Blogs & Ecology

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?...

Leigh Stringer, Lloyd Alter, Willem Maas, Stephen Del Percio and Preston Koerner

I was asked to be part of a panel discussion about Green Blogs and the Built Environment and was surprised to see a full house. There were also moderator Leigh Stringer of The Green Workplace, Preston Koerner of Jetson Green, Stephen Del Percio of Green Buildings NYC and Willem Maas of Green Home Guide.

I really felt sorry for Richard Moe, and a bit angry, too. Here he is, the keynote speaker for Thursday morning, with a hall that can seat thousands, and there are maybe two hundred people. Downstairs they are crowding in to other seminars on how to build green buildings, not realizing that up in the ballroom the President of the National Trust for Historic Preservation is talking about what is by far biggest green market for architects in the country- fixing what we have.

Two years ago, TreeHugger Christine called the AQUS Watersaver:

"the epitomy of American ingenuity. Bothered from a young age by the tragic waste of water flowing down the sink drain, Mark Sanders repeatedly dreamed of a system to collect that water and reuse it."

We met Mark Sanders at Greenbuild, with what is now known as the Sloan AQUS Watersaver. This is the kind of progress we like to see; an guy with a dream and a glue gun but limited distribution gets to tie up with a major....

Kevin Surace and his company, Serious Materials, have been on TreeHugger before; they invented and are producing EcoRock, a new drywall substitute that generates a fraction of the carbon dioxide released in the production of conventional board. They also make Quietrock, a soundproof drywall where one sheet is equivalent acoustically to eight sheets of regular stuff. They "aim for breakthroughs in product performance, without requiring changes in customer behavior or in how products are used – thus speeding market adoption."

For a long time this TreeHugger has been promoting the idea of residential composting toilets, saying that " If we are truly going to develop a zero waste society and protect our water resources, we are going to have to start thinking about dealing with all of our wastes and not keep flushing some of them down the pipe."

TreeHugger first showed YOLO Colorhouse paints over three years ago and their outdoor line a year ago. It's nice stuff, but now every paint manufacturer offers VOC (volatile organic compound) free paint, it is an easy point when you are racking them up for LEED. (Learn why VOC free is important here)

So besides the lovely booth with happy people creating spin art, what makes YOLO so special today?
...

Douglas Green has been building furniture in Portland, Maine since 1993 under the name Green Design, and he has been living up to his name when it comes to the way he designs and builds.

Green manufacturing to us means creating designs that endure - structurally and artistically - to last for generations, without harming either the environment or the people that make or use them. Our work is done using domestically grown solid wood, logged following sustainable forestry guidelines. Whenever possible, our manufacturing waste products are recycled or repurposed.

...

They may have crushed all of the EV1 electric cars, but they didn't crush the technology; it lives on at Aerovironment, used primarily in industrial vehicles and forklifts.

The technology behind PosiCharge grew out of AV's development of the modern electric car for General Motors. Introduced in 1989, the GM Impact was a breakthrough in EV design and systems integration. When tasked with finding a way to safely increase the useful range of electric battery packs, AV's team of engineers, scientists and battery applications experts developed PosiCharge.

It essentially charges a battery three to six times as fast and a conventional DC charger....

TreeHugger loves the idea of rainwater harvesting and has shown quite a few solutions for storing it; they are usually big tanks that are either buried or quite visible above grade. They are also as big when they are empty as they are when filled.

Jim Harrington takes another approach; he invented the rainwater pillow, a flexible bladder that expands to hold rainwater. It is available in sizes from 1,000 to 40,000 gallons. ...

It doesn't look like much, and my photography doesn't help, but for me, this simple product was perhaps the best thing I saw at Greenbuild. But then, I am biased; I like dumb products that just sit there and do their job while reducing our carbon footprints and saving fossil fuels. These are the kinds of innovations that scale, that are accessible and affordable.

Structural Insulated Panels (SIPs) are usually known as a sandwich of OSB (oriented strand board) and styrofoam, all glued together to make a structural panel. While they make a very well-insulated, tight wall and are fast, I have worried about their longevity and would have preferred to use a less petroleum-int...

Here is an equation we like:

Waste by-product + modern technology + socially responsible labor = Engineered Timber Resources Products

A great example of what they do is with Mulberry. This tree has been cultivated for thousands of years for silk production, and needs pruning to flourish. the branches are then stripped of their bark for medicinal purposes. And the twigs, as much as 15 tons per hectare? garbage, usually burned for for heat. Enter ETR.
...