Inhabitat readers might remember that we interviewed San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom back in October over a live webcast that was open to any of our readers who wanted to attend. The finale of our Green Talks series of live chats with green thought-leaders, this interview touched on subjects such as mandatory composting, electric vehicle infrastructure and political leadership in CA. Our interview with Mayor Newsom was provocative and inspiring, and was a can’t-miss bit of Inhabitat journalism, if we do say so ourselves. Happily, for those of you who missed this amazing interview – we finally have the videos together of the interview in its entirety. We’ve chopped the full 35 minute transcript down into 4 shorter, themed segments for easier viewing. Enjoy!

PART ONE: The Big Picture & Mandatory Composting & Recycling

PART TWO: How to Make Your Cities (And Your Politicians) Greener

PART THREE: Renewable Energy & Electric Car Infrastructure

PART FOUR: How to Get to Carbon Neutrality in 2020

Let us know what you think in the comments below!

PS- Big shout out to the awesome band Tanlines who provided us this great audio track for our videos. You can find out more about Tanlines here >

Do you like the green / health benefits of cycling, but are concerned about the safety of biking in your city? Would you like to see your city made more safe and convenient for cycling? If you care about bicycles and the urban landscape (and we hope most of you do!), then be sure to JOIN US today at 3:30pm est to talk to Boston Bike Czar Nicole Freedman. We’ll be discussing Boston’s new bike initiatives, including the new bike sharing program - which will put 3000 rentable cycles on the streets of Boston to enhance public wellbeing.

Nicole is the driving force behind Boston’s new bike love, and what will be the biggest bike-sharing system in the United States, so she definitely knows a thing or two about the topic at hand. She’s also a former Olympic cyclist and has played a pivotal role in making Boston a more bike-friendly place as the director of the city’s bicycling programs. We are SUPER EXCITED about this can’t-miss webinar with Nicole today, so please JOIN US, and take part in the conversation!

SIGN UP HERE TO JOIN IN THE CONVERSATION >

CALLING ALL GREEN DESIGNERS!

In case you missed it – we’re doing a LIVE INTERVIEW TODAY with Tom Hicks of the USGBC, to discuss a brand new USGBC initiative to test and analyze the performance of ‘green buildings’. This is an extremely exciting BRAND NEW initiative from the USGBC, and Tom is leading the charge on establishing performance accountability for green buildings. For those of you who have ever thought to themselves: “LEED is all fine and good, but what happens to LEED-rated buildings after they are built and get their certification?” – make sure you join us in this Inhabitat Green Chat to find out more about this great new Building Performance Initiative from the USBGC.

If you want to watch the interview and participate in the chat, SIGN UP NOW to join us at 2:00pm EDT/11:00am PDT today.

SIGN UP HERE TO JOIN IN THE CONVERSATION >

READ MORE >

Halloween is just around the corner and if you’ve got any little ones in your life, you’re probably racking your brain for cute and clever Halloween costume ideas. If you’re on the verge of giving in to sheer desperation and contemplating holding your nose while buying a plastic Spongebob costume — don’t fear — we have a greener solution for you in the form of Oeuf’s adorable knit animal outfits for kids! These lovely mix-and-match knit pieces, made by Bolivian craftswomen, are not really costumes per se — more just cute dress-up separates — and that is precisely why they are such a great sustainable option for a green halloween. Kids will have fun wearing bear ears or a racoon tail any time of year, and these knit pieces are so adorable that you’ll want to encourage year-round dress up play.

GERMANY WINS THE 2009 SOLAR DECATHLON!

Drumroll please… after an exciting week of competition and judging, the winner of the Solar Decathlon 2009 has just been announced, and it’s a stunner! In a huge upset (as Team Illinois was leading on the scoreboard until just a few moments ago) the Germans took the grand prize in the heated competition, and beat out the 19 other (mostly American) design teams with their Darmstadt house! This is sure to get national pride ruffled a bit, as Team Germany won the Solar Decathlon back in 2007 as well, kicking the butts of the mostly American teams then, as well. As the sole team representing Germany, competing with 13 American teams from various states and universities, some would argue that Germany might be triumphing in part due to their concentrated resources: the Darmstadt team spent $650,000-$850,000 on their gorgeous solar home, while many of the American teams had much smaller budgets for their houses. (For example, the Rice University Team spent $140,000 on their solar house)

A scoring of a full 150 points out of 150 in the Net Metering category tipped the scales in Germany’s favor early this morning and allowed the Darmstadt University team to once again overcome being one of the only foreign teams in the competition and reign supreme — check out our full story about the surPLUShome here!

+ Solar Decathlon 2009 Coverage
+ Team Germany Solar Decathlon House

We’ve been in love with eco kids outfitter Oeuf for many years now, and they’ve just unveiled their cutest morsel yet: an adorable collection of baby animal hats and booties that let your tot discover his inner ‘Wild Thing‘. Available in green dino-style, cuddly white bear, and grey wolf style, these toasty 100% Alpaca wool hat-and-boot outfits make perfect green Halloween costumes, but are also great for just playing make-believe around the house. In a bout of impeccable timing, Oeuf just released this new product right before the release of the ‘Where the Wild Things Are‘ movie this week, and we couldn’t be more excited to get into the spirit of this cherished children’s book and dress our little Inhabitots up as Wild Things. Go Oeuf!

+ OEUF ANIMAL HATS & BOOTIES

CALLING ALL INHABITAT READERS – Don’t miss the Inhabitat Editors Roundtable Webinar (and your chance to win this awesome $1700 Biomega bike!) TODAY at 1pm est!

Last week we kicked off an exciting new project for Inhabitat called Green Talks. This series of live webinar discussions and presentations will engage with green thought leaders around the country to bring you the freshest ideas in emerging green design and innovation. Our very first ‘Green Talk‘ kicks off the series today as a roundtable discussion with four Inhabitat editors: Editor-in-Chief Jill Fehrenbacher, Managing Editor Mike Chino, New York Editor Yuka Yoneda and Technology Editor Ariel Schwartz.

We’re super excited about this opportunity to connect with our readers, so if you have a question about green design, about Inhabitat – or about anything at all, come join our conversation.

READ MORE >

The Solar Decathlon, the super solar architecture competition held in Washington D.C. bi-annually, officially kicked off today, and Rice University’s awesomely affordable ZEROW House is already making waves. The first round of evaluations took place yesterday, and this low-budget underdog placed 4th among the twenty competitors after being recognized in the categories Comfort Zone and Appliances. What is most impressive about this team is that the average budget of the 20 solar decathlon houses at the mall is $490,000, while the ZEROW home was built for only $140,000!!! Even more impressive, the ZEROW House was designed specifically for Houston’s Third Ward Neighborhood as part of Project Row House – an organization that seeks to develop housing for low-to moderate-income families.

READ MORE >

Hey Inhabitat Readers from around the globe! Want to meet the editors of Inhabitat and win this awesome folding bike – valued at $1700?

As we head into October we’re thrilled to announce a fabulous new initiative at Inhabitat: GREEN TALKS! We’re going to be harnessing the power of the internet to bring you LIVE presentations about future-forward green initiatives from public officials and renowned innovators – thanks to Adobe Connect Pro meeting software. We’ll be kicking off INHABITAT GREEN TALKS this month with our first ever Meet the Inhabitat Editors webcast!

We’re inviting you to share your questions and comments about our website and get to know the editors — and to encourage active conversation and participation from our readers, we’ll be giving away a super sleek Biomega Boston folding bike valued at over $1,700 to one lucky participant! So if you have something to say to the Inhabitat editors, and you want to win a sweet bike while you are at it, please JOIN US IN THIS CONVERSATION NEXT WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 14th at 1PM EST!

READ MORE >

This elegant LED-solar panel necklace by Swedish student designer Mae Yokoyama doesn’t really provide any function except adornment (and perhaps a dim nightlight at night), but we love this creative transformation of a purely utilitarian tech object (the humble solar panel) into a piece of stunning wearable art that will raise awareness about solar and LED technology.

READ MORE AT ECOUTERRE >

DRUMROLL PLEASE!

We have an announcement to make that we hope will come as welcome news to all you readers who love our fashion coverage (and also all you readers who hate our fashion coverage ;) ! We’ve been toiling for months now on a new website exclusively dedicated to eco-friendly fashion, and we are thrilled to unveil the newest member of the Inhabitat family today: ECOUTERRE.COM

READ MORE >

We’ve been raving about British dystopian climate-change docudrama The Age of Stupid ever since we previewed the provocative film this summer, and today, we are thrilled to say that the film is OPENING IN THE U.S. TONIGHT! The film is highly entertaining, inspiring and provocative – certain to make you think, whatever your politics and your opinions on climate-change – so get yourself to a theater tonight to see the premiere! As you know, the success and box office run of any film has a lot to do with how many tickets are sold on opening night, so lets all try to help this indie film succeed! The Age of Stupid has a CRITICAL MESSAGE that we should all support, so do your part and go see the film tonight – you won’t regret it! Look for tickets in your area here >

The Inhabitat team will be attending the New York premiere tonight at Chelsea Cinema with the two lucky winners of our ticket giveaway: Be Veg Go Green and simple411. There are still tickets to the screening available, and we’d like to invite any other eco New Yorkers who want to see this film to join the Inhabitat team tonight!

READ MORE >

HEY NEW YORK & SAN FRANCISCO READERS!

We’ve got some exciting news for you! Recognizing that many of our readers (and many of our writers) are concentrated in New York City and in the San Francisco Bay Area – we’ve decided to launch city-specific versions of Inhabitat to those of you interested in local green design news and events: InhabitatSF and InhabitatNYC! We’ve been covering San Francisco and New York politics, events and green design initiatives more and more on Inhabitat.com, and now there is a way to find all this great local coverage in one place. So check out our brand new websites: InhabitatSF and InhabitatNYC, and if you’d like to stay up to date on all the latest green developments and eco design events in your city, be sure to subscribe to our San Francisco and New York City newsletters!

+ Inhabitat San Francisco

+ Inhabitat New York City

READ MORE >

IF YOU SEE ONE MOVIE THIS FALL – THIS IS THE ONE TO SEE!

Everyone knows that hindsight is 20/20, but will we regret our lack of action on climate change in the year 2020? That’s what The Age of Stupid, the groundbreaking film epic from McLibel director Franny Armstrong, wants to sink into the minds of everyone in the world. This brilliant movie, which will kick off UN Climate Week, is opening nationwide on Monday, September 21 at 450+ cinemas simultaneously — and we urge all Inhabitat readers to go see it as soon as you can!

READ MORE >

We all know what it is like to have a favorite pair of treasured jeans that are so comfortable and fit so perfectly that we want to wear them every day. The downside to this pure and beautiful jean-love is that too much wear leads to jeans wearing out – with telltale holes in the crotch and knees – and then before you know it, you have to either start patching, or search around far and wide to find another pair of jeans as great as your favorite. But now, thanks to Denim Therapy, there is a better solution! Denim Therapy offers an amazing (and very affordable) service to seamlessly repair all the threadbare patches, broken zippers, and holes in your favorite pair of jeans, and return them to a like-new state — without patches, seams or any indication that your jeans have been through the ringer and back!

Like most people, I had a favorite pair of jeans in my closet that was getting holey and threadbare, so I decided to check out Denim Therapy’s service for myself to see if they lived up to the hype…

We are getting close to the end of our Green Wedding Guide, and in case you are just tuning in for the first time right now, we’ve previously covered conflict-free eco-wedding rings, greener wedding locations, more sustainable invitations, gift & registry ideas, and eco wedding gowns. We covered eco bridal gowns already, but we can’t leave the guys out nor the wonderful bridesmaids, so this issue of the Green Wedding Guide explores eco clothing options for men’s and bridal party attire.

READ MORE >

THE DEADLINE FOR OUR AWESOME BACK TO SCHOOL GIVEAWAY IS TONIGHT AT MIDNIGHT!

If you’ve been reading Inhabitat the past couple weeks, hopefully by now you’ve read about our fabulous back-to-school giveaway contest. In case you missed it, we’re giving away an AWESOME NoonSolar school bag stuffed with eco-friendly back to school supplies (worth over $500) and a slew of other great prizes to our readers in the spirit of back-to-school goodness. The contest deadline is tonight at midnight and we’ll be announcing the winner in tomorrow’s weekly newsletter, so if you haven’t entered yet this is your last chance!

READ MORE >

Get ready for school with our back-to-school green giveaway contest!

Fall is just around the corner, and students everywhere are getting ready to go back to school. To get into the autumnal school spirit and help our readers green their back-to-school regime, we’re running a contest on this site to give away an AWESOME solar powered bag by NoonSolar, stuffed with eco-friendly back-to-school goodies like recycled paper notebooks, erasers and pencils. Our back-to-school goody bag is worth over $500, and it’s a really sweet prize that can be all yours, if you enter our contest. Here’s how:

1. Sign up for the Inhabitat newsletter >

2. Sign up to follow us on Twitter and Facebook

3. Await instructions, which will be emailed out to all of our subscribers on Wednesday August 26th.

READ MORE >

You know those SIGG aluminum water bottles that eco-geeks carry around with them as a protest against plastic bottles? Well apparently, SIGG bottles manufactured before August of last year contain BPA in their epoxy liner – according to a press statement made recently by Steve Wasik, CEO of Sigg. (Bisphenol A, as many of you know, has been shown to be an estrogen-like endocrine disruptor, and most companies have been removing it from food and drinking containers in the past few years). We feel strongly about the bottled water issue and have done our fair share of Sigg bottle promotion on Inhabitat over the years, so we were appalled to hear this news today.

READ MORE AT INHABITOTS >

Welcome back to our Green Wedding Guide! If you’ve missed any of our issues in weeks past, we’ve already covered finding conflict-free eco-wedding rings, greener wedding locations, more sustainable invitations, and great gift & registry ideas. This issue of the Green Wedding Guide will highlight eco-friendly wedding dresses! We’ve got tips on finding the best eco-friendly wedding gown designers out there, as well as some other alternatives to find the dress of your dreams without putting a dent in the environment.

READ MORE >

Hi Inhabitat readers! I’m the founder and editor-in-chief of Inhabitat. I don’t talk a lot about myself on this website, since it isn’t a personal blog, but for those of you who are interested in finding out more about me, I’m happy to announce that the Mighty Girl blog has just posted a funny and in-depth interview of yours truly over on MightyGirl.com, as part of a Gap ad campaign. (I have to say that I love that companies like the Gap are getting so creative and interactive with their ad campaigns these days – more fun for you and me, right?)

Find out more than you probably ever wanted to know about me in this interview here >

Enjoy!

+ Born To Inhabitat Interview

They say that ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’, and nowhere is this more true than in the world of design. Oftentimes it doesn’t matter how brilliant an idea is, if it can’t be visualized effectively it is often hard to convince people of its merit. Readers who are familiar with Inhabitat will know that we are guilty of this visual bias as much as anyone: we are suckers for sleek, glossy, eye-candy renderings. Imagine our surprise then, when we realized that some of the best ideas submitted to our Reburbia Design Competition were the ideas with the least visual punch. In fact, one of the most powerful (and certainly the most workable and cost-effective) idea submitted to the Reburbia Competition isn’t a design proposal at all, but instead a policy proposal — called Entrepreneurbia — to get rid of the idiotic zoning laws which led to most of the major problems in suburbia in the first place. Makes a lot of sense, right?

If you’ve been perusing Inhabitat lately, you hopefully know about our fabulous Reburbia Design Competition – the contest we’ve been running to come up with some radical new ideas as to how turn the bleak future of the suburbs around. Our  announcement this past Monday of the Top 20 Finalists prompted thousands of votes and comments to come spilling into the Reburbia website, and we are thrilled to see the passionate opinions and heated debates over which design should win the top prize, which includes publication in Dwell magazine’s December 2009 issue, and a cash prize of $1000. So what are you waiting for?

Get your vote in now >

There were tons of designs submitted ranging from the profoundly practical to the intriguingly insane. We were impressed to see that all of the entries, whether they were satirical, funny, or just plain weird, all showed ‘out-of-the-box’ thinking (although some of them were in the box, literally). If you want to check out some serious eye candy and participate in the debate over what to do with our nation’s suburbs, pop on over to the Reburbia website to check out the competition and cast your vote today.

VOTE FOR YOUR FAVORITE HERE >

If you’ve been reading Inhabitat at all over the past month, you’ve hopefully seen our countless announcements and banners about the Reburbia Design Competition – the contest we’ve been running to come up with some big, bold new ideas as to how to fix the suburbs. We received a ton of interest and submissions to our Reburbia competition, and we’re thrilled to announce that we have selected twenty finalists to compete head-to-head in online voting for the top prizes, which include publication in Dwell magazine’s December 2009 issue, and a cash prize of $1000.

Submissions to our Reburbia competition ranged from seriously sensible (rezone rezone rezone) to wildly fantastic (suburban airships anyone?). We got some amazingly provocative, funny, and just plain weird entries, so pop over to the Reburbia website to check out the competition and cast your vote today >

VOTE FOR YOUR FAVORITE HERE >

We are thrilled to announce that our bouncing eco baby blog Inhabitots is turning 1 today! As proud parents, we’ve seen Tots grow and blossom into a wonderful young site in its own right and we are ever so proud. With 5 editors, 100,000 readers, and 800 posts under our belt, Inhabitots is growing up fast. If you have yet to check out Inhabitots for the best in green design for kids, drop by today to wish them a “Happy Birthday” and to celebrate the past year with them of covering green products for babies and kids.

Click here to wish Inhabitots a very Happy Birthday & check out our favorite posts from the the past year >

Hey Bay Area Inhabitat readers!

We’re having our first ever San Francisco Inhabitat reader meetup tonight at Stable Cafe in the Mission district and we’d love to see you there! We’ll be convening for tapas happy hour from 5-8pm, so if you’re in the area come join us to grab a drink, talk green design, and get to know the readers, writers and editors behind our website. In attendance will be Managing Editor Mike Chino, Senior Editor Emily Pilloton, Senior Editor Sarah Rich, tech writer Ariel Schwartz, green building writer Trey Farmer, art writer Moe Betiks, and me, founder and editor-in-chief, Jill Fehrenbacher. We’d love to meet some of our Inhabitat readers, so please stop by if you get a chance and say hi!

WHERE: Stable Cafe, in the Mission: 2128 Folsom St, (between 17th St & 18th St)
WHEN: 5-8pm, Thursday 7/30/2009
WHO: The fabulous inhabitat writers and YOU (hopefully)
WHY: Why not?

The Deadline to enter the REBURBIA Design Contest is FRIDAY – July 31st!

If you’ve been reading Inhabitat this summer, by now hopefully you have heard about our REBURBIA contest. If you are interested in entering the design contest for a chance to win fortune and fame – the deadline is TOMORROW!

Anyone who has been watching the subprime mortgage meltdown take over sprawling suburban communities while greenhouse gas emissions continue to accelerate would say that the future of suburbia looks bleak. That’s why we want to remind you about our REBURBIA contest to re-imagine the suburbs, and encourage you to GET YOUR ENTRIES IN TODAY!

READ MORE >

Hey San Francisco Inhabitat readers!

It’s official! We’re having our first ever San Francisco Inhabitat reader meetup at Stable Cafe from 5-8pm tomorrow. Because we are planning this so last minute, we’re keeping things really casual: basically its just a chance to meet up, talk green design, and get to know the readers, writers and editors behind our website. In attendance will be Managing Editor Mike Chino, Senior Editor Emily Pilloton, Senior Editor Sarah Rich, tech writer Ariel Schwartz, green building writer Trey Farmer, art writer Moe Betiks, and me, founder and editor-in-chief, Jill Fehrenbacher. We’d love to meet some of our Inhabitat readers, so please stop by if you get a chance and say hi!

WHERE: Stable Cafe, in the Mission: 2128 Folsom St, (between 17th St & 18th St)
WHEN: 5-8pm, Thursday 7/30/2009
WHO: The fabulous inhabitat writers and YOU (hopefully)
WHY: Why not?

Hey San Francisco Inhabitat readers!

I’m out visiting the Bay Area right now, and the San Francisco Inhabitat crew is thinking that it would be fun to host a casual reader meetup somewhere in the city in the next couple of weeks, so that we can get to know you guys a little better. We can drink, chat green building, eco fashion, and maybe give away some products or Inhabitat T-shirts. We were thinking happy hour – maybe 7/30 or 7/31st. Before we get too far down the road of planning, we wanted to gage your interest, and see who might want to attend. Let us know! If you want us to do something like this and you want to attend, please leave a comment on this post. If you have any ideas for venue, please let us know your suggestions as well in the comments!

-Jill

Welcome back to Inhabitat’s Green Wedding Guide! So far in this summer series we’ve covered eco-friendly jewelry, locations, invitations and now we’re bringing you our tips and suggestions for eco-friendly gift giving. Favors, gifts and registries are sometimes thought of as the bane of a green wedding. It can get overwhelming to plan details of sustainability into an eco-friendly wedding — let alone find meaningful gifts that aren’t a load of eco-guilt. Some fight the gift giving, but giving and receiving is fun, and there are many easy ways to make wedding gift exchanges more environmentally friendly.

CALLING ALL ARCHITECTS, DESIGNERS & ECO-EVANGELISTS!

In case you missed it, last week we announced a design competition with Dwell Magazine called ReBURBIA: which asks you how you would redesign the suburbs for a more sustainable future. For example, how can we transform vacant big box stories, foreclosed McMansions, and empty cul-de-sacs into vibrant, living, breathing, walkable communities? What are the energy and transportation infrastructures that we will need in the ‘burbs, to provide for a brighter, more sustainable future? Fame and fortune await our winners, so if you have ideas, make sure you enter them in our competition, for a chance to be published in Dwell Magazine, on Inhabitat, and take home $1000. The deadline to submit your ideas to our fabulous contest is July 31st, so enter today!

ENTER THE REBURBIA DESIGN COMPETITION >

DEADLINE: July 31st

Welcome to our third installment of the Inhabitat Green Wedding Guide column. So far we’ve covered eco-friendly rings and locations in our Green Wedding Guide. In our third installment of our series, we are talking eco-friendly wedding invitations. Invitations set the mood for the wedding – simple and casual, fancy and elegant, quirky and fun, the possibilities are endless. Your guests will gather information on what to wear and what type of wedding it will be from your wedding invitation. And by sending out an eco-friendly invite, you’re setting the bar for the rest of your gorgeously green and eco-conscious wedding.

READ MORE >

THE FATE OF SUBURBIA IS IN YOUR HANDS!

With the current housing crisis, the sub-prime mortgage meltdown, and rising energy costs, the future of suburbia looks bleak. Foreclosure signs are the new lawn ornaments and the Obama administration is reportedly considering plans to raze sections of 50 economically depressed US cities, condensing these towns’ shrinking populations. It is obvious that a change is necessary, which is why Dwell Magazine and Inhabitat.com are reaching out to all future-forward architects, urban designers, renegade planners and imaginative engineers to enter your visions for a brighter more sustainable suburban future in the ReBurbia competition.

Could YOUR design change the landscape of America?

Welcome back to the second installment of our Green Wedding Guide. Last week we talked jewelry, and this week we are going to talk about eco-friendly ways to pick your location. The location of a wedding and its subsequent reception is one of the most important decisions of the whole affair. The location influences all the other details: flowers, decorations, logistics, travel, rentals, number of guests, type of reception, season and time of day. With so much at stake, it becomes crucial that the location will compliment the other eco-friendly decisions that green brides and grooms desire. As with rings, location obviously comes down to personal preference, but here are a few things to keep in mind when scouting for the perfect green wedding spot…

READ MORE >

Dear readers,

We hope you notice that we’re always tinkering with our website to try to make it the best possible experience for you, our readers. We’ve recently rolled out a brand new ‘condensed’ version of the site that is faster loading, easier to scan through, and packs in more great green designs per page! You can check out an example of this new layout right now over at our baby website Inhabitots.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on this new design before we roll it out on Inhabitat.com. Please take a second to vote in the poll below, and please feel free to leave a comment if you feel strongly about this change, or have any suggestions. We look forward to hearing from you!

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