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This is the third part of The Ultimate Modern Gift Guide for the Holidays 2010,* which is a curated list of goods for design-savvy folks interested in green innovation. This green gift guide has eight parts, which will be made available throughout the week. Here are six gift ideas geared toward conservation by saving energy and water.
This is the second part of The Ultimate Modern Gift Guide for the Holidays 2010,* which is a curated list of goods for design-savvy folks interested in green innovation. This green gift guide has eight parts, which will be made available throughout the week. With this second part, here are seven pieces of art and furniture worth gifting.
Starting today, we're doing something that we've never done before. Introducing The Ultimate Modern Gift Guide for the Holidays 2010,* which is a curated list of goods for design-savvy folks interested in green innovation. This green gift guide has eight parts, which will be made available throughout the week. With this first part, here are gifts that are perfect for the ...
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If you're on the web, here's a quick note to say Happy Thanksgiving! Hope you're safely enjoying the day with family, friends, and others. I'm grateful to you for coming back and motivated everyday to find better projects, products, and noteworthy topics.
Also, just for information, I have an excellent web guy working on migrating this entire site rom Typepad to Wordpress. It's a big endeavor, but I'm looking forward to being able to do some new things. To make a bigger difference in the world ... stay tuned!
Blu Homes recently installed and completed this factory-built home for two professors in Long Island. It's based on the Element line, which is basically the same model used to build this Rhode Island retreat that we mentioned previously. Maura McCarthy, co-founder of Blu Homes, told me in an email that steel frame construction helped the permitting process because the site is in a 120 mph wind zone near the ocean.
Alex Wilson, this year's winner of the Hanley Award for Vision and Leadership in Sustainable Housing, selected EnGuard Insulation by Vita Nonwovens as the BuildingGreen Product of the Week following Greenbuild in Chicago. The 100% polyester insulation product is made with recycled plastic bottles, or, more specifically, 15% post-consumer and 35% pre-consumer recycled content.
A new company operating out of the Pacific Northwest, Environite Building Products, recently introduced its signature solid-surface product, Environite. It's a cast-to-size material made with roughly 90% recycled content -- recycled glass and discarded post-consumer and post-industrial materials -- and both VOC- and styrene-free, according to the company. Environite is available in several colors, though the white countertop pictured may be hard to beat.
Perhaps you heard about a report by Environment & Human Health, Inc., which was published earlier this year, LEED Certification: Where Energy Efficiency Collides with Human Health. In it, to summarize, the authors suggest that the USGBC creates a false impression that buildings are "healthy" when the LEED system doesn't really do much to remove harmful chemicals from products and buildings. The report started a media frenzy on the topic.
If you're looking for long-lasting, energy-efficient lighting, 60-watt replacement LEDs are on the way to big box retailers. These lights screw in just like typical incandescents, but they use less than a quarter of the energy and have no mercury, unlike CFLs.
