Did this year whizz by as fast for you as it did for us? As the year-end draws closer, it’s easy to get sucked into the holiday madness and forget that the environment is not exactly going through “a holy day” phase. But seriously

who has time for that right now? The only time we can spare at the moment will be used wisely to do one of most the spiritual rituals ever performed by humankind: And that is to shop …until we faint.

Ok, before the darling twin angels of credit and debit kiss you blind and you pass out from all the love, we’d like to state one small fact: We’re not the party poopers here. In fact, we party hard. Think of us as the eco -spirited Lindsey Lohan… or think of us as a speck of green light illuminating, kind of like Rudolph’s tiny nose.

The first sign that you’re still shaking your green pompoms while everyone is cheering for something else is that you have Beyond in your hands at this very moment. And this issue we’re throwing a big bash party. We’re celebrating the kickoff of a new season with a stellar set of images and stories from all corners of the globe. Paris, Rome, Australia, Africa, Sinai, and Mexico are among the destinations we’ve set off to – and for very different reasons. We’ve come across some really cool spaces, places, and faces, such as Tûranor, the first solar boat to circumnavigate the world, the red hot new Ferrari store in Italy, and sunny pilot and pioneer André Borschberg. When we flew back to Lebanon, we rubbed elbows with extreme sports aces such as Walid Noshie and Amer Ghandour and we spent a night holed up in a tree house. And when it was time to get back to business, we pulled up a chair next to banking tycoon Raymond Audi who lifted the lid on his many green senses. While we were at it, we took a course on how businesses can make green models of themselves at no cost. Read on for Spark Notes. One of the many things we learned as we went along is that industrial waste can actually be an important economic resource.

It was also interesting to know that Lebanon is thinking seriously about turning its waste to energy and that the state is working on promoting water conservation. But it was not so interesting to find out that noise levels in Beirut exceed international standards, and they are even a threat to health. This might not have been something worth shouting about, but we were loud and proud that the Lebanon Green Building Council has devised a system for rating energy efficiency in commercial buildings. And we were shouting through the roof when we saw the liquid sculpture images of Belinda Ibrahim. And so will you.

As you can see, we’re not resting on our laurels, not this issue, and not any issue. We’ll continue shining our green light through. We’ve been nosey, and now so are you. So twitch your nose and be proud.