Made by NextDesk, the Encore is ideally green, with bamboo top, recycled aluminum frame, and VOC-free coating - perfect for this TreeHugger writer!

Residents of Muskingum County in Ohio got quite a shock this week after dozens of exotic animals broke free from an area wildlife farm and took to the streets and highways.

Wiarton Willie saw his shadow this morning, which means the cold weather will stick around.

Norwegian architect Tron Meyer cuts a stair out of solid engineered wood.

Which side of the bed gets the stair? Batlab solves it with two.

Perhaps lofts are not the best solution for tiny homes and apartments.

This multifunctioning stair hides a generous bookcase underneath.

A health insurer practices what it preaches.

Here is an architect who knows how to get people on their feet.

Architect Tamir Addadi squeezes a lot into a very small space

Michael Janzen comes up with an interesting and elegant design. But is it safe?

Belgian architects build a tower in a barn. But my, it uses a lot of lumber.

It seems that these days you can build just about anything with a CNC machine.

A good, if not very accurate, idea.

Why go diagonally when you can go straight up?

160 tons of steel and 10 tons of copper never looked so good

And believe it or not, it's environmentally friendly!

Because if you make it beautiful and open, people will use it.

Syte Architects insert a mezzanine and a terrific storage stair in existing loft.

Sometimes you wonder what they were thinking.

An international music festival in the slums of Nairobi is unusual enough. But one that plans to stop a dam and save an indigenous way of life? Let's party.

A new study shows how adolescents quickly improved their sleep time and quality in just one week's time.

But what will the handrail police say?

Also we've got electric motorcycles and hot rocks.

Plus two ways to go green as we upgrade our popular series.

Not to mention getting buried in dirt or building with it.

Who says newsletters are old school? We pick the best of each day's TreeHugger and add a little je ne sais quoi

Plus lots of green things.

With a visit to a festival and a brown lawn.

And a few looks back at themes of the last ten years.

Also, much ado about nothing.

In today's weekly newsletter, we go on about why cold showers are good for you (not the reasons you think); show off some very fancy LED lights in a very old fixture design and whine about the designs of tiny houses.

Can't keep up? Here's the best of the week in TreeHugger in digestible little bits.

Help amplify the message of the global water crisis by lending your social media updates to World Water Day 2012

The world's rarest duck - the Madagascar pochard - needs a new environment if it's going to survive

Stairs are coming out of the closet and becoming the major architectural element, helping keep people active and healthy.

Now that the summer surfing season has come to a close, (is there ever really an end to surfing season?), it's time to give your board a little TLC, upgrade any thrashed gear and prepare for the big waves of the

A Colorado family that had long ago given up on finding their cat got some incredible news this week, when Willow was found in New York City -- five years later and 1,800 miles from home.

Modifications to the $3.5bn project have been made to address environmental concerns, but it may not deflect criticism.

Alice + Whittles makes use of high-quality materials that would otherwise go to waste.

Beekeeper, and World War II veteran, is at risk of losing his beehives he's had since the 1950s.

A few short weeks ago it came out the China had plans in the works to place 20 hydroelectric dams on the upper

Another signs that the poles are warming fast.

Forever is a very long time.

From a painter's satirical take on 1950s images of a bucolic world to

Our photo of the day features one of the smallest of North American owls.

These multi-talented stairs do more than one thing in this apartment renovation in Brooklyn.

As we noted in our review of the New York Times Building communication stair, a standard principle of design today should be comfortable, bright stairs that serve as more than fire escapes, that encourage people to take the stairs instead of the

The Freedomky is a nicely done modular design

Already suffering a perilous decline, the deaths of 4 North Atlantic right whales in the Gulf of St. Lawrence this month doesn't bode well for the species.