Manuel said:
"This is great news! I hope all cities pass this into law.The practice of using plastic bags just to quickly dispose of them has been going on far t..." [read]
Jay Knecht said:
"What are the performance stats for the Son of Max? ..." [read]
gazelle said:
"@ Dallas:
The book, and the supplementary videos in the "How It All Ends" youtube series, address this in detail, but I'll try to paraphrase:..." [read]
Barry said:
"Kofi Annan has about as much of a clue about electric cars and developing countries as Ann Ann the Panda.
He underestimates the ingenuity o..." [read]
JJ said:
"Very cool. I didn't thought that biodesel might be our future fuel...." [read]
Derek said:
""I guarantee you this will spark huge debates around the world," she said. "We have to delve into this in a way that hasn't been done in a long tim..." [read]
See the bee? Aim the pee. Photo Sfegette via flickr.
Chasing negawatts, the energy that you don't use, is a popular pursuit these days for cash-strapped states, and California is turning out to be excellent at it. Negawatts (a term Amory Lovins came up with) can offer a lot more bang for the buck, so to speak, then building new power. And asSteve Fleischli at HuffingtonPost reports, when faced with choosing a $550 million salination plant that would require lots of water and lots of power but produce fresh water, or a Coastal Restoration $187 million project to swap out 455,000 existing urinals for waterless alternatives and save water and generate negawatts, California's choice would seem to be, well, clear.
TreeHugger has shown a couple of toilets with sinks built into their tanks, which make you reach over the bowl to get at the sink. There have also been gray water collection tanks that go under the sink. But this is the first time I have seen an elegant, properly integrated sink and gray water system integrated so elegantly with a toilet.
Despite being one of the smaller rooms in most homes, the modern bathroom serves many purposes. It's a sanctuary, a room for pampering, and where we clean ourselves, but it's also where myriad household toxins lurk, and where much of the average home's water goes right down the drain. But don't fret. There are so many ways to green your bathroom design, you'll never have to waste water or pollute the environment again. Read the Green Materials Guide for Bathroom Designs over on Planet Green to learn more about the ideas and materials that'll make your bathroom more about zen relaxation than wasting water; here are a few tips to get you started.
After writing about the Blue Bidet, the distributor kindly sent me one to try out. I apologise in advance for the rust stains in the toilet and the old paint on the baseboards; Let's just say it is clean but old.
Is your newly improved bathroom home to a dual flush toilet or gray water system? Does your remodeled kitchen boast a reclaimed sink and other green materials? Have you improved the environmental health in your home? Have you installed devices to help save electricity, energy, water, or all three? Prove it! From small to big; water to energy; weekend home improvement projects to total room remodels, we want to see your green home modifications. Click through for details, and if you missed today's readers slideshow, fall into this season's colors in our Readers' Fall Foliage Photos .
And not just any urinals, the lucky winner is the H2Zero waterless urinal by Caroma, which beat out the competition to win this huge endorsement from one of the largest cities in the United States. Plus, green builders looking to get their permit approved now have one more ally on their side as this system has already been stamped off by the city.
In a city that has long had its battles with water conservation, this is just one more way to save lots and lots and lots of water. So just how did this "vitreous china urinal" clear all of the hurdles? Well, by making a product that outperformed the other urinals in operation, odor management, durability and waste build-up. If the city was going to approve a system that might make some people a little queasy, they had to find something that wouldn't leave a mess for anyone to have to deal with.
People find the idea of going without toilet paper a bit shocking, but lots of people around the world do it, and there are good technologies available now to replace your toilet or add on to it. It is cleaner and healthier, and counterintuitively, saves a lot of water. Making a roll of toilet paper uses 1.5 pounds of wood, 37 gallons of water and 1.3 KWh of of electricity.
A lot of these bidet style toilets are expensive, as are may of the toilet seat add-ons. The Blue Bidet is only US$ 69, C$79 when I saw it at the local Home Show in Toronto.
The water cooler with the big polycarbonate bottle is so outré, but is also expensive. But nobody likes water fountains any more and lots of people carry SIGGsrefillable bottles. This new "hydration station" from Haws detects the bottle without touching and delivers filtered water. They say that "every bottle refilled saves the equivalent of a quarter bottle of crude oil that would have been used in the manufacture and shipping of bottled water.
They also point out that it "lowers risk, both in not having unknown persons delivering 5 gallon bottles into your facility" and not having employees kill themselves trying to change them. Or, as where I teach and where they should know better, the closets are filled with empty bottles waiting to be picked up.
Here is the perfect thing for TreeHugger Sami's front yard: a Pee Tree. We talk a lot about pee on TreeHugger; how it is full of useful phosphorus, how yellow is the new green. What a shame to waste it on urban walls and in corners when cities could install designer Joa Herrenknecht's Pee Tree. It is also a new form of urban communications medium....
Image via Coroflot
One of the first times I met Graham Hill, the founder of TreeHugger, he told me about growing up in a household where practical environmental behavior was the norm. "My mom always taught us to use all the toothpaste in the tube before tossing it out."...
Photo via Grain.
An off-gassing shower curtain with its 108 volatile organic compounds, is an affront to your health and your senses. So it's natural to want to applaud the efforts of four designers, grouped together at a fledgling design firm called Grain, as they attempt to create an alternative to PVC-based plastic shower curtains. Yet swapping out the PVC plastic for the wonders of Tyvek may not be the right move. Tyvek isn't truly recyclable and is basically a petroleum-based product. Designers get pretty enamored with versatile Tyvek - click forward for Grain co-founder Chelsea Green talking about the justification for creating with Tyvek....
Image via: Maybemay on Flickr.com
It's easy to ignore, that little ripple of water in your toilet tank that you think might be a leak, but you don't have time and you're really not sure. The next time you pop a squat, there it is again, mocking you, taunting you but you figure you'll remember to pick up a new flapper the next time you're out at the store. What if there was something that could alert you to the problem and stop it instead of waiting for you to get around to fixing it? ...
For Rent: Walk-in Closet... $150, Food Pantry... $75, Couch... $50 a Night
The struggling economy has brought new opportunity to the budding entrepreneur. It is called renting out your excess space, and it means more than just renting out a portion of your house to a trustworthy tenant. Renting space can be anything from a single bedroom, closet, garage, or even just a couch for the night. Do you have more home than you really need? Perhaps you can capitalize on it and make a nice monthly income in the process......
Seventh Generation Inc. co-founder and CEO Jeffrey Hollender, who started the green tissue giant in 1988, is transferring power to Chuck Maniscalco, a former PepsiCo executive. The new guy better not mess with my favorite TP....
Bathrooms are dangerous places; just ask Janet Leigh. But it isn't just Tony Perkins that you have to worry about, there are a host of dangers in everybody's house.
Discovery partner How Stuff Works asks What's the most dangerous room in the house? They are not entirely clear about which is worse, the kitchen or the bathroom....
Photo via: Left Hand
Sometimes finding humor in life is as easy as checking into some of the news being featured around the nation. Today's humorous news bit comes from a story published yesterday in the Chicago Tribune titled, “What to do with doggy doo _ how 'bout a Powerloo?”
The article proceeded to describe the health problems and environmental eye-sore associated with outdoor animal defecation. The solution offered, outdoor, flushable doggy toilets going for just under $1,000 a pop (not including the price of a heated unit for cold weather climates)......
Images from ECObyCosentinoCosentino, one of the world’s largest natural stone importers, announces the launch of ECO™, a new line of countertops. The material is composed of 75% recycled-content including mirrors salvaged from houses, building and factories; glass from windows and bottles; granulated glass from consumer recycling practices; porcelain from china, tiles, sinks, toilets and decorative elements; and industrial furnace residuals from factories in the form of crystallized ashes.
...
Over the years Eric Hudson’s company, Preserve (formerly Reycline), has done some great things that we here at TreeHugger have been following. It all started with the launch of the Preserve toothbrush and the product list has grown from there. From the Preserve Jr. Endangered Species toothbrush to the Preserve razor, to their newest line, Preserve Kitchen, the company is no stranger to the environmental world. All Preserve products are made from 100% recycled #5 plastics in the USA, are BPA free, and fully recyclable after use. The company is powered by the recycling efforts of individuals and companies via its Preserve Gimme 5 program with Whole Foods. ...
Scott Naturals. Image credit:KC/Scott.
KC has received plenty of criticism for marketing only toiletries produced with virgin pulp from old-growth forests. Recycled content was low. That has changed, now, on a large scale. The company has just introduced the Scott Naturals line of toiletries (as pictured).
It's a first in this sector to have a full line with relatively high recycled fiber content in all entries. Reuters reports that competitors such as Charmin and Procter & Gamble Co lack multiple product offerings with high recycled content. This could be a transformational debut.
Details and discussion below....
Moen's Envi Eco-Performance Showerhead uses about 30 percent less water than a normal-flow showerhead. Image supplied by Moen.
I went to a press meeting with Moen this week and came away with a ton of green facts about the well-known company who produces bathroom fixtures. Was I taken in by the allure of a shiny presentation? Did the swag make me want to praise the company to anyone who will listen? Nope. I'm tough to please when it comes to eco-issues, and I'm not afraid to out greenwashing. But the science and math geek in me can't deny the company's impressive quantifiable eco-results (i.e. hard figures). So what do those numbers add up to? It's an equation for all-around green goodness....
The biggest downside of having a tankless water heater is that it never runs out of hot water, and my daughter's showers can run forever and often do. Trevor Murphy in Queensland had the same problem, and invented the Aqualim shower head to deal with it: the thing shuts off after a set amount of water flows through it. My daughter would be hitting me over the head with a shampoo bottle, not smiling....
TreeHugger loves ideas that let you live with less space, but they can be hit or miss. Here is an interesting idea from a designer named Pavel, who calls it the Oneself, a bathroom for someone who lives by themselves....
Source
There used to be a big debate about which is better-paper or plastic bags; now we know the answer is neither- bring your own. Perhaps the debate going on now about virgin vs recycled toilet paper is similar- the best solution is to use neither.
Christian Wolmar writes in the Guardian that "If everyone in the world used as much toilet paper as people in the UK, let alone Americans, there would not be a single tree left." He notes that in most of the world, people don't use it, and in fact we don't need it at all.
...
Image via: Jaboneras Banus
Sure you could just toss the soap on the counter, or if you're lucky your sink has a little cut-in indentation for holding soap. But it's inevitable that that soap will end up a slimy mess as the water pools under the soap and just turns the hidden half of the bar into goo, just waiting for you to grab it - you know what I'm talking about. Well designer Marcos Shayo of Buenos Aires, Argentina has taken that goo to task and designed a minimalist soap dish - the Soap Holder Banus - that can be installed anywhere, uses minimal resources and also keeps the soap fresh....
Swedish no-mix toilets
Over a hundred years ago, Teddy Roosevelt noted that “civilized people ought to know how to dispose of the sewage in some other way than putting it into the drinking water.” We still don't get it right, building huge networks of pipes that dump everthing together into one pipe, when both bodily waste products are considerably more useful if kept separate.
Rose George does an op-ed in the New York Times that expains why. ...
Toilet paper aisle. Image credit:Flickr, Noricum
You know that feeling when you walk into the paper product aisle at the market and you’re overwhelmed with choice? Being a green consumer, you naturally want to make a green choice, but how? And, maybe more importantly, why? Need help? Well, viola! Greenpeace has released its Recycled Tissue and Toilet Paper Guide, a credit card-sized shopping guide to help consumers find the greenest household paper products....
Photo via Coroflot
Those shampoo and soap commercials that always show people being transported to exotic outdoor bathing locations when they start using the product just might become a kinda sorta reality with this intriguing bath mat idea that brings a bit of the swampy outdoors inside. ...
Photo via RelentlesslyOptimistic
We've all been in bathroom stalls where poetry (at least by a loose definition) has littered the walls. But who'd have thought that poetry in the potty could make you use less toilet paper? A study by the research center Japan Toilet Labo showed that it can make a big difference - cutting down paper use by 20%....
We'll be working on better category archives soon. In the meantime, take a look at the weekly archive if you really want to dig around, or use the search box at the top of the page.
on 11. 5.09
And not just any urinals, the lucky winner is the 
The water cooler with the big polycarbonate bottle is so outré, but is also expensive. But nobody likes water fountains any more and lots of people carry 
Here is the perfect thing for 
Image via 
Photo via Grain.
An 
Image via: 
Bathrooms are dangerous places; just ask Janet Leigh. But it isn't just Tony Perkins that you have to worry about, there are a host of dangers in everybody's house.
Discovery partner How Stuff Works asks 
Photo via: 
Images from ECObyCosentino
Over the years 
Scott Naturals. Image credit:KC/Scott.
KC has received plenty of criticism for marketing only toiletries produced with virgin pulp from old-growth forests. Recycled content was low. That has changed, now, on a large scale. The company has just introduced the 
Moen's Envi Eco-Performance Showerhead uses about 30 percent less water than a normal-flow showerhead. Image supplied by Moen.
I went to a press meeting with 
The biggest downside of having a tankless water heater is that it never runs out of hot water, and my daughter's showers can run forever and often do. Trevor Murphy in Queensland had the same problem, and invented the Aqualim shower head to deal with it: the thing shuts off after a set amount of water flows through it. My daughter would be hitting me over the head with a shampoo bottle, not smiling....
TreeHugger loves ideas that let you live with less space, but they can be hit or miss. Here is an interesting idea from a designer named Pavel, who calls it the Oneself, a bathroom for someone who lives by themselves....
Image via: 
Swedish no-mix toilets
Over a hundred years ago, Teddy Roosevelt noted that “civilized people ought to know how to dispose of the sewage in some other way than putting it into the drinking water.” We still don't get it right, building huge networks of pipes that dump everthing together into one pipe, when both bodily waste products are considerably more useful if kept separate.
Rose George does an op-ed in the 
Photo via 
Photo via 
