Eco Friendly Home Product Ideas & Information
From the category archives:
The word green has always been associated with the environment. For the business-minded, however, green means money. But what do you get if you combine these two connotations? The answer is green investing. Green investing, as the name suggests, is a philosophy of capitalizing in companies that offer or support environment-friendly services, products, and policies. [...]
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One of the growing trends in interior design education is people seeking a degree in green interior design and related certifications. Although many schools are beginning to offer some classes for eco-friendly design, there aren’t really a lot of them that offer degrees about the topic. So, what does one do if they want to [...]
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Green roof design will play a big role in the city of the future. What is a green roof exactly? From a builder’s point of view it is not just grass growing on a roof but a more complex system of three layers. a special water tight layer or membrane that keeps moisture away from [...]
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The Denver Water Department employees were really onto something big when they coined the term xeriscaping some 30 years ago. Xeriscaping, also known as low-water landscaping, utilizes low-water landscaping techniques to create beautiful landscapes and gardens without wasting huge amounts of water. The techniques for low-water landscaping are simple and require less maintenance than conventional [...]
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Washington DC residents are getting an ominous sounding warning in the mail from the District’s Department of the Environment. It’s a post card that has a picture of workers applying coal tar on a street, with the words “COAL TAR PAVEMENT PRODUCTS BANNED” loudly super-imposed. On the back it informs you that as of July [...]
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As I previously mentioned, this last weekend was the date for Arlington, Virginia’s first Green Expo hosted by Arlingtonians for a Clean Environment. I headed over on Saturday and was treated to an amazing success for anyone interested in eco friendly home living! About forty businesses and organizations were present, representing a broad spectrum of [...]
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An interesting article in Environmental Building News caught my eye by saying that Dow Chemical’s Styrofoam branded extruded polystyrene (XPS) insulation was awarded Cradle to Cradle Silver certification by its sponsor company MBDC. XPS contains the brominated flame retardant HBCD, which persists in the environment and is not green at all. What’s going on here? [...]
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I’m very excited to announce that Arlington, Virginia is hosting a Green Expo on March 20, 2010. First, the formal announcement: Energy conservation, eco-friendly commuting, healthy homes, and sustainable living will be just some of the items on the menu when the Green Living Expo lands in Ballston on March 20th. The Expo will feature [...]
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Bloom Energy just revealed its Bloom Box, a game-changing, energy efficient home fuel cell technology that could see its way into the eco friendly home within the next five or ten years. The information was released to much fanfare in California, with luminaries like Colin Powell and Arnold Schwarzenegger in attendance. It has also been [...]
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On the list of many things I have to do to go green in my new home is to upgrade to Energy Star appliances as soon as I can. Of particular concern are my Maytag washer and dryer that look like they’ve been around since before I was born. Energy efficiency and water saving wasn’t [...]
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The December 6, 2009 edition of the Washington Post featured an opinion column from Mike Tidwell, executive director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, that basically argued we should not waste our time going green in “small ways,” and should just focus on the big picture stuff (like a new climate protocol hopefully coming out [...]
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Not everything considered “green” is also “sustainable,” a fact that may surprise some people. First, let’s define the terms. “Green” is a fuzzy term but generally means something is environmentally friendly, not poisonous or toxic, doesn’t contribute to global warming emissions, doesn’t contribute to habitat destruction, and so on. These are all good things. “Sustainable” [...]
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A few weeks ago I wrapped up a greenwashing series that talked about the many ways product makers try to deceive or misinform individuals about the “green-ness” of their products. One of the main bits of advice I gave was to look for “meaningful” eco labels to guide your purchase decisions. But what does “meaningful” [...]
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As I continue my quest to buy a house (which explains my light posting lately), I’ve come to realize what a non-green business real estate can be. First is all the energy expended in gasoline as your realtor takes you around to one property after another until you find “the one.” Once you do find [...]
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Thinking about reaching for that bottled water on a hot summer day? Think twice, and maybe reach for a water filter jug instead. Make no mistake, using bottled water is harmful to the environment. What the bottled water industry doesn’t want you to see or think about is the huge toll on the environment caused [...]
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Forty years ago, Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River caught on fire from the gross amount of pollution it contained. It was a stark reminder of how America’s rapid industrialization was laying waste to the environment, and served as the catalyst for implementing the Clean Water Act. Today, the only burning rivers you’ll find in Cleveland are an [...]
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A friend and loyal reader recently wrote to me, complaining about how difficult it is to get his high rise condo board to go green in its management decisions. His experience reflected my own seven years of condo living, and I can understand the difficulty of getting change enacted by a condo board or homeowner [...]
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The Timberland Company, an outdoor footwear and clothing company, recently announced it will be launching its eco friendly “Earthkeepers 2.0″ boot in the fall. The boot is being designed to enable disassembly and recycling. Customers will be able to return the boots to any Timberland store for recycling when they don’t want them anymore, rather [...]
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For the last seven weeks or so we’ve discussed the seven different ways, identified by Terrachoice, in which product marketers try to convince the public that their products are green. It’s called greenwashing, and is inevitable in a world that is becoming increasingly environmentally aware. More and more people are no longer content to just [...]
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Anyone with even a passing interest in environmentalism is well aware of how wildlife is in crisis everywhere. From whale poaching to seal clubbing, from over-fishing to over-hunting, from drowning polar bears to chemically mutated frogs–there is no corner of this planet left unthreatened by habitat destruction or wildlife extinction due to mankind’s expanding footprint [...]
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