30 Gorgeous Eco-Friendly Hotels

via mashable.com

Earth Day, annual holiday of environmental sustainability, is on Monday, and green lifestyle and sustainability are especially in vogue.

It also happens to mark the beginning of peak travel season in various parts of the world. Who says hospitality and eco-consciousness have to be mutually exclusive?

Below, we've compiled a megalist of some of the top eco-friendly hotels in the world. With solar-powered electricity, structural elements made from natural materials and downright beautiful scenery, you'll definitely find a destination where you can travel responsibly.

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Create a Science Fiction Environment With Photoshop

via psd.tutsplus.com

Photoshop is a fantastic application because it allows you to create just about anything your imagination can dream up. In this tutorial, we will show you how to create a science fiction environment using digital painting and illustration techniques. While working on this piece, you will learn how to set up your color scheme, set your perspective, and even how to create a monster robot. Let’s get started.

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The Solution To California's Problems Is Beneath Its Feet - But Rich Environmentalists Are Having None Of It

via businessinsider.com

SHALE exploitation in North Dakota has lifted incomes and brought unemployment down to 3.2% of the workforce, the lowest level in the country.

Californians are rarely found looking longingly towards the Midwest. But the revelation that their state, with unemployment at 9.8% and America’s highest poverty rate, may be sitting on the largest deposit of shale oil in the continental United States has led some to wonder if their salvation lies 10,000 feet (3,000 metres) beneath them.

California has been an oil state since 1865. Thanks largely to reserves that can still be tapped by conventional means, it remains the third-largest producer in the country. Output has lately been declining by 2-3% a year, according to the state’s Energy Commission. But in 2011 the federal Energy Information Administration declared that the Monterey shale formation, which spans 1,750 square miles (450,000 hectares) in southern and central California, held 15.42 billion barrels of recoverable oil, 64% of the total estimated to be in the 48 contiguous states.

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5 Characteristics of A Positive Work Environment

via hongkiat.com

Aside from the job scope itself, one factor that significantly influences how employees feel about work is the environment. By work environment, I mean everything that forms part of employees’ involvement with the work itself, such as the relationship with co-workers and supervisors, organizational culture, room for personal development, etc.

A positive work environment makes employees feel good about coming to work, and this provides the motivation to sustain them throughout the day.

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Inspiration Mix: Eco and Environmental Designs

via inspirationfeed.com

Inspiration mix is a roundup of inspirational designs based on a specific niche. When designers are in search of inspiration, going from site to site and typing in specific search queries in Google is daunting. To solve this problem we combine some of the best designs based on specific topic and give you high quality inspiration all in one place. So if you are in charge of designing a business card, logo, poster, brochure, website, or anything else, this is your go to resource.

Today we will be taking a look at environmental designs. Environmentally friendly (also eco-friendly, nature friendly, and green) are ambiguous terms used to refer to goods and services, laws, guidelines and policies claimed to inflict minimal or no harm on the environment. Companies sometimes use these terms to promote goods and services by making environmental marketing claims and with eco-labels...

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Apple's Data Centers Will Be Powered Entirely By Renewable Energy

via gizmodo.com

Greenpeace has been on the offensive against Apple this week, blasting the company for sourcing the power for its energy-intensive data centers from coal power plants. Today, Apple fired back with some remarkable facts, claiming it's a clean and renewable energy superstar.

Apple says the data centers in Austin, Texas, Sacramento, California, Munich, Germany, and Cork, Ireland are already powered by 100 percent renewable energy. The company has also been granted regulatory approval to use renewable energy at its data center in Newark, California, which should be completed by February 2013.

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How to Create an Exceptional Workplace

via inc.com

Exceptional workplace. It sounds good, right? We all want to have one or work at one, but what is an exceptional workplace, and how do you build one? One thing is for sure, you don't wake up one day and say, "I want my company to be an exceptional workplace" and bam, there it is. Becoming exceptional takes time and thought. It's not haphazard.

During my career, I have had the pleasure of working with a wide variety of senior managers, some from companies recognized as exceptional places to work and others that create great places to work without even knowing it. If no one has handed you an "Exceptional Workplace" award, but you are interested in building an organization that could easily win such an award, I'd like to find how you would answer these questions.

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Urban Environment Digital Illustrations

via tutorials-share.com

In these series of posts, we’ll be putting the spotlight on talented graphic artists showcasing their most recent work.

Today’s Artist of the Day is The Design Surgery from London, UK. They specialises in Informative Architecture, Illustration & Graphic Design. To find out more about them, checkout their network.

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Apple plans to build solar farm beside North Carolina data center

via digitaltrends.com

It looks as if the land cleared beside Apple's $1 billion data center in North Carolina will be used to build a solar farm to help power the new facility.

After buying and clearing 171 acres of land next to its gargantuan soon-to-begin-operations data center in Maiden, North Carolina, it looks as if Apple is about to build a solar farm on it.

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This Company Turns Plastic Bottles Back Into Crude Oil

via good.is

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. But if life gives you plastic? Make crude oil. Vadxx, an Ohio-based energy company, is taking even plastics that can't be recycled and reverting them to the material state from whence they came: crude oil.

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