April 10th, 2009
The Most Beautiful Green Home Building Construction Project Ever?
Stumble it!
Written by Brian Liloia, courtesy of GreenBuildingElements.com
My jaw dropped when I first watched this video tour of a beautiful owner-built green building construction project in Oregon. This particular green building is made entirely out of cob, a mixture of clay, sand, and straw.
Meka Bunch of Wolf Creek, Oregon built this stunning cob house over a four year period. Complete with hand-sculpted furniture, shelves and nooks built directly into the walls, arched windows, and a killer custom staircase, his cob building is a divine artistic achievement.
Check out the video and photos of Meka’s cob cottage for yourself:
This couch is made of cob and features wood storage tucked underneath, right next to the stove.
The kitchen features many shelves and nooks built directly into the cob walls, and also includes a small compost chute. (Look for the tilted latch.)
The wood stove is surrounded by cob for thermal mass, and includes a warm nook with shelf to culture yogurt.
Gorgeous custom-made cob staircase.
The north porch of Meka’s cob cottage.
I must say that Meka’s cob house design is one of my favorite projects that I’ve seen. This is truly a beautiful hand-built green building.
For more information, visit the Artisan Builders Collective.
(Image credit: Artisan Builders Collective)
Popularity: 24% [?]
March 24th, 2009
Eco-home Makeovers: Green Irene on the Scene
Well thank goodness someone has seized upon this huge market opportunity! Here are Low Impact Living we’ve been talking for years about the need for a national, high-quality service that provides in-home green auditing and consulting services. And we’re thrilled now that Green Irene is on the scene.
Green Irene was started in New York but they now have over 300 independent green consultants all over the United States. A consultant will come to your home, and advise you on how to save energy, cut your water use, save money and live a healthier life as well. The home makeover costs $99 and takes about 60-90 minutes. At the end of their review of your home they will give you a Green Home Makeover Report and a Family Action Plan– so that you can jump into making positive changes right away.
Green Irene is doubly brilliant because they also offer Green Office Makeovers. We hear from people all the time who want to know how they can go green at the office– and now they can have a Green Irene specialist visit their office and help them make smart changes.
We are contacted all the time here by people who want to become green consultants and they don’t know where to start– well now we can direct them to Green Irene. The company provides extensive training for its consultants, so that anyone can become a green home expert. To learn more about becoming a green consultant with Green Irene, click here.
Popularity: 3% [?]
March 24th, 2009
Cardboard Furniture: From Cheap to Artsy to DIY
Most cardboard has a pretty high recycled content — and can be easily re-recycled or composted to boot. Plus, cardboard’s also an inexpensive material that’s light and, usually, flat — characteristics that make cardboard furniture affordable (usually, at least) to make and ship. All these qualities are making cardboard — something we often think of as a low quality, one-use, disposable product — a popular material for serious eco furniture designers!
Cardboard’s an especially popular material for children’s furniture — perhaps because easy-to-recycle cardboard makes sense to use for pint-sized chairs and little cradles kids will quickly outgrow. Green Lullaby’s Eco-Cradle (above), for example, is an all-cardboard cradle made with over 60% recycled pulp! Eco-Cradle ships flat and can be assembled quickly without tools — and can also be disassembled and re-flattened to be easily stored away for the next baby. The Eco-Cradle’s available for $99.50 at Olive and Bean Boutique.
Another cardboard baby bed option’s the customizable cardboard cot by Album di Famiglia (above). However, this boxy cot’s very pricey! Parents will have to spend $220 Euros plus UPS shipping to the U.S. at the Little Fashion Gallery to get this cot.
Lots of other kid furniture’s available at Cardboardesign, a company that offers a basic kids’ drawing table ($58) and chair (2 for $45) — but then thinks outside the cardboard box to create everything from an all-cardboard lemonade stand to a rocket to a play castle too (above). The kids can certainly enjoy playing with and using these toys and furniture, but half the fun seems to be in the assembling and decorating of these cardboard structures. Each product comes with assembly instructions — and a packaway flat box for storage.
Cardboardesign also makes furniture for adults! The light, easily assembled, flat-packed tables and chairs are especially popular with eco-companies with booths at expos and conferences, since the furniture travels easy. I see them being great for bake sales or other community events. Why lug big heavy tables and chairs around when you can easily get the same setup from a flat cardboard box?
Those cardboard pieces can apparently withstand 600 lbs of weight according to Cardboardesign’s website, but even more sturdy looking shelves, chairs, and desks — like the one above — are also available from the company.
For those willing to shop for their furniture from afar, ReturDesign Studio in Sweden offers a very large variety of furniture, ranging from basic tables and chairs to beautiful sofas (above), functional display units, and gorgeous lamps. According to CNET, ReturDesign gets many customers from U.S.! To be one of them though, you’ll need deal with currency exchanges and international shipping.
Big spenders can browse Frank Gehry designs, made by Vitra. These high end seats are gorgeous show pieces — and will put you back $480 - $985 a piece at All Modern.
Not willing to fork over that kind of cash for — cardboard? Then try your hand at making your own cardboard furniture. Foldschool has free patterns and detailed instructions for making a stool, chair, or rocker for kids!
Up for a bigger challenge? Check out this Instructables post on how to design your own cardboard furniture. These instructions were taken from a video — How Things Are Made: Cardboard Furniture — featuring Eric Guiomar of the Les Cartonnistes, a collective of French cardboard furniture makers! (via Apartment Therapy)
For more cardboard inspirations, read about the offices of Nothing, a commercial creative agency, and Beast, an ad agency (via Treehugger). Both offices were designed entirely by cardboard!
Photos via Olive and Bean Boutique, Little Fashion Gallery, Cardboardesign, ReturDesign Studio, and Foldschool
Popularity: 11% [?]
March 11th, 2009
Pizza Box and Other Recycling Mysteries Solved!
Even for the most eco-minded among us there are often lingering questions when it comes to recycling. “Can I put that used pizza box in the recycling bin?” is a big one. Also, “Do I need to rinse that plastic tub or that glass jar?” is another common one. Let’s get to the bottom of these mysteries, shall we?
Thanks to Earth911.com, they have solved the pizza box puzzle for us in a recent excellent piece on that topic. I knew that you can throw out clean cardboard, but you can’t throw out a pizza box that has cheeze and sauce remnants on it. But I didn’t know WHY– and now you can too! Here’s the scoop:
“Food is one of the worst contaminants in the paper recycling process. Grease and oil are not as big of a problem for plastic, metal and glass, as those materials are recycled using a heat process. But when paper products, like cardboard, are recycled, they are mixed with water and turned into a slurry. Since we all know water and oil don’t mix, the issue is clear.”
So if you are able to rip out the parts with food trash on them, then good on you. If not, sadly that cheesy box needs to go in the trash. So sad.
Now on to the rinse-out questions. Keep in mind that glass and metal are both more recyclable than plastic– with plastic you have to check the numbers on the containers and make sure your local recycling accepts those types of plastic.) For both glass and metal: you do not have to clean the heck out of them before throwing them in your bin. You also don’t have to remove labels. The heat used in the recycling process deals with contaminants easily– and you get to save water!
For plastic you do need to rinse it more thoroughly. Oils and food debris foul up the plastic recycling process. So give those tubs a good rinse– and do a particularly good job if there are cleaning or hazardous materials in there.
What about recycling Styrofoam? Earth911.com has done an excellent piece on this as well– read about recycling Styrofoam here. As you guessed, it’s not an easy answer. It depends on where you live– in Los Angeles for instance we can toss our clean Styrofoam right in our recycling bin. But that is definitely not the case in a lot of cities. As always, you need to check with your municipal waste service for clear recycling guidelines.
Click here to read our full recycling guide– it covers batteries, paint, and much more. Or if you’re looking for a recycling center in your area, search our nationwide database of recycling centers. Thank you for all of your hard work to recycle to the max!
Popularity: 3% [?]
February 6th, 2009
Greener Gadgets Design Competition: You Get to Vote
The 2nd Annual Greener Gadgets Design Competition is on, and there are lots of compelling, interesting, and just plain kooky designs in the mix. Core 77 design magazine and Greener Gadgets host this competition to inspire outstanding design innovations for greener electronics. The top 50 entries are published online for voting and commenting. You can vote for your favorites. Voting ends February 20, so get on it!
One cool product is the eMetric. This is a wireless office power management system. Designer Jason Deperro contends that the eMetric “allows teams of conscientious workers to control and learn about their electronics’ energy consumption - saving energy and money.” We like the idea very much that teams of folks could instantly track their usage and then work to lower their power consumption. It’s e-Nifty.
One design we also like is the Indoor Drying Rackby Rob Podell. First of all, it’s not electronic, so that’s cool. Also, we’re big fans of air-drying laundry here at Low Impact Living (remember that your clothes dryer is one of the worst power-sucking, inefficient appliances in your home), so we think this drying rack is pretty nifty. It folds down from the wall and creates an aerated kind of table for drying. Easy, attractive and electricity-free!
We also dig the CompostAll. This kitchen device, designed by frog design, is a replacement for the home in-sink garbage disposal. It allows food waste to be composted instead of sent down the drain. The CompostAll saves mulched food waste in a removable container under the sink. Frog design claims that the devise provides a convenient, discreet, and odor-free location for food waste. What’s also pretty cool is that it comes with an alert light on the sinktop that tells the user the container is full. Then you can just take the container out from under the sink and put the contents into your outdoor compost bin. You already have one of those, yes?
In the kooky column, I’ll add the Guilty Wallet. Ruhel Mohammed has designed a series of wallets aimed at helping people cut our consumer culture (which he spells in ALL CAPS). He makes the interesting argument that we need fewer green gadgets and instead should all buy less. He goes on, “We spend for so many reasons, but it is undeniably true that we spend through one of these vessels: GREED, LUST, PRIDE, ROTH, SLOTH, GLUTTONY and ENVY. Although spending and debt are the foundations of the capitalist society, we should be careful of excessive spending or GREED.” Wow, don’t get Ruhel involved in a debate at a cafe– it will not be a short discussion. His wallets may not have much of an impact, but they do make you think about spending for a brief moment.
Popularity: 7% [?]
