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Green

We rock Japan’s new wearable grocery bag for sustainable, stylish shopping

Carry your groceries through the mighty power of your own core!

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Uniqlo and GU announce they will now charge for shopping bags in a new, eco-friendly initiative

Japan’s most beloved cheap and cheerful fashion brands are taking another step to reduce damage to the planet.

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Cruise Tokyo in comfort for free with Suumo’s cozy taxis, hang out with their fluffy mascot

There are only three of these adorable verdant vehicles out on the streets — flag one down if you get the chance!

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There’s a reason why there are fewer green Lego bricks than any other color

Lego building blocks are a fantastic toy for growing kids and adults alike. These snap-together bricks allow you build pretty much anything, regardless of whether you follow the instructions included in the box or throw caution to the wind and build whatever pops into your head. With the success of The Lego Movie and a sequel and spin-off movies in the works, the outlook for this 65-year-old toy has never been better.

But there is an alleged little-known secret hidden in the core of Lego’s sensibility. If you take a random sampling of Lego bricks, you will notice that there are far fewer green ones than any other color. The reason why may surprise you.

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Tea for trash – “Methane Cafe” offering free drinks in exchange for patrons’ kitchen waste

It’s often said that, rather than splashing out on expensive new appliances and fitting solar panels to our roofs, it’s the smaller changes we can make in our daily lives that will have an enormous positive effect on the environment. The act boiling a kettle, for example, may seem like a relatively harmless one, but – often because we boil more water than we actually use – we waste thousands of tons of carbon every single day simply by making cups of tea or coffee.

With that in mind, a new members-only cafe has recently opened its doors in the town of Osaki, Miyagi Prefecture, which uses energy from patrons’ kitchen waste to boil the water needed for a relaxing brew, making the green tea they serve some of the greenest in the world by far.

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Green Tokyo: 5 cool examples of urban agriculture

With its massive urban sprawl and busy streets, Tokyo doesn’t exactly seem like the kind of place you would find farmland, but Tokyoites are waking up to the fact that growing your food closer to home means more food security and less pollution from transport. The problem is finding the space in the city and cultivating–if you will excuse the pun–the expertise. But where there is a will, there is a way, and some Japanese have found truly ingenious ways to bring farming to the big city.

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