Inhabitat

REMINDER: Live chat with Tom Hicks of USGBC TODAY at 2pm EDT!

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 >

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Russia to Launch its own “Cash for Clunkers” Program

In the wake of the United State’s recently terminated Car Allowance Rebate System, Russia has announced that it will be implementing a “Cash for Clunkers” program of its own early next year. The plan aims to encourage domestic vehicle sales while emphasizing the environmental benefits of purchasing more energy-efficient vehicles by offering 50,000 rubles (approximately $1,500) for the trade-in of vehicles that are more than 10-years-old towards the purchase of a Russian-made car.

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NYC SUMMER STREETS: LAST DAY!

Photo by Seth Holladay, via Flickr
Today is the last day for NYC’s Summer Streets 2009!
NYC DOT has been closing Park Avenue from Brooklyn Bridge to Central Park on Saturdays, from 7:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. to all motor traffic so that NYC residents can walk, run, or bike along city streets. This is the third and LAST Saturday for this great initiative, so we hope you are planning on getting out there. Why, …

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ENTREPRENEURBIA: Rezoning the suburbs for a sustainable future

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?

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Australian Town Bans Bottled Water

The small Australian town of Bundanoon just set a new standard for sustainability by voting to do what no community has ever done before: ban bottled water! The measure was founded over concerns about the tremendous amount of resources used to extract, package, and transport bottled water, and it passed nearly unanimously in a town hall meeting. Will this be the beginning of a trend?

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US Government May Bulldoze 50 Cities; Create More Green Space

It seems virtually everyone—from Wall Street bankers to small business owners—has been affected by the economic downturn. Now, the recession’s latest victims may be American cities. The Obama administration is reportedly considering plans to raze sections of 50 economically depressed US cities, condensing these towns’ shrinking populations and city services to smaller areas. The plan, dubbed “shrink to survive,” may seem kooky, but it could be big news for environmentalists: In many cases, bulldozed districts would be returned to nature via forests or meadows.

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GREEN RANT: Why Won’t NYC Recycle Plastic?

Why does NYC send easily recyclable PET plastic containers to landfill?
New York City recycles plastic – or so I thought! For the last several years I have been carefully scrubbing all plastic number 1 (PET) and number 2 (HDPE) containers (such as most deli containers that you get when you buy tomatoes or sliced fruit) and collecting them for NYC recycling. Just yesterday the superintendent of my building brought a giant bag of deli containers back up to me from the recycling bin and said ‘This all needs to go in the trash – NYC won’t recycle it‘. I stared at him disbelief until he pulled out a flyer from the NYC government stating that it WON’T TAKE ANY PLASTIC EXCEPT PLASTIC BOTTLES – even easily recyclable #1 (PET) and #2 (HDPE) plastic!

This news blew my mind – why would the New York City government waste a chance to recycle all the PET and HDPE in non-bottle containers such as fruit and deli containers? Especially when most other cities (such as San Francisco) DO recycle all plastics? According to the NYC recycling website, it seems that the reason NYC is not doing it is because ‘it is not worth the effort’:

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IS IT GREEN?: IKEA

Americans demand low prices and giant warehouse stores where they can buy anything they want. We may not like it, but big box retailers are a part of life. But don’t assume that being big is bad. Massive, world-wide retailers can make a difference especially because they are that big. Enter IKEA, a company with stores all over the world. Critics say that IKEA is a landfill-waste generator because they make huge volumes of stuff that doesn’t last. IKEA only started working toward sustainability in 1999, when it published its first set of environmental priorities, but their new slogan is “low price, but not at any price.”

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INHABITAT 2009 EDITOR’S PROJECTIONS

Part of the fun of following future-forward design is tracking the trends of each year and seeing how they inform future developments. With this in mind, we’d like to cast our projections for the coming year in green design! From a more environmentally sound political climate to conscientious changes in the way that goods are designed, produced, and consumed, there’s plenty to look forward to in 2009 – read on for our editor’s predictions!

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IS IT GREEN?: Portland, Oregon

This week’s Is It Green comes to you from the lush city of Portland, Oregon. I have lived in many cities, from Los Angeles to New York City to the suburbs of DC to Singapore. I have traveled to many more cities – Key West, Montreal, Tokyo – and can say that Portland embodies the culture of sustainability more than any of them. From green transportation to sustainable agriculture and public policy, Portland offers a shining example that all cities should aspire to. Read on for an in-depth report on the city’s green merits.

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IS IT GREEN?: Eco-Labels and Certifications

We all know it: Green is the new black. One of the many manifestations of the environmentalist trend/movement is that labels and certifications designed for the environmentally-conscious consumer have been proliferating like mad. Even if you’re savvy enough to know about LEED and FSC, there are dozens of lesser-known eco-labels. It’s hard to derive information from a label you’ve never seen before, but you may be able to figure out which category of label you’re looking at – government, proprietary, or independent agency. I’m taking this week’s Is It Green to blitz through some of these and give a little context to those logos.

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California To Become The Electric Vehicle Capital of the US

Recently the cities of San Francisco, San Jose and Oakland unveiled a massive concerted effort to become the electric vehicle capitol of the United States! This groundbreaking development heralds a nine-step plan that includes everything from buying fully electric vehicles for all government transportation to expediting the approval of charging outlets throughout the bay area, including those located on the street. The creation of this essential infrastructure marks a huge step towards the acceptance of electric vehicles as a viable alternative to those that run on fossil fuel.

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New York Mayor Proposes Charge on Plastic Bags

Recently New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg proposed that NYC begin charging shoppers 6 cents for each plastic bag issued at the register. The policy is the latest attempt by the city to go green and reduce its environmental footprint, and it comes several months after Ireland introduced a similar tax that cut the use of plastic bags by 94%.

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IS IT GREEN? Clean Coal

Throughout this past election season we heard both major-party candidates give a lot of love to “clean coal.” The phrase sounds great to Americans concerned about our dependence on foreign oil, and the U.S. has enough coal to generate our electricity for hundreds of years – if it’s “clean”, why not? But what do “clean coal” technologies really entail, and can an ancient energy source responsible for 40% of U.S. CO2 emissions really clean up its act?

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GET OUT AND VOTE FOR THE ENVIRONMENT!

GO VOTE!
In case you’ve been living under a rock, today is election day in the U. S of A – and we’re super excited for the possibilities that this hotly contested presidential election brings. If you are anything like most Americans, you’ve probably been following this election in the news, online, and on SNL, and you probably realize the monumental changes this election could bring to US politics. Now, more than any other time, it is crucial that you exercise your right as a citizen to have a say in our democracy – so go vote right now! We hope you have gone to the polls already, or are making plans to go later today. If you think your vote doesn’t really matter, just think back to the 2000 presidential election where we ended up with the George W. Bush disaster for eight years, based on 537 contested ballots in Florida. Just think, if a few hundred more people had gotten out to vote (or if a few hundred voting booths had worked properly), we might have ended up with Al Gore as president. And just think how different things would be today if that were the case. Think of what a better state our environment would be in today if Gore had won in 2000.

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Ride Together and Vote

Today we’re interrupting our regular programming with message of utmost importance. Every Tuesday we present you with a number of transportation options that will improve the environment. From hybrid vehicles to bicycles, how we move from place to place has a dramatic impact on our world (today’s entry would have been awesome, trust us). But today there is no single choice more important for Americans than going out to vote. So use your car, motorcycle, bike, skateboard, or even (gasp) your legs, and grab a friend, your neighbor, or even a total stranger, and take them to vote. Think that your selected presidential candidate has it in the bag and don’t need to do anything about it? Think again!

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San Francisco Announces 10 Million Gallon Biodiesel Plant!

Hot on the heels of San Francisco’s recent celebration of locally-sourced Slow Food, Mayor Gavin Newsom announced a new plan to provide the city by the bay with a local source for sustainable fuel. On Friday the Mayor revealed a proposal between Darling International and the Port of San Francisco to retrofit an old rendering facility to produce biofuel. The new plant will recycle fats, waste grease, and tallow to generate 7.5-10 million gallons of biodiesel per year!

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California Approves First Statewide Green Building Code!

It’s been a banner week for environmental policy as the California Building Standards Commission recently broke news of the nation’s first statewide green building code. The measure mandates significant improvements in energy efficiency and water consumption in all new construction throughout the state. The announcement was fore-grounded by April’s ambitious LA green building law and comes hot on the heels of Al Gore’s historic appeal last week for a carbon-free US energy policy.

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Al Gore Challenges America to go Carbon-Free in 10 years

Al Gore recently appealed to the competitive nature of the US as a market driven society with an energy challenge that calls for a complete shift to renewables in the entire electricity sector. The former Vice President and Nobel laureate is raising the bar with the goal of total carbon-free wind, solar and geothermal power by 2018. Part of the vision includes powering electric vehicles (as truly emissions free), but the ambitious plan would transcend through transportation and ripple throughout the green building industry and beyond. With elections on the near horizon and a push to drill for yet more oil, Gore’s challenge is as timely as it is clear: in order to transcend an unsustainable existence, we need to transform our energy outlook.

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Uninventing Suburbia and the American Dream

photo by Jill Fehrenbacher

With alarming reports of crude oil prices now hovering close to $145 US dollars per barrel, and home mortgage lending going bust, it is increasingly apparent that the 1950’s inspired American Dream of cul-de-sac ‘oases’ and paved highway transport is really on the verge of an all-out collapse. The environmental costs of suburban life were starkly highlighted in a feature story in the NY Times earlier this spring – a harbinger of sorts to the summer of 2008 where cries about SUV-fill-up costs have supplanted soccer-mom chat. Andrew Revkin at Dot.Earth also addressed the topic with a provocative blog piece that suggested ‘retrofilling’ suburbia as a means to ‘uninvent’ the mindless sprawl. Whatever the strategy to come, it is more apparent than ever, that reinventing our consumption habits and our notions of living ‘the good life’ will be a vital action item as we search for new ways to define sustainability in lieu of behemoth malls and suburban plots of American neighborhoods.

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U.S. Freeze on Solar Energy Projects Lifted

Just as things were really heating up in the solar energy sector, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) pulled the plug on new solar power plants. Last week the New York Times reported that “the federal government has placed a moratorium on new solar projects on public land until it studies their environmental impact, which is expected to take about two years.” Headlines like world’s largest solar array in California or world’s largest solar power plant in the Mojave desert promised to be few and far between as the BLM decided to take its time to assess the more than 130 proposals filed by solar companies in the past three years. Just days later, after an uproar of voiced concern, the moratorium was reversed. Not fast enough to avoid drops in stocks, but quick enough to avoid fatally derailing the renewable energy sector off the tracks.

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CAR FREE NYC? NYC tries ‘no car zone’ near Inhabitat HQ!

The beauty of living in a place like New York City is that you don’t need a car for ANYTHING. When I left California five years ago to move to NYC, I sold my car and never looked back – it was one of the most freeing moments of my life. Most New Yorkers – especially those in Manhattan – get by just fine without cars and rely on public transportation for mobility. And everyone knows that streets are more pleasant for walking, biking and shopping when cars are taken off the road. So it makes perfect sense for NYC to try out a no-car zone in Manhattan. Just because Mayor Bloomberg’s congestion pricing plan was shot down in the spring doesn’t mean we’ve called off our dreams of a traffic free future.

Even though it’s a baby step, a new summer proposal has us excited about the possibilities of moving in the direction of a car-free Manhattan. A new initiative called SUMMER STREETS is an attempt to turn parts of Manhattan into a haven for pedestrians for 3 days in August.

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Los Angeles Passes Ambitious Green Building Law

The past month has seen shock waves resonating throughout the world of sustainable architecture with two monumental reports on green building backed by some serious changes in public policy. First, the CEC released “Green Building in North America: Opportunities and Challenges”, which lauded sustainable buildings as the quickest, cheapest, and most substantive way to cut down on North American greenhouse gas emissions. Next, CoStar released a comparison report stating that LEED buildings consistently outperform their peers in terms of occupancy rates, sale prices, and rental rates, with demand far outnumbering their supply. And, last week on Earth Day, Los Angeles approved a green building ordinance that signifies a significant shift towards a policy and market-driven era of economically and environmentally viable building.

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KILL PLASTIC BAGS WITH TAXES: look to Ireland

Ireland plastic bag usage drops dramatically after plastic bag taxes are instated!

With all the recent bans on plastic bags around the world, it’s natural to wonder just how effective all the bag banning will be. Instead of simply enacting laws to phase out plastic bags – which seems like a wishy-washy attempt at most, Ireland has implemented a tax-based incentive to cut plastic bag useage — and it seems to be working wonders. Between the government tax on bags, an effective advertising campaign, and public support, plastic bag usage has dropped 94% in a matter of weeks.

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No More Free Plastic Bags in Israel

It looks like 2008 will keep up last year’s momentum of phasing out plastic bags whenever possible. Just as the new year rang, word came around that a bill had been introduced in Israel that would mandate a charge to customers for every plastic bag taken at the supermarket.

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China Bans Plastic Bags

It seems that plastic shopping bags are really on the way out. It started with San Francisco, Hong Kong, then Melbourne and other cities, and now, beginning in July, all plastic shopping bags in the entire country of China will no longer be free. As part of China’s attempts to reduce their extreme pollution problem, the policy will call for a small charge for plastic bags in China that must be shown clearly in all supermarket receipts.

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Africa Wages War on Plastic Bags

Motivated by a climate of widespread environmental devastation, Africa has boldly moved to initiate a continent-wide ban on plastic bags in an effort to eliminate the billions of throwaway sacks that are marring its cities and landscapes (San Francisco, Melbourne, and other cities have already banned them altogether). It’s no surprise that what was once viewed as a step towards modernization has instead created far-reaching problems for rural and urban communities that initially embraced the cheaply manufactured plastic bag in lieu of totes made of indigenous materials and biodegradables.

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Zero Energy Homes in California by 2020

The Governator’s state is laying down the zero energy law, requiring that all new homes in California must be carbon neutral by 2020 if a proposal adopted by California’s energy regulators is enacted. Gutsy? Definitely. Crazy? Maybe not…

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ALCATRAZ GOES GREEN

Despite its sinister history as a world-famous prison, no one’s stopping Alcatraz from becoming an innovative learning center for the latest in green technology. With its location in the middle of San Francisco Bay, Alcatraz is perfectly positioned to play host to solar, wind, and tidal power. The new turn to green comes on its 100th birthday, and the National Park Service is putting a ton of its own resources into this prison-turned-tourist destination, making sure power, water, and even transportation to and from the island is entirely sustainable.

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U.S. CONGRESS TO BECOME CARBON NEUTRAL

Putting our own house in order is a good first first step in the long path towards sustainability, so it was great to hear that the U.S. House of Representatives has unveiled a plan to become carbon neutral by the end of its current term. Legislation has also been introduced to make the entire Capitol complex- all 23 buildings- carbon neutral by the end of 2020. The plan was delivered to the speaker by the Chief Administrative Officer at the end of June. Known as the “Greening the Capitol” report, the plan outlines a series of steps that the House must take in order to become carbon neutral as well as future goals to become a model of sustainability.

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MELBOURNE BANS PLASTIC BAGS

Last July, Australia’s Victoria state legislation, home to Melbourne, announced legislation to put a levy of 10 cents on every giveaway plastic bag given at supermarkets. The move was seen as a necessary step to curb the ammount of plastic bags going into landfill, and follows the actions of several small towns in Victoria and in other parts of the country.

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