Who's Who: The Eco-Guide

Thursday, Apr. 20, 2006 By NIA ELIZABETH SHEPHERD, NADIA MUSTAFA, CHRISTINE LENNON, CAROLINE TELL, MELISSA CERIA, KATE NOVACK

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DESIGN TOUCHSTONE Method is not only health conscious, but the brand's sleek packaging, conceived by award-winning industrial designer Karim Rashid, also redefines the category with scrubs and sprays that actually look stylish on countertops.

The Modern Hippie Graham Hill 35, Toronto

CLAIM TO FAME The proprietor of treehugger.com a for-profit online magazine and store, wants to make sustainability mainstream. He employs 25 staff members around the world to write news and reviews of modern yet green products and services. "No one has three hours to search for a pair of organic jeans," says Hill. "So we created a prolific blog that people enjoy reading while increasing their eco-smarts." With 20,000 visitors a day and a searchable archive of 5,500 posts, it's the largest green-lifestyle website out there. And there are TreeHuggerTV weekly videos and podcasts, with one episode documenting plans for an electric pedicab in Long Island City, N.Y.

BIG BREAK After earning an architecture degree at Carleton University and studying industrial design at the Emily Carr Institute, Hill started ExceptionLab, a product-design firm (imagine lamps made from old blinds) that, along with Treehugger, is a subsidiary of his holding company, Utopia Manufacturing.

DESIGN TOUCHSTONE Some of the "clever, innovative, creative and sleek" design featured on the site: a Galya Rosenfeld modular scarf handmade from reclaimed ultrasuede scraps from the upholstery industry, an iXi bike with an oil-free chain and David Ellis speakers made from dried gourds.

The Domestic Do-Gooder Danny Seo 29, Reading, Pa.

CLAIM TO FAME Dubbed the "organic Martha Stewart," Seo is creating a fresh, eco-friendly aesthetic in event planning, interior design and fashion without sacrificing style. "I don't want to sleep on the floor," he says. "I like having a nice home, a stylish wardrobe, nice things to eat. Green can be chic they're not mutually exclusive ideas."

BIG BREAK Last year Seo founded the multimedia brand Simply Green. His goal is to show the public simple and stylish ways to help the environment. "The biggest issue with people is that they think living green is too hard, that it costs too much," he says. "I am providing solutions. I am teaching them how." Seo is the host of two shows, one on Sirius satellite radio and another on Lime Television, and he has written four books. His fifth one, Simply Green: Parties, will be published in June, and provides recipes and party-planning ideas with a focus on sustainable living. Tips include how to make a lantern out of a used paper bag.

DESIGN TOUCHSTONE Seo's creations evoke a Zen-like simplicity, and he is resourceful, making chair covers out of old cashmere sweaters and picking rocks from his garden for dinner-party place cards. But it all looks sophisticated, and that is the rule. "If you don't have a stylish home, you're going to be disappointed," he says. "You won't care how green it is, because it's all about style."

The Comfort Creator Robert King 50, New York City

CLAIM TO FAME King is the founder and CEO of Humanscale, a maker of ergonomic office products. Most high-performance desk chairs depend on a maze of knobs and levers to control the settings. Humanscale seat positions are based on the sitter's weight, so the chairs require fewer parts and use fewer environmental resources.

BIG BREAKTHROUGH King founded Humanscale in 1983, but it wasn't until 1999, after partnering with designer Niels Diffrient, that he introduced his first chair. Today Humanscale accounts for approximately 20% of the market for high-performance seating.

DESIGN TOUCHSTONE "We try to boil our designs down to be as simple as possible, with fewer parts and less material," King says. The company's Freedom chair, for example, has 132 parts. A comparable chair from the competition has 275. King is lobbying to bring to his industry the kind of regulation that exists in the food business. He would like to see chairs labeled with sustainability scores based on their content. Humanscale would fare well: about 62% of the material in its Freedom chair is recycled. That's not material that is recyclable (although it's that too) but material that has been recycled.