The first edition of
Sustentable, a design festival entirely dedicated to sustainability and green design, is proving that Buenos Aires is ready to embrace the environmental movement. The event gathered a good amount and quality of designers, which offer a panorama of the state of green design in the city these days. Plus, even in a rainy weekend, it received a great amount of public in the workshops and presentations.
Many of the featured designers in the show are already part of TreeHugger's archives, but there were some new faces too. In this post we bring you Diseno Cartonero (something like waste-picker design). Find out in the extended....
The US Environmental Protection Agency has an aqueous analog to the well established ENERGY STAR® program. The 2-year old
WaterSense® is a partnership program sponsored by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and is the symbol for water-efficient products, services and practices.
Vanguard Homes of North Carolina USA is apparently the first partner-member to construct a
new home that broadly meets WaterSense® criteria.
WaterSense labeled new homes by Vanguard will be designed to be at least 20 percent more water efficient than homes currently being built under traditional standards, saving homeowners more than 10,000 gallons of water per year. These homes are designed to use significantly less water inside and out, through efficient plumbing fixtures, hot water delivery, appliances, landscape design, and irrigation systems. Via:Vanguard news release (pdf file)
How much would you save if you bought WaterSense® labeled products for an
existing home? (Surely a more frequent occurrence, these days.)...
Enough is enough according to the nuns at an ageing Victorian convent. They are tired of being caretakers for an old country mansion that is eating money in fuel bills and upkeep. Now they have commissioned a new home in the remote countryside that will be environmentally friendly. It will have rainwater harvesting, reedbed sewage systems, sedum roofs, recycled materials, a woodchip boiler and be built of responsibly-sourced timber.
"We are supposed to love creation and respect the environment. We're living in and taking care of it." said the abbess. To that end they have hired
Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios, prize winning architects who have recently won the prestigious Stirling Prize for a residential development. The architects appreciated the sisters' point of view: "These clients are naturally parsimonious, they're not into buying and consuming like we are and they have a great respect for the natural environment. It's been a privilege working with them. They're so charming and they're quite good fun."
...
Andrew Maynard plug in housing
When I asked
Is Home Ownership a Good Thing? a few months ago, the consensus was very much yes. Now some thoughtful people are coming down on the other side.
Richard Florida:
Our reliance on single-family homeownership is a product of the past 50 years – and the experiment has outlived its usefulness. Not only is it now readily apparent that not everyone should own a home, and that the mortgage system is a big part of what got us into the current financial mess, but homeownership also ties people to locations, making it harder for them to move to where work is. Homeownership made sense when most people had one job and lived in the same city for life. But it makes less sense when people change jobs frequently and have to relocate to find new work.....Imagine a future where people live in plug-and-play rental housing units – able to move quickly when they change their jobs, with many shrinking their commute to a short walk or bicycle trip and many others able to trade in their cars for accessible mass transit.
...
We wrote a year ago about Michelle Kaufmann's assault of the booming prefab modern gingerbread scene, noting that "as the mortgage crisis deepens, this may be the only modern prefab market left." We are disappointed to note that whereas last year her house was a modest, one storey number, she has gone all McMansion on us with her
GingerLotus, which is definitely more than we can chew in a sitting. ...
My favorite talmudic anecdote is from the Rabbi who noted
"my life has been blessed, because I never knew I needed anything until I had it." I know exactly how he felt; How have I coped without this
One Click Butter Cutter? found on
Dvice. No wonder North American kitchens are so big, they have to accommodate all of this crap....
They are just so cute, those kids on the
cement promotion site. The concrete manufacturers advertise themselves as green, and whenever we go to the trade shows, all the insulated form manufacturers are calling themselves "green"- there was a whole row of them at Greenbuild. My usual complaints are the amount of Carbon Dioxide generated in its manufacture or the damage done by aggregate extraction; now we have a new one: cement kilns are among the worst emitters of mercury on the continent.
...
Old Thomas Alva was no slouch with the elbows in the corners when it came to patent battles or discrediting competitors, and neither are his successors at General Electric. While we generally admire the company, we were not impressed with their
announcement a year and a half ago that they were working on more efficient incandescent bulbs, that
"In addition to offering significant energy savings comparable to CFLs, the 21st century version of Edison’s bulb provides all the desirable benefits including light quality and instant-on convenience as incandescent lamps currently provide at a price that will be less than CFLs."
I wrote that
the timing of the announcement was suspicious(it was the same day as the launch of
18 seconds.org and a lot of incandescent bans were being discussed) , and
" would also suggest that announcing a bulb that will be half as good as a CFL when it is launched in three years has just given a whole lot of people an excuse to do nothing."...
Lots of companies have "guides"- that simply take you around their own products. EcoTimber, (seen on
TreeHugger here) which has been selling sustainably harvested wood since 1992, has produced a wood guide that is well laid out, fairly complete, and as they say on Fox, "fair and balanced"- a really useful resource if you are considering a wood floor. ...
Pop-out to a pop-up has got to be London's theme this month. Everywhere temporary shops selling Christmas goodies are appearing...and then disappearing.
Last week's was an eco delight with ecological and green gifts for everyone and this week's caters to the design crowd. Brought to you by
Designersblock, the group behind the most interesting displays at the London Design Festival, they are calling this a "pop up thrift shop, where people can find economical solutions to Christmas."
Findings range from the beautiful to the completely quirky. In the beautiful category are the
cashmere blankets and throws (pictured), woven from Scottish cashmere using the traditional weaving skills. Quirky: the wallets made out of
recycled music cassettes from around the world. Ceramic dinner plates have a hole in the rim so that they can be stored by hanging them on the wall: no packaging and no shelf space. ...
Personal Computer Environments
Photo credit to
ifyr
A "green ergonomic office" can refer to several different things. Today, we are looking at salvaging and reusing your current office equipment, rather than purchasing a whole new set. You may think that new and improved "ergonomic" stuff will vastly improve your office performance and comfort, when in truth, it may not be as much improved as you think.
Voodoo Ergonomics
Tony Biafore of
Ergonetics has been in the ergonomic business for 25 years, plus currently contracts with the
U.S. Department of Labor to help with their in-house
ergonomics program. Tony tells us, “There is no such thing as an ergonomic product—it is all in how you use things.”
In other words, a new ergonomic computer mouse used in the same bad position will leave you no better off than the old mouse you’d been using. This is what Tony considers to be the very common misconception of what he likes to call “voodoo ergonomics.” VE is the belief that a product alone can be a fix-all for such office related ailments. Good quality office products can be valuable tools, but you must also know how to use them properly in order to gain the full benefit from them. ...
Photo credit to Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
Setting up a green office has less to do with buying high tech ergonomic equipment, and more with using what you already have correctly. Buying less office equipment, means less chance for your old stuff ending up in the landfill somewhere, and quite frankly, no matter what you currently have, it is probably a lot more functional than you may realize. Sometimes the best way to reuse old office equipment, is to have never thrown it away in the first place.
We spoke with one of the foremost experts on
office ergonomics, Tony Biafore, to find out some of the facts of setting up a functional, ergonomic, and healthy office. But before we get to the interview featured in
part 2, I think an introduction is in order of why good office ergonomics is so important, and how it can be achieved using your current office furniture....
Thanks to the gang at
Daily Candy for their great tip on new eco-store
Hammocks and High Tea. The designs are described as "home goods inspired by life and fusion of the tropics" and the cute, simple designs are a beautiful touch to any backyard retreat or bedroom hideaway. All materials are eco-friendly, recycled and/or non-toxic, and make great gifts for a housewarming party....
Image source: Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego
Watching the world around us and the changes big and small that occur all the time, sometimes you just have to do something to reflect what you are experiencing. It is this need to create that brings
Human Nature: Artists Responding to a Changing Planet to the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego. The exhibit, on display until February 1, 2009, is part of an artist residency program "investigating the relationships between fragile natural environments and the human communities that depend on them." In practice, that meant
sending 8 prominent artists to threatened locations around the world and then let them work their magic....
It is hard to build in Washington DC; there is a lot of history and a lot of approvals required. Surprisingly, it is easier to build there than it is the Canadian wilderness; that is what philanthropist Joseph Hirshhorn found out when he tried to build a new town "planned towards happy living" north of Lake Huron, with Philip Johnson as his architect. Blake Gopnik writes in the
Washington Post:
Joe Hirshhorn, a child of the tenements, had made a decent fortune on Wall Street in the 1920s and had started using it to buy modern art. But the huge uranium strike he bankrolled in Canada in 1953 -- just in time for the nuclear arms race -- allowed him to think bigger, and to bring several of his interests together. As a mining magnate, he needed a place to house his workers. As an arts patron, he wanted somewhere to showcase his collection, which he now had the money to expand to museum size. And as a new-minted philanthropist, he wanted to help the world, in this case by giving those workers a model town with that art at its heart. That town was called Hirshhorn.
...
Kokuyo Co Ltd has been in the news recently thanks to the creative new look for its office in central Tokyo. With a focus on reducing CO2 emissions and lowering power consumption, the stationary maker introduced LEDs, zoning that reduces the need for lamps, and divided the office into several areas. Such efforts have resulted in a 28% reduction in power consumption by the overall office....
Image source: Oeuf
Oeuf (pronounced UH-F. Means "egg" in French), maker of children's furniture, toys and clothes, brings more multi-functional items that can age and change as your child does. Items are all manufactured in Europe from socially responsible manufacturers. The children's clothing is all very cute and has a very grown-up, European look to it....
click here to enlarge
But hey, with the US$ so strong, thats only $ 382,469 and it is for two dogs, so that is a lot less per dog. So what if people are hungry or losing their jobs, let them build doghouses. Inside:
the dogs will sleep on sheepskin-lined, temperature-controlled beds, soothe their aches in an 18in-deep spa, howl along to a £150,000 sound system and watch dog-friendly programmes on a 52-inch plasma TV.
Automatic dispensers will ensure that chilled, filtered water and deluxe dry food are always available.
The two dogs will each have a bedroom with large windows which overlook their own private playground. 'Dog-vision' webcams allow their owner to monitor their activity 24 hours a day, while climate control ensures they are kept warm.
...
Pikachu is full of helium, which the
New York Times describes as
"a finite and increasingly scarce resource, produced extremely slowly by decaying uranium and thorium." Like anything else, (gas prices anyone?) when it gets scarce and expensive, people start thinking about using it more carefully.
So this year, instead of just releasing it into the air, the are going to try and recover it.
This year, workers from Linde and Macy’s will poke long wands into the chambers of the small- and medium-size balloons, sucking the gas out and into tubes. The wands have bulbous tips, like mushrooms, to keep the balloon fabric from tearing and bunching.
...
There was an entire row of exhibitors showing various incarnations of insulated concrete forms (ICFs) with their styrofoam walls and their plastic ties that are filled with concrete and then labelled green. Then there is Durisol, that has been around for half a century. it is made of wood chips and a bit of portland cement, 78% recycled materials, is noncombustible and is the original insulated concrete form. So why is it always ignored?...
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