PLAYgreen

Green Your Fitness Gear!

 

When your goal is to get fit, having the right type of shoes, clothes and support is essential. With so much workout gear to choose from nowadays, it’s not always easy to know which products are the best for you, and for the environment. Before you go out to buy an armful of synthetic products (yes, spandex, nylon, and their brethren were invented in a lab), remember the many green-thinking companies that produce sustainable apparel and leave your money in their hands instead!

Source: Sierra Club

Join us at the 2011 PLAYgreen Festival!

 
Come join us at the PLAYgreen Festival on Friday, February 25th from 10:00am - 4:00pm at the Pauley Ballroom! The PLAYgreen Festival is the Bay Area's premier eco-experiential event to play, work, and live a greener lifestyle! This year's event will feature over 85 student, campus and community exhibitors, local restaurants, and one amazing indoor farmers market!

Hosted by Cal Recreational Sports, admission to the ultimate eco-experiential festival is FREE! A complete event schedule including a list of participating groups and the paperless online event guide can be viewed on the PLAYgreen Festival website. We'll see you there!

Barefoot Running?

 

The debate between barefoot running and running with footwear has been going back and forth for years. But, could the theory behind running barefoot actually have some merit? For decades, major shoe companies like Nike and Adidas have profited tremendously off their stylish footwear. However, recently, more people have changed to barefoot running for health and safety reasons.

Christopher McDougall’s bestseller, Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen tracks the legacy of the legendary Tarahumara, an indigenous Mexican tribe whose people are known for running long distances wearing little to no footwear. McDougall, a long-distance runner himself, has claimed in his book and in several interviews that, prior to running barefoot, he was more prone to injuries and heel pain. This seems counterintuitive, but “Barefoot Ken Saxon,” founder of RunningBarefoot.org, claims that feet are sensitive enough to let you know if you’re doing something stupid, and that wearing shoes actually could make your feet more prone to long-term damage.

Source: Sierra Club

 

Two graduate students from NYU recently created an interactive new project called “Warning Signs.” The two students invented t-shirts that change color when exposed to high carbon monoxide levels. The shirt designs feature a heart or a set of lungs. This isn’t any ordinary type of clothing because when the fabric is exposed to pollution (ranging from cigarette smoke to car exhaust), blue veins appear on the organ image!

Co-creator Nien Lam explains, "When people would step out to have a cigarette, they would see our project, and then feel guilty going out to have that cigarette realizing, 'Oh, this is actually what I'm doing to myself.'” The American Lung Association reports that 6 in 10 Americans live in places with dangerous levels of air pollution. Cigarette smoking leads to over 440,000 deaths per year in the U.S. alone. 600 million trees are destroyed per year to make dry tobacco.

The NYU duo are now thinking about creating clothing with alcohol sensors. They may have the liver change color when the wearer has consumed too much!

Source: The Huffington Post