Inhabitat

Greetings from Vermont!
…and thanks for your outstanding website. We’re refinishing the basement and creating a game room for the kids. We are using green building materials and FSC certified furniture but are unsure about how to best design for and purchase green electronics. We want to select our HDTV and associated stereo equipment first and then custom build any necessary built ins to house them. Can you steer us in the right direction to find sytlish green electronics for our new family room? Thanks,

Peggy and Ken Farabaugh

Can you direct me to green building/remodeling resouces in the Kansas City area?

Dear Inhabitat,

I am an Industrial Designer, currently in Cleveland, OH. I am looking to find a product design job that is eco-conscious. Can you point me in the right direction?

~bubbaamc

Green or vouge? I like your new column, and wanted to respond to green products. Bamboo what a great material until you look at the road well traveled. The CO2 issue is just one concern. How is it manufactured also should be looked into. The bottom line is region goods, this may take reiventing the wheel but may be the future. Recycled materials harvested from everywhere around us can get us a long way down the road to a cleaner more sastainable planet, but don’t be to qwick to dance for joy because when ever a product is mass produced there is a down side, waste and polution. The key is to keep process and materials to a minimum use vs waste factor. Where I live in Montana we manufacture MDF High Denstiy Fiber Board, used in the maunfacture of furniture, cabinets, shelving, counter tops, flooring and evreything that solid wood could be used for in the past. It is made from Forest Product Waste, saw dust. However the process to make the material is a major source of polution to the air and water, not to mention the transportation of product and material to make and market the product. So is it a good solution. You could say it is green friendly just as much as Bamboo. It uses what was once waste, waste that clog streams and rivers and over burdened forest floors now is a highly valued forest product that saves trees and the forest. It is a product made and sold regoinally, through out Northe America and has wide applications for its use. You will find it on the base layer of your lament flooring also. So is it better that Bamboo or worse. I am sure that to compress and stick that Bamboo flooring together is at best an enviromental nightmare just like MDF. An new company is starting up
Below fron an article in High Counrty News Oregon that will use old news paper the same way as saw dust is used in MDF. Heres the article that appeared in the High Country News.

(Earth Partners, a company in Baker City, Ore., wants to turn old newspapers into new furniture. The company plans to break ground in eastern Nevada this spring for a plant that will produce high-quality fiberboard out of newspapers recycled from Reno and Sacramento. Company president Ron Pratt says the smooth gray panels can be used for siding, doors, dressers, desks, cabinets and more. The Nevada plant, which Pratt hopes will be the first of many, will consume the daily newspaper leavings of a city of 300,000 to manufacture more than 2 million four-by-eight-foot sheets a year. The equipment was designed by Compak Systems, a British company that is building similar plants in Pakistan and Sri Lanka. There the panels will be made of wheat straw and sugar cane wastes)

The botton line is consume less and use what you have recycle, redesign, buy for life. Don’t waste your money on junk, buy the highest quality you can afford,, Antique furniture? It was made well and to last for generations not like the quick and ready to assemble junk offered by the giant furniture manufactures to day.

Thanks

i have an 18,000 gallon water tank i will be using for rain water collection. i have been comparing the various filtration systems. what is better, ozonation systems, or uv-charcoal filtations? thanks

Thanks much for the valuable information and linkage, I’m forwading your posts to friends all the time. I feel lucky to be living in San Francisco, where a lot of green products are available, but I must confess sometimes it’s a chore to find the store that’s carrying exactly what I need (not all producers list carriers on their websites ( but thank YOU, gypsy and loic!) –and some too ambushed to resond to requests). I was wondering if you knew of a site that lists local suppliers of green products– for instance, where exactly in SF can I buy hemp jeans? I would love to be able to do an online search for locally available green porducts that’s not a treasure hunt.

Re: bamboo. Some folks in Berkely are taking it upon themselves to grow the bamboo they require for small projects. If it’s within the scope and need of the artisan, I think it’s a great solution.

A number of months ago, you featured new LED bulbs from Philips. I have tried to search for those on the Philips website, to no avail. do you have any additional information on when these beautiful bulbs might become available, and how much they will cost?

Thanks.

Hi Green Abby,
Any help would be appreciated with this problem. I am building a new house and would like to incorporate an earth tube. I have read that there are problems with mold. Are there any published specs on how exactly to build one and also how to eliminate the mold?
Thanks, Mary

hi there, i have found your website very useful and inspiring but was wondering if you could help me further. i am working on a design project involving cork, and would recycle waste cork. can you suggest places that could supply me with cork granules- preferably for minimal cost/free? thanks

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