Meters Spinning Backwards!
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You find the darndest things on YouTube sometimes. Southwest Windpower, the maker of the Skystream 3.7 small-scale wind turbine, brought this video (and others like it) to my attention.
Exploding Low-Flow Toilets
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In 1997, humorist Dave Barry wrote a newspaper piece titled "The Toilet Police," about those newly mandated 1.6-gallon low-flow toilets that honestly and truly deserved to be dumped on. The column is still floating around the internet, and clearly people are still moved by it. But, y'know, that was over a decade ago. There are still crappy toilets to be had, just like there are lousy products of all sorts readily available, but smart toilet makers have strained to get the kinks out to the point that a one-gallon flush can outperform some of those old three-and-a-half-gallon water-hogs.
"Zero Energy" Exit Signs
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A post went up on Treehugger a couple days ago about "an eco alternative to plug-in exit signs" — photoluminescents. I posted the following reply there, and thought I'd just as well share it here, too.
Environmental Building News (where I work) reported on photoluminescent exit signs in 2006. With tens of millions of exit signs deployed in North America that use up to 350 kWh each annually (as much as a nicely efficient refrigerator), it's a big deal.
A Short History of Lighting
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Illustration from U.S. patent issued on January 27, 1880 to Thomas Edison.
Light is one of our most important energy needs. Historically--before the advent of electric lighting--the need for illumination governed architecture. Buildings were designed to facilitate natural daylighting. My office is in one of the old Estey Organ buildings on Birge Street, built in the late 1800s; it's just 28 feet wide, allowing natural light from the windows to reach fully into the building.
Going Green on Black Friday
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I found myself near Washington, D.C., on the day after Thanksgiving. Rather than try to prop up the economy at retail outlets or lounge in a hotel room all day, I headed to the National Building Museum to see its "Green Community" exhibit with my mother and sister.
Appropriately, we took the light rail system into the city.
BuildingGreen Bulletin: Changing Behavior — December EBN
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Twice each month, BuildingGreen publishes an email news bulletin with current news and product information briefs. Sign up here — it's free. We will never share or sell your email address, and you may unsubscribe at any time.
Read the current bulletinOther's efforts to bring clarity to product certifications
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I promised participants at my GreenBuild session (Nutrition Labels for Products: Taking control of deciding what is green for you) a list of the efforts to bring clarity - through summaries, comparison tables, databases, whatnot - to the plethora of green building product certifications out there.
Homebuilder's Day speaker: Homebuilding "Not so much a system as a bad habit"
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Greenbuild 2008 included the first ever Green Homebuilder's Day, a conference within the much larger overall conference. Homebuilder's Day welcomed old hands and newcomers to the field of green building, and the sessions were full. BuildingGreen organized the event, which coincided with the announcement of our soon-to-be-available, residentially oriented Green Building Advisor. That this day of educational sessions took place at all is a good sign for the future of houses in America and for softening their environmental impact.
"Listed on GreenFormat" - What Does That Actually Mean?
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There were quite a few of these placards in booths on the expo hall floor at Greenbuild. They were nice-looking signs, and seemed to give some green cred. But... no. As it says on GreenFormat's website, " GreenFormat is open to any manufacturer that wants to list a product."
Now, I don't want to dis GreenFormat — BuildingGreen is actually working with CSI on this project, which is sort of an offshoot of their MasterFormat system — but being listed doesn't actually mean anything.