The Finnish family business
Lasistudio reclaims glass bottles and jars without crushing them in order to create new objects. All the products are hand-made in an old barn in Finland. By taking advantage of the original shapes of the waste packages, only 1/4 of the energy needed to shape new objects from melted glass is used, says Jan Torstensson Oy, glassworks specialized in manufacturing items from recycled packaging glass....
Swedish design company
Hetta’s favourite materials are cork, leather and wool. We particularly like the corky underlays for pots; one has the shape of a
Ladder, and another one is
Long and flexible for you to decorate the table in countless ways.
...
Ok, these shoes may not be as stylish or elegant as those from the Danish label
PJUX that we featured last week, but we love thought provoking concepts and experiments with materials just as much as anything practical or functional.
Moco Loco recently highlighted the work of French designer
Tete Knecht, whose work they saw at IMM Cologne. ...
A new technique for construction caught our eye at Barcelona’s material library
Mater (more about that below):
Drysystem. Drysystem is a new tile laying system, developed by the Spanish ceramic company
TAU, that doesn’t require getting your hands dirty. This new way of putting tiles doesn’t require any kind of adhesive; the pieces simply slot into each other. 45x90 cm tiles can be slotted seamlessly into a polymer base. ...
Organic Light Emitting Diodes (OLEDs) are much more energy efficient than the "inorganic" kind. Its' quite likely that OLED's will one day make for ultra-thin TeeVees, lit architectural fascia, interior lighting, or back-lit signage. But, there has to be a fast, inexpensive way to manufacture OLEDs before the technology can spread to diverse consumer applications. Let's say it another way: before regular people can afford it. Wisely, GE is on the case.
They are using roll-printing techniques similar to that used for thin film photo-voltaic manufacturing. Somewhat similar to a paper-making machine. Amazing how one thing leads to another.
GE Global Research has reached a milestone in next-generation lighting, demonstrating the world's first roll-to-roll manufactured organic light emitting diodes.
The research group said the newspaper printing-like process is key to making the next-generation lighting technology low-cost and commercially viable.
...
Imagine a bus shelter that grows extra-long roots for you to sit on and leafy greens as shade. Or a living playground made from trees?
These are the fantasies of Plantware, a company that aspires to make fixtures in the urban landscape from living, growing trees.
...
Combining a handful of TreeHugger's favorite things,
Bloxes are modular boxes built from flat-packed corrugated cardboard cutouts that can be used for everything from office furniture to modular walls. Inspired by
LEGOs and utilizing some of the lessons you learned in high school geometry, Bloxes earn points for their smart, flat-packing design, modular construction and movability and surprising strength -- you can sit or even stand on the finished product.
...
joseph_beuys_hat
That is an odd title coming from this TreeHugger, who prefers
"Sustainable Cement is Like Vegetarian Meatballs" Nonetheless when a building is made from such a long-lasting material the best thing to do is to maintain it well and use it for a long time. Concrete structures take a lot of energy to build, a lot to knock down, and the recycling value is negligible. So reuse it.
Stephen Bayley writes about R
obin Hood Gardens and the nature of concrete, "the fashionable hate material of today." He notes that Alison and Peter Smithson's project was not a smashing success:"Alas, their architectural reach exceeded the grasp of the builders and Robin Hood Gardens suffered from the start with a singular lack of commodity and firmness. Worse, the unintelligent housing policies of Tower Hamlets populated Robin Hood Gardens with the tenants least likely to be able to make sensible use of the accommodation."...
Studio Gang are very talented architects, and have shown that they know how to
design for energy efficiency. and their
Aqua project certainly is interesting. However every one of those balconies on each of eighty floors of highrise condos is a giant radiator fin, constantly losing heat to the cold Chicago winters. It isn't too terrific for comfort, either as the floors are freezing near the window walls and condensation can form on the ceiling. Hairline cracks due to thermal stress are also likely to form.
There are a
few systems around that can provide a thermal break for a concrete cantilevered balcony, mostly from Europe, but they are expensive, a couple of hundred bucks a foot. One can see from the construction photos that they are probably not being used here....
Brazilian innovation group Let’s EVO and materials developer Fibra Sustainable Design have joined forces to create a sustainable skateboard. We’ve seen green skates before (
Arbor’s and
Sector 9’s are some examples), but besides this one being one of the first to be developed in Latin America, it was built with innovative materials developed by Fibra.
The cover layers are from Papunha Veneer, produced from the waste of the sustainable palm-heart industry. The second layer is a composite formed by 70% natural fibers (jute, malva and curaua) and 30% post-production recycled polypropylene. The natural fibers of this material are also produced on a fair trade model. Finally, the heart of the board is from 3-ply Organic Mosso Bamboo, grown without chemicals and in a sustainable model.
All of these materials are bonded with a vegetable-based adhesive extracted from species like castor oil plant, soy and corn.
Keep reading for more and a close up on how these materials look....
Wood Turner, Project Director, Climate Counts is going to be guest posting with us for a bit. His focus is on voluntary corporate climate change efforts. Please join us in welcoming Wood and his team!
Climate Counts is a non-profit campaign that scores companies annually on the basis of their voluntary action to reverse climate change. The Climate Counts Company Scorecard -- launched in June 2007 -- helps people vote with their dollars by making climate-conscious purchasing and investing choices that put pressure on the world's most well-known companies to take the issue of climate change seriously. Launched by organics pioneer Stonyfield Farm, Climate Counts functions as a proxy for the average consumer in tracking the world's largest companies and believes everyday consumers can be the most important activists in the fight against global warming. New Climate Counts company scores will be available in April 2008....
After our initial launch, we were thrilled to find Crate & Barrel's
Kona rug. And over the past few years we’ve covered the company's various eco-products, such as their
glass food storage containers, their
Bamboo Bento collection and, in the past year, their
“green sofa.” Nowadays, we’re amazed at what they’ve come up with.
At first, we were skeptical of Crate & Barrel’s most recent e-newsletters, touting their commitment to sustainability, but we’re beginning to see that this might not be a case of your average green washing. “The best place to start making the world a better place is right at home,” reads the introduction to the environmental part of their website. “At Crate & Barrel, green is not a trend. It’s an ongoing mission.”
...
The huge trade show
EcoBuild has returned to the Earls Court exhibition centre in London. Given that this is the same venue for
100% Design, where maybe, if you're lucky, 5% of content is sustainable, it is amazing to see the entire two hangars filled with eco-friendly materials. However, on closer inspection, it is clear that while all eco-materials might be equal, some are definitely more equal than others. Here are five which we think make the TreeHugger grade:...
There's plenty of buzz in the startup world about faster-to-make, cheaper, highly efficient, thin-film solar photo-voltaic technology. For a sample, check out "
Painting solar Bloo" about a solar panel startup company balled "Bloo" which is deploying nano-tech methods to up the cost effectiveness of Cadmium Telluride based solar collection devices. We're all for innovation, don't get us wrong; but Cadmium Telluride or "CdTe" solar panels are a troubling innovation pathway. This post presents a high-level summary of the risk management areas of concern and a closing comment on how to potentially relieve concerns about cadmium coating our rooftops.
Tellurium, although very rare, even in comparison to the other noble metals such as gold, is available as a byproduct of copper and lead smelting, and is already produced in North American for variety of non-solar applications. Tellurium metal is only of moderate toxicity. This is the good news part of the story....
Be it paper or plastic, packaging and its environmental impacts have always been squarely on the TreeHugger radar (
here,
here and
there). And last week, to add one more pebble to the mountain, the
Dogwood Alliance released a
report on the effects of logging in the southeastern parts of the United States, which shows that eco-unfriendly packaging is not only a global issue, but also one that hits pretty close to home.
The report, “Southeastern Swamplands and Paper Packaging”, focuses on the rich biodiversity of the thirteen-state region, which is the largest paper-producing region in the world, supplying 15% of the world’s paper. Twenty-five percent of all the wood fibre from this region ends up as paper packaging – out of six million acres cut down annually. ...
America's poisoned supply chain melt-down started in China during mid-2007, and appears to be continuing into 2008. Running in a direction opposite of that suggested by the movie
China Syndrome.
Poisoned dog and cat food first came to public attention in the summer of 2007.
Then came lead paint on children's toys; and, lead-laced PVC everything from China.
Just before Christmas of 2007, there was this plastic sculpting toy for kids that contained a dangerous drug, added for reasons only known to the minds of mad polymer scientists.
Now, it's the biomedical supply chain, with roots in Chinese pig farms. What's next?...
Greenguard meets all the tests for a good green label. It is a true independent third-party certification and is recognized by LEED and just about everyone else, "helping customers choose healthy, low-emitting products and materials and demonstrating a commitment to the environment through better indoor air quality."
So we were surprised to see an ad for Owens Corning's pink fibreglass insulation saying that it had Greenguard certification. We thought it had a formaldehyde binder in it. So how did it get Greenguard?...
Whenever I write about what a lousy building material concrete is from an environmental point of view, and why I love wood,
I take a lot of abuse. However this little drawing by Austrian architect Christoph Wassmann says it all: a cubic meter of concrete (which doesn't go very far in construction and is not readily recyclable) puts out 385 kg of CO2. A cubic meter of steel (which goes a long way and is recyclable) puts out
a lot at 12,200 kg CO2/m2, but that is virgin steel and much of it now is recycled so it should be lower. Wood? it binds CO2 and has a negative rating, sucking in 900Kg of CO2 in its "manufacture" or growth. A cubic meter of wood contains 411 board-feet, or about 100 8' long 2x4s, which is a fair pile.
::Anarchitecture...
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We found ourselves wandering through the 
Imagine that; now houses and 
We featured 
