We all know that leaving appliances on standby wastes energy, but who can be bothered to go around and turn everything off manually?

Domia's Bye Bye Standby lets you turn off appliances from a central (wireless) switch, doing the job with one click.

The starter pack offers a Green Switch and Smart Socket combination. A Smart Socket can control up to four appliances and they are available to buy separately.

[Via Automated Home]

Related stories: Power Aware Cord | DIY Kyoto at home

The 2012 Olympics will be a "cutting edge example of sustainability", setting examples in low waste,  low carbon emissions and green transportation, according to the Powers That Be. 

In a statement issued exactly 2,012 days before the games begin, the Olympic Delivery Authority detailed a number of ways in which London 2012 will be greener than green (or at least greener than the Sydney Olympics, the reigning champion in Olympic eco-friendliness terms).

Now the weather's finally turned seasonal (and much as you feel obliged to be happy that it's officially 'no longer the warmest January on record', you still really hate the cold), the chances are your mind is turning to holidays. Preferably the sort that whisk you out of the gloom as quickly and as affordably as possible. After all, we're all entitled to our dose of winter sun, aren't we?

Starbucks is protesting its innocence once again, this time in response to accusations made in the 'fair trade film' Black Gold, which exposes the plight of farmers in Ethiopia, the 'birthplace of coffee'. The chain has described the film's claims as 'inaccurate', denying that its workers are malnourished, barefoot, and completely reliant on US food handouts while multinational coffee chains rack up huge profits.

Pressure on the coffee giant and its rivals will mount further today when Tadesse Meskela, a spokesman for Ethiopia, meets Tony Blair to kickstart a campaign to get the East African country's farmers a better chance. At the moment, they're getting around $1.10 per pound of coffee, while retailers can sell the same amount for anything up to $160.

Last year, Patagonia wanted your underwear (so long as you were really, truly, done with it). This year, Patagonia is recycling any and all fleece into new ones, with the recycled fleeces generating only 20% of the emissions generated by creation of virgin fleece. (So yes, it's a good idea to send it to Patagonia instead of just donating it to charity, if it's gone beyond comfortable wear and into scruffy looking.) Patagonia's goal is to go all-recycled by 2010. [GT]

Patagonia offers to recycle your fleece: even if it’s a North Face one

More Fashion & accessories

Instead of leaving the basement idle, or worse, a catch-all for junk best either recycled, given away or (worst case) tossed, consider turning it into a year-round garden. With a Hydrogarden Grow Tent (for example) you can get a hydroponic garden up and running in surprisingly short time without having to know much - according to HydroHobby, anyhow. Growing it yourself would be the ultimate in local-local-local produce, and with hydroponics you know exactly what's going into the food (and therefore into your body). This particular setup costs £175 for a 1.2m version, or £345 for a 2m box. [GT]

Hydrogarden Grow Tent

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Reminiscent of the Lago Tangram shelves from last year, Chris Burton's Upcycling exhibition used construction waste as the basis for his art and craft pieces.  Burton said: "Despite construction and demolition debris being the highest percentage of waste entering landfills today, there is a lack of effort by residential contractors and construction companies to take responsibility of this growing problem." Burton hopes his exhibition will create social awareness, encouraging individuals to act locally and think globally when it comes to finding ways to divert waste from landfills.  [GT]

Chris Burton's Upcycling exhibition [via Inhabitat]

More Design & furniture

Even Hello Kitty has gone sustainable! Behold the Hello Kitty Garden Light with Planter, featuring the usual milk-faced plastic cat with pink bow, a heavy-weight plastic planter, and - here's the sustainable bit - a solar panel discreetly on the back to power the faux-Victorian lantern companion dangle. $159 USD. [GT]

Hello Kitty Garden Light with Planter [via Gizmodiva]

More Green gadgets

Baby goods, not babies... The Petit Papillon winter sale includes the blue pixie hat shown here, which is hand-knitted and only £9. But if your budget is a little bigger (or even if it isn't and you're going to pretend) see the Cosmopolitan Style Pure Merino Wool Blanket & Cap Set, done in broad creamy stripes of soft lamb wool. Normally £130, on sale for £90. [GT]

Petit Papillon winter sale

More Kids stuff

If typical modern cars resemble running shoes, the Girasole electric car looks more like a stylish beach sandal. A Japanese-Italian collaboration from Yoshio Takaoka, in collaboration with Italy's Start Lab SAP, the Girasole runs off standard mains power, and reaches speeds of 65 km per hour. It travels distances of up to a 120 km on a full battery. It's also so quiet (how quiet is it?) that it has its own soundtrack: designers have given it a clip-clop horse-hoof sound effect so that pedestrians can actually notice it sneaking up on them. (So much for Deathrace 2000.) [GT]

Fill it up... with electricity please: the Girasole electric car [via SciFi Tech]

More Transport & travel

If you didn't get an iPod Nano over Christmas and haven't quite rationalized buying one at the post-hols sales, perhaps the "The Office" Signed iPod Nano will be what finally rolls you over.  (The bad news is, it's signed by the cast of the Yank version of "The Office".  The good news is, it's for charity, so it's a tax-deductible iPod Nano.)  Scrawled by Leslie David Barker, Brian Baumgartner, Kate Flannery, Angela Kinsey and Phyllis Smith, proceeds from the auction benefit the Children's Defense Fund, Cure Autism Now and the emergency relief efforts in Darfur (specifically Friends of the World Food Program, Save the Children and the U.S. Fund for UNICEF).  Auction goes until 15 March. 

"The Office" Signed iPod Nano [via iLounge]

More Planet saving

Show her you love her thiiiis big - but are still green at heart - with the world's tallest roses from Organic Bouquet.  (Not that you can get them in time for Valentine's Day; they're sold out until early March.)  Grown at high altitude in Ecuador, the roses are nearly two meters tall, with blooms spanning ten centimeters across.  (They recommend you also spring for the galvanized steel vase-cum-bucket to keep them in, at an additional modest charge.)  $250 USD for one dozen; $450 USD for two dozen.  (At that price they'd better be fair trade!) 

World's Tallest Organic Roses

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Instead of a huge metal box, complicated to recycle, expensive to ship, and hard to keep clean, Electrolux has prototyped what it calls the 'Soft Fridge'.  With a heat-insulating membrane, extendable shelves, and accordion-style ease of pack-up, the entire unit is intended to work more around your immediate needs but also be able to expand or retract on the fly.  Still extremely-extremely in the concept stages, it does show that appliances are apt to change enormously over the next ten years.

Electrolux Soft Fridge

Now that I am no longer A: five years old or B: pregnant, I don't drink milk. If I did, however, I would certainly choose to chug it from one of these lovely glasses.

The 100% recycled glass tumblers are sturdy and dishwasher safe.

A set of six Absolutely Pure Milk glasses costs £18 from Biome.

1. Passive smoking linked to diabetes - better hurry up with the ban in England, then. [Which]

2. Pop promotes carbon trading (music, not lemonade). [Guardian]

3. Two-million-ton iceberg will be on the move this summer. Ships beware. [Independent]

4. Bad news on the piste: Planet warming makes it harder to predict avalanches. [PlanetArk]