Polystyrene may get banned in California since it isn’t such an environmentally friendly material so coffee drinkers in the Golden State may find themselves carrying around their coffee in a different, but very familiar material soon enough: paper.

The Chicago Tribune reports that the fast-food chain is testing gout paper coffee cups and the change would be a nationwide one.
"(Consumers) care about where their food comes from, how people are treated, impacts on the earth," said Bob Langert, VP of sustainability at McDonald's USA, the Trib reports. "And they want to do business with people who care about the same things they care about." 

The test of double-walled paper cups started in January, is lasting into the summer, and is taking place in a whopping 2,000 locations, the paper notes. The claim from the Golden Arches is that the California legislation didn’t lead to the test and that the company has been considering alternatives for “decades.”Continue reading...

Want to crack a code launching lasers to blast open a safe containing a Samsung Series 9 notebook and $10,000 in solid gold?   

Tweetcracker is the second iteration of the Boosted campaign (you might recall Tweet Wrap from last Christmas), inspired by the Samsung Series 9 with the 2nd Gen Intel Core i5 processor.

Twitter users can tweet three attempts a day to crack a code that unleashes lasers that strike the C4 and blast open a safe located in an underground lair.Continue reading...

It’s been 41 years since then college student, Gary Anderson, designed the first and still widely used recycling logo, three arrows signaling "recyclable," "made with recycled material," or "recycle here." 

Anderson won $2,500 from the now defunct Container Corporation of America, which sponsored the contest. Anderson saw his logo for the first time on recycling bins in Amsterdam in the late 1970s. "It really kind of bowled me over," he recently commented. "It's just astounding to me that it really has become iconic." 

Now it's Anderson who's doing the judging, as one of the jurors in another eco-logo contest: "Make your Mark," the search for a logo to identify products made from bio-plastics.Continue reading...

Toyota's Ideas for Good project is raising the bar on crowdsourcing creativity and kindness. In the open spirit of brands that invite developers to play with their data and create apps, the automaker is offering to share its intellectual property (good ideas) to others who may see applications that could address issues or needs in their worlds.

Submissions are now closed in the campaign, and the finalists will be announced on April 10, when the public will be invited to vote through the end of the month. The finalists have been winnowed down from thousands of submissions covering a swath of social needs since the initiative was announced in November.Continue reading...

Avon ambassador Fergie yesterday kicked off Avon Voices, Avon's first-ever global online singing talent search for women and songwriting competition (for men and women) in celebration of its 125th anniversary.

The launch also got a hand from Reese Witherspoon, and Fergie's fellow judges including Russian pop star Valeriya, singer/producer David Pack, and songwriter Diane Warren.

Check out avonvoices.com, where users can participate in one of three ways: upload a videotaped singing audition, compete in the songwriting track or vote on others' entries.