Leeding Green

Dow Chemical’s new Performance Plastics Division has stepped in with funding for the 2012 London Olympic’s stadium wrap. But is it really “sustainable?”

Read On »

Sherwin-Williams Company recently received an EPA Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award for a new paint formulation that uses both soybean oil and recycled plastic bottles. Since introducing the new formula last year, Sherwin-Williams says it has used 320,000 pounds of soybean oil, 250,000 pounds of PET, and eliminated 1,000 barrels of oil. It also eliminated 800,000 pounds of VOCs, or volatile organic compounds.

Read On »

Lowe’s has continued to work on quality of life issues that have been part of the company’s philosophy for over sixty years. Its 2010 corporate social responsibility (CSR) report zeros in on three high-level focal points: workplace, community, and the environment.

Read On »

In the unassuming rural community of Putney, Vermont, students and faculty at the Putney School are proud of their new field house. Not only does the new building expand the opportunities for the students at the private high school, it’s also the only net-zero school building in the country, and one of only a handful [...]

Read On »

This post is part of a blogging series by economics students at the Presidio Graduate School’s MBA program. You can follow along here. By Izabel Loinaz As it has been said, every challenge offers an opportunity.  This easily can be said for the professional sports industry in the US. The Challenge: Annually, millions of swag [...]

Read On »

The following post is part of the course work for “Live Exchange” the foundational course on communication for The MBA Design Strategy Program at California College of the Arts. The rest of the posts are presented here. By Arash Shirinbab Eight years ago I had my first opportunity to engage as a product designer when [...]

Read On »

by Trish Holder Sometimes market research can be a real downer.  Take a manufacturer of residential construction products that has spent millions of dollars developing “greener” products and the marketing campaigns to go with them.  These manufacturers know they have to get consumer buy-in, but research tells them that only about 20 percent of people [...]

Read On »

Are you tired of the continual expansion of suburban sprawl?  Or perhaps just want a home that is right sized for your household, instead of a giant McMansion?  New Avenue Homes may provide you with a sustainable option.

Read On »

In the past decade, Intel has taken huge strides toward not only generating renewable energy, but conserving energy in its business and purchasing renewable energy credits (RECs) to offset the majority of its U.S. energy consumption. In 2001, Intel began to build its energy portfolio. Ten years later, it includes wind, solar, geo-thermal, small hydroelectric [...]

Read On »

When the Charlotte, NC ImaginOn opened in 2005, it was the city’s first green building. The combination library and children’s theater used a number of innovative features in its construction including compressed wheat fiberboard, recycled rubber parts and plastic bottles. The builders recycled all of the waste material and incorporated numerous energy savings elements into [...]

Read On »

by Susan Brautovich, LEED AP Dubai may be whipped by recession and racked with debt, but Abu Dhabi is humming along just fine. A go-slow policy and fat oil reserves helped insulate Abu Dhabi from the worst effects of the credit crunch and the Gulf building frenzy that almost sank Dubai. Despite some slowing, plans [...]

Read On »

Sara Olsen laments that green, affordable housing isn’t as sexy as cleantech, but its popularity and demand are still on the rise. The housing crash and ongoing mortgage woes certainly hurt its cause, but green housing pioneers are marching forward. According to industry speakers at the National Association of Home Builders International Show in Orlando [...]

Read On »

Last week, guest author Susan Brautovich raised the question of whether green mega-homes are truly green or if small and beautiful is the greenest of them all. She pointed out that larger homes will have more embedded energy than comparably constructed smaller homes and will also require more resources to maintain. On the other hand, [...]

Read On »

The next version of LEED will be an update and expansion of the technical content from LEED 2009. Your comments help to ensure that LEED continues to be at the vanguard of innovative design construction and operation of buildings and communities. It is expected to be released in late 2012. The USGBC strongly encourages all stakeholders to participate. Comments are welcome for all LEED systems.

Read On »

“It seemed like a good idea at the time.” Is that what they will be saying about the LEED standard for green buildings, a few years from now? Was it perhaps a bit ahead of its time when it was first developed back in 1998? Has our collective understanding of what it takes to make a building truly sustainable evolved over the past few years to the point where a different standard is needed? As more and more people are moving into the green space, new requirements are emerging. Questions are being raised that a LEED certification doesn’t necessarily answer.

Read On »

As reported last week, the state of New York was considering a ban on the controversial practice of hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” for natural gas exploration. Over the weekend Governor David Patterson signed a seven month moratorium on the most potentially destructive methods of horizontal fracturing, although many climate hawks would have preferred a more [...]

Read On »

The Carbon War Room, the Sir Richard Branson non-profit organization that encourages and develops market-driven climate solutions, has announced the winners of their Gigaton Awards at the Cancún Climate Summit. According to the CWR, “The Gigaton Awards seeks to bring prestige and recognition to companies showing leadership in emissions reductions and sustainable practices, thereby engendering [...]

Read On »

Today’s large corporations have the size and power to literally move mountains.  But with hundreds of thousands of employees spread over dozens of countries and business units, agreeing on where that mountain should be moved to is a monumental challenge. In this interview, Alison Taylor, the VP of Sustainability – Americas at Siemens, discusses the [...]

Read On »

The United Nations might be the body long responsible for hosting the forum for international agreement on climate change, so it’s about time it gets its own climate house in order. Imogen Martineau of Martineau & Co. is responsible for this task and she’s using web 2.0 tools to do it.  Though when I asked [...]

Read On »

Sage Electrochromics has received an $80 million strategic investment to help bring their relatively inexpensive electronically-tintable dynamic glass to market. Sage makes a glass technology that absorbs heat, and the best measure of its potential may be the identity of their new investor: Saint-Gobain, one of the world’s largest glass and construction material manufacturers. SageGlass [...]

Read On »

The “eco-industrial district” concept in Seattle is moving – slowly – from concept to sustainable reality. The Metropolitan King County Council last month adopted a proposal that calls for a partnership with the City of Seattle (which resides in King County) to create Eco-Industrial Districts in the city and throughout the county. The idea is [...]

Read On »

With apologies to Gertrude Stein, a brick is a brick is a brick, right? Well maybe not anymore according to CalStar Products. CalStar, based in Newark, CA is a sustainable building products startup with a new, green approach to brick-making that uses fly ash, a coal by-product, instead of clay. Production of traditional clay brick [...]

Read On »

One Honolulu City Councilman, Donovan Dela Cruz, introduced a bill that would require building permit applicants to submit plans that would prove the reuse or recycling of 60% of any demolished and dismantled materials.

Read On »

A couple weeks ago, our friends at Greener World Media announced that a draft of the sustainability standard they developed in partnership with Underwriters Laboratories was available for review. Here’s my take on the most exciting components of the draft as well as some areas for improvement for future drafts. First off, we were pleased that the [...]

Read On »

Researchers at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands evaluated a paving material made with titanium dioxide that consumes those pesky NOx particles, and converts them into a benign nitrate that can simply wash away.

Read On »

Silicon Valley-based Soladigm is banking that electromagnetic windows’ pricing can decrease as they scale and builders install them in more office buildings. The three-year-old start-up, which is based in Milpitas, CA, has received funding from Sigma Partners and Khosla Ventures.

Read On »

No one said they couldn’t or shouldn’t do it but they did it anyway, making some nice enviro points along the way. The Plastiki, a 60-foot catamaran made out of more than 12,000 recycled plastic water bottles and its 10-member crew arrived in Sydney, Australia Monday after sailing some 8,000 nautical miles in 130 days. [...]

Read On »

If you’ve done any digging into the green building realm, whether it’s as a homeowner, contractor, or just a design fan, it’s a cluttered field that can start to look all the same. But then there are certain companies that get your attention. Portland, Oregon based Eleek does that for me. Beyond being gorgeously designed, [...]

Read On »

It may be a thoroughly carpetbagging idea, but a new study published by the Southeast Energy Efficiency Alliance (SEEA) suggests Dixie could have a lot to gain from energy efficiency, in terms of dollars saved, jobs gained and water conserved. In fact, if all of the efficiency programs covered by the study, such as stricter [...]

Read On »

The energy efficiency services sector is set to boom, but a lack of qualified personnel could jeopardize that growth, according to a new report (PDF) from the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The report argues that increased training in, and awareness of, energy efficiency methods in the building design and construction trades will be necessary. [...]

Read On »