Wondering what top trends and innovations for sustainable & stylish living are in play today? According to Ann Mack, the director of trend spotting for J. Walter Thompson, even in these recessionary times, green “is still very much alive.”  Here are some highlights of JWT’s 100 Things to Watch this year:

• Bamboo is booming: touted as the sustainable building material of the future, we should expect to see bamboo everywhere from building material to bicycles, clothing, kitchenware and more.
• Biomimicry (a personal fav): biologists, engineers and designers collaborate to develop designs and processes that take inspiration from nature.
• Coming Clean With Green: Americans may see more accurate and detailed green claims when the Federal Trade Commission publishes the first update to its “Green Guidelines” in 12 years.
• Custom Printed Books: market is projected to increase from 4 to 15 percent of the total book market of the next five years.
• Digital Interventions: Concerned about several forms of digital addiction (internet, mobile phones, Facebook) people will stage interventions of family and friends, encouraging the idea of logging off for periods of time (de-teching).
• F-Commerce: more and more brands will allow Facebook visitors to shop without leaving the site (ie: Victoria’s Secret, Delta Airlines and 1-800-Flowers.com)
• Green Luxury Cars: following the lead of the electric Tesla Roadster, we’ll see eco-minded wheels from Mercedes-Benz, VW, Porsche and BMW. Mercedes-Benz will launch a 4-cylinder engine (smaller, cheaper & lower emissions) in its top-line S-class sedan for the European market. VW’s Bentley G Continental GT Coupe will offer the option of a V8 engine (cleaner than the standard 12-cylinder), while Porsche and BMW have plans for plug-in hybrids within two years.
• Home Energy Monitors: Consumers are increasingly interested in monitoring how much energy their appliances and gadgets use. Design-friendly products are coming to market from Belkin’s Conserve Insight device to GE’s Nucleus home energy manager. And as sales of plug-in hybrids and electric cars take off, home energy management will increasingly be linked to vehicles.

• P-to-P Car Sharing: Person to person services including Spride Share in San Francisco, RelayRides in Boston and SF, WhipCar in London and DriveMyCar in Australia match car owners whose vehicles are idle with people who need wheels. (I’m skeptical about this one.)
• Scanning Everything: With Tesco’s iPhone app, customers can scan the barcode of a product of interest when out and about, and it’s automatically dropped into the online cart. (…impulse buys anyone?)
• Stricter Green Building Standards: As advocated by the International Living Building Institute or the Passive House Institute, building standards will be more stringent than LEED.
• Smart Infrastructure Investment: The coming years will see huge investments in smart infrastructure (embedding digital communication technologies into the framework of power systems).
• Tube-Free Toilet Paper: (no pun in tended) Currently, Kimberly Clark is conducting a test roll-out of new Scott Naturals in Walmart and Sam’s Clubs in the Northeast … if successful, it will cause competitors to follow suit, giving the toilet paper industry its biggest makeover in a century.
• Vanishing Forest Awareness: Deforestation is capturing the world’s attention again … 2011 is the UN’s International Year of the Forests, and forests were central to COP16 in Mexico.
• Virtual Mirrors: Companies like Shiseido roll out virtual makeup mirrors in European stores after launching them in Japan, allowing shoppers to preview products and play with options.

via: JWT