Well, there’s a title to grab your attention!

Image via Smartplanet.com.

A quick whip around the office for ideas of alternative uses for this handy device brought forth various suggestions, from a primitive rafting paddle or a table tennis bat, to a cheese board!

However, this genuinely is sold as a Spanking Paddle, much to our entertainment!

You may be wondering where we found such an item, but whilst immersing ourselves in researching ethical products for ethicalsuperstore.com we stumble across many ‘interesting’ products which grab our attention. This is undoubtedly the most amusing items we’ve discovered this week - we weren’t searching specifically - honest!

So Why oh Why is this considered ethical we hear you cry?!?

Primarily it is because it was handcrafted as part of a fair trade project in India using sustainable wood, making this piece of ‘equipment’ the ultimate in eco-friendly spanking technology.

So what are you waiting for?!? The producers of these sustainable spanking paddles, Coco de Mer (NB don’t click on this link at work!) wax lyrical about the endorphins released from a good spanking, but perhaps the less said here and now about the potential associated euphoric highs the better…

I think the most important lesson to be learnt here is that whatever your hobbies, and whatever your persuasions, you can do whatever on earth it is that you do in an eco-friendly manner! And the moral of this story is that your sex life certainly should not be excluded from this. Buying fair trade condoms is a good starting point, but whether you stop there is up to you!

Bamboo can be made into all manner of things these days. You can buy bamboo jewellery and bags, and clothing made from bamboo is becoming less of a phenomenon and more of an accepted production technique with ethical clothing manufacturers. Check back to our article from last June on bamboo bikes for a truly innovative use of the material.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that bamboo bridges were the kind of construction you’d be more likely to come across in deepest Asia, however, in a bid to avoid conventionality, an eighth bridge has been built across the River Tyne in Newcastle over the last fortnight. Measuring 100 meters in length and with two 25 meter towers at either end, it is a formidable structure. Although it’s only a temporary installation, this latest enormous work of public sculpture in the North East has raised almost as many eyebrows as the Angel of the North did.

Find out more about the bridge after the jump…

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