty affects 47 percent of the rural population. Countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela have all explored seaweed production for food. Yet as demand outpaces production and wild stocks have declined， more attention is being paid to sustainable cultivation and harvesting methods that can keep the industry surviving.

Seaweed has a long history in South American style of cooking. The native cooking of Chile made frequent use of cochayuyo, the most abundant of the country 750 types of seaweed. Today, cochayuyo is commonly found in place of meat incharquican, a traditional dish cooked slowly in a closed pan.

Kelp, a type of large brown seaweed, as the new vegetable is a global trend too, and for good reason. Nutritionally, seaweed is packed with iodine and other nutrients, and appears on trend-making menus in Google's New York cafeteria, though it used to be thought difficult to get people to eat it.

While 83 percent of cultivated sea vegetables are produced for human consumption, we aren’t just eating it. Seaweed is used in fertilizers and animal feed, and seaweed-based food additives are likely in many products in your kitchen and bathroom right now. Carrageenan, made from red seaweed, is in everything from shampoo and toothpaste to ice cream and some hot dogs.

While seaweed grows readily—there are concerns that humans are taking too much of the wild stuff. It is possible that overexploitation of natural seaweed resources could lead to significant ecological, economic, and social consequences at local, regional, and even global scales. In Latin American countries like Brazil and Peru, where the seaweed industry is based on harvesting wild seaweed rather than cultivated, the need for environmentally friendly models is urgent.

【推荐3】“Birds” and “airports” are two words that, paired together，don’t normally paint the most harmonious picture. So it really raises some eyebrows when China announces plans to build an airport that is for birds.

Described as the world’s first-ever bird airport, the proposed Lingang Bird Sanctuary(保护区）in the northern coastal city of Tianjin is, of course,not an actual airport. Rather，it's a wetland preserve specifically designed to accommodate hundreds-even thousands-of daily takeoffs and landings by birds traveling along the East Asian-Australian Flyway. Over 50 species of migratory (迁徙的）water birds，some endangered, will stop and feed at the protected sanctuary before continuing their long journey along the flyway.

Located on a former landfill site，the 150-acre airport is also open to human travelers.(Half a million visitors are expected annually.) However，instead of duty-free shopping，the main attraction for non-egg-laying creatures at Tianjin’s newest airport will be a green-roofed education and research center, a series of raised “observation platforms” and a network of scenic walking and cycling paths totaling over 4 miles.

“The proposed Bird Airport will be a globally significant sanctuary for endangered migratory bird species, while providing new green lungs for the city of Tianjin.” Adrian McGregor of an Australian landscape architecture firm explained of the design. Frequently blanketed in smog so thick that it has shut down real airports, Tianjin is a city---China’s fourth most populous----that would certainly benefit from a new pair of healthy green lungs•