This being Earth Day--in fact the 40th anniversary of the first Earth Day!--I thought it made sense to profile a really simple, really green product: the clothesline. In digging into clotheslines, I came across a number of manufacturers, including the Lehigh Group in Pennsylvania and the Swiss manufacturer Stewi.
The 40th anniversary of Earth Day arrives this week to relatively little fanfare. We're focused on other things: high unemployment, a moribund economy, residual sniveling over health insurance reform. But 40 years is an important milestone.
The goal of this report was to get a handle on the ways in which LEED credits can be achieved.
We've just released a neat new report on what it costs to achieve specific LEED credits. Based on the current LEED-NC 2009 rating system, "The Cost of LEED" draws on the experience of veteran cost estimators to provide prices for specific measures a project team would consider. The report helps a team understand the implications of LEED on the cost of its own particular project, with lists of "standard" approaches compared to "high performance" options, along with cost premiums for those options.
With commercial plumbing fixtures, one trend has been very clear over the past few years: the transition to hands-free operation. Users don't want to touch anything in restrooms, period. The other trend is water conservation. Unfortunately, these two trends are not always in sync.
False-flush is a fairly common occurrence with sensor-activated toilet and urinal flushometers. I've had toilets flush three times before I've even used them!
For the last several weeks I've been describing a number of common myths about green building. This week I'll address the myth that green homes are ugly--that incorporating solar and other green features somehow compromises aesthetics.
All right, I'll admit it. The fact that the Netherlands-based revolving-door manufacturer Boon Edam has a model that uses human power to generate electricity is mostly a gimmick. By entering or leaving through the NRG+ Tourniket, a generator built into the revolving door mechanism powers three LED spotlights in the ceiling of the door.
The last several weeks I've written about a number of common myths of green building. (Last's week's myth: solar panels are the best way to green a home.) Here's another: that the energy-conservation features and products we install are enough to ensure that our houses will be top energy performers.
Geoengineering. That's what they're calling some of the more high-tech proposals for solving the climate crisis.
An article in the UK version of Wired talks about a design for a skyscraper that would collect water in much the way plants do. The skin of the building collects rainwater, guiding it to storage cisterns below ground. It could then be used for toilets, irrigation, clothes washing, and other uses for which potable water is not required.
I've been following Sage Electrochromics for a long time. In 2006, BuildingGreen named SageGlass one of our Top-10 Green Building Products. It was the first practical, durable dynamic glazing that worked in exterior façade applications. This week, the company rolled out a new, much-higher-performance product.
Our April EBN feature article--"Passive House Arrives in North America: Could it Revolutionize the Way We Build?"--went online today. This was a fun article to research and write, because it put me in touch with my low-energy building roots.
The last several weeks I've written about common myths of green building: that it has to cost more to build green, that green building is mostly about materials, that
InPro Corporation was founded in 1979 as Institutional Products Corporation (IPC).
The last few weeks I've written about common myths of green building: that it has to cost more to build green, that green building is mostly about materials, and that
If you thought making substantive change by 2030 was a challenge, how about by 2014?
