If you live on Vancouver Island, chances are you’ve crushed a Lucky Lager or two. With its iconic red-and-white logo, the beer brand is known for being affordable, crisp and refreshing — and is intrinsically linked to our corner of the world. But how did that happen? The company, now owned by Labatt, has no current ties to the region. As it turns out, the story goes back nearly a century. …“The story of Lucky as a brand itself actually starts in 1934 in San Francisco,” Matt Poirier explained. “Even then the story of the brands that were built behind Lucky go back to 1858.” …Lucky Lager (with the the iconic red, white and gold logo with a large red ‘X’ behind it) remained a part of Vancouver Island’s exports for decades, through the Second World War and into the ’50s, when it was bought by Labatt in 1957. In 1980 the company purchased Budweiser, and moved their operations to Edmonton, tearing down the Victoria brewery where Lucky had been produced. Lucky has somehow been linked to the Island despite having no physical connection to it for 40 years, the reason according to Poirier is nostalgia.
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GREENWICH, New York — It is Christmas time and many people have been busy decorating their Christmas Tree. But how did this somewhat strange practice come to be? To start, several ancient cultures practiced religious festivals around the time of the winter solstice that involved the use of evergreen boughs. … The first written record of a “Christmas tree” was in 1510 in Riga, Latvia. …The Christmas tree eventually made its way to the United States, mainly by way of German immigrants. However, the tradition did not catch on for a while. The Christmas tree was viewed as a pagan symbol, particularly in Puritan New England where laws forbade the practice for a long time. Eventually the greater prevalence of German and Irish immigrants in the first half of the 19th century made the practice more accepted. 
If you’re going to write a novel about an alien fungus threatening the planet, there are few places more suited for the setting than the damp, dark forests surrounding Seattle. At least that’s how Benjamin Percy sized up the situation when he started writing “The Unfamiliar Garden,” the second book in his Comet Cycle sci-fi series. …Steve Trudell, one of Seattle’s top mushroom mavens, says Percy made the right choice. “The Pacific Northwest is an excellent area, mushroom-wise — a big reason why I live here,” he said in an email. A fictional University of Washington mycologist — that is, a scientist who specializes in the study of fungi — is one of the main characters in the book. And that’s not the only parallel between Percy’s plot and matter-of-fact mycology. Although the invasive fungus in his story is totally made up, the way it behaves plays off some of the freakier foibles of real-world fungi.
MENLO PARK — In a small lab in California’s Silicon Valley, Martin Janousek and Stu Aaron are making whiskey. There are no oak barrels stacked floor to ceiling. In fact, there’s hardly any wood at all. Instead, they use syringes, beakers and vials to find a more sustainable way to distil whiskey. “This modern consumer – they tend to care about causes like climate change,” said Aaron, co-founder of Bespoken Spirits. The spirit spends three to five days in a keg-like metal barrel. The company’s technology speeds up oxidation, thus changing the whiskey’s flavor and extracting the color, smell and flavor profile from a piece of oak about the size of a pinky finger. They char the oak in the lab before cutting it into small pieces known as microstaves – this allows them to use 97% less wood. By nixing barrels completely, they can avoid cutting down trees…
The Woodland Trust and Forestry England warned revellers the fruit can lead to a series of problems for creatures – including hedgehogs, foxes, badgers and birds – and spread disease. …Kate Wollen, assistant ecologist at Forestry England, said: “We see many posts on social media encouraging people to leave pumpkins in the woods for wildlife to eat, but please do not do this. “Pumpkins are not natural to the woodland and while some wildlife may enjoy a tasty snack it can make… birds, foxes, badgers, deer, and boar unwell and can spread disease. …Pumpkin flesh can attract colonies of rats and also has a really detrimental effect on woodland soils, plants and fungi.” People are being urged to turn their pumpkin into soup or even into a birdfeeder – or add to the garden compost.
German toilet paper maker Hakle is turning to waste from coffee production to stay afloat, reported Manila Times. Two years ago, at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, the firm profited from a huge demand in essentials – such as toilet paper. But with the health crisis abating, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has sparked skyrocketing energy costs, forcing Hakle to file for insolvency. It has therefore turned to innovative solution. Huge quantities of coffee grounds are produced every year by the European food industry, and Hakle has found a way to transform the waste into material to make loo roll. The first rolls using the new process were produced at the Duesseldorf-based company’s factory last week. …”The goal is 20 to 25%” of coffee grounds constituting the material for making the paper, replacing wood pulp, said Jung.
