Green Options

GreenTalk Radio host Sean Daily speaks with Tom Schey, President of Minimal Productions. Schey is now leading green home building in Southern California and is the author of an upcoming book on fun ways to green up your life. 737conserve is an incredibly advanced, beautiful intellectual home. One of the most advanced smart homes ever built. The structure [...]

It’s a pleasure to finally begin writing here at Green Options! This time around, I’d like to focus on green building ambitions in the corporate world. I’ve been hearing a lot about Wal-Mart, Intel, etc. But have you heard about what Leviton just did with their headquarters?

The new flick 500 Days of Summer, which generated much buzz as the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, rolls out in limited release today. Lot’s of people are talking about it as a romantic comedy meets Memento which in film terms means that those with ADD or short attention spans might be confused by this rambunctious romantic romp. But for us, the buzz doesn’t just lie in the zigzagging sex talk but rather in the architecture talk. Even more specifically in the Green architecture talk.

Dwell Magazine knows whats happenin’ in the housing-slash-art-slash-design world. That’s their gig, and that’s good for those like me who love to see the cross-section of sustainable reinvention/repurposing and artistic home design.

This “scrap house” is located a ways outside of Toronto. The caption associated with this photo at dwell.com describes the home like this: “…a cluster of ’sheds’ with guest and living space to the right, a garage and [...]

Before being ‘green’ became fashionable, and terms like ‘eco-chic’ were coined, being environmentally conscious was synonymous with words like ‘granola’ and ‘treehugger,’ generalizing the eco-conscious crowd as a free-spirited-Birkenstock-wearing-Grateful-Dead-loving bunch of Liberal hippies chanting ‘Peace, man.’

But being green has definitely gone mainstream, and from celebs like Julia Louis-Dreyfus with her lavish, multi-million dollar solar-powered home, to Pierce Brosnan, aptly named the ‘Best Dressed Environmentalist’ by the Sustainable Style Foundation, the stereotype of the gritty, unkempt nature wanderer that once dominated the category no longer applies.

Recently, MSN posted a list of the ‘Top 14 Green Celebrities,’ which contained some long-time environmental advocates and a few surprising new additions, all echoing a commitment to championing this important cause through various initiatives like Leonardo DiCaprio’s documentary film about global warming, the 11th Hour, featuring interviews with green leaders and a companion website where everyone can sign up to take action in their local communities, and George Clooney’s Oil Change, a campaign aimed at ending America’s independence on oil.  

EcoSalon is keeping tabs on sleek, green architecture and has identified a futuristic-cool lineup of 15 houses, including this JLS Design house pictured above. These houses reach for green functionality and 21st Century design.

Source: EcoSalon

Image: JLS Design

This has got to be one of the coolest green concepts I’ve seen in a long time: shaping the malleable roots of ficus trees into useful, eco-friendly structures like benches, playground equipment, bus stops and even umbrella stands. The “eco-architecture” technique could one day even be used to grow homes, according to the researchers at Plantware and American Friends of Tel Aviv University. (Be sure to [...]

Oakland, California-based architect Michelle Kaufmann has made a career of promoting green homes and green communities through her company, Michelle Kaufmann Designs. But if you’re not in the market for a new house, she still has some pretty cool tips for greening your home on the cheap.

On her blog, Kaufmann features do-it-yourself videos for a neat variety of eco-projects that let you reduce energy costs, recycle objects into useful items and add elements of clean, green living to your home.

How green is Walmart? So green, apparently, in the case of one soon-to-open “high-efficiency” store in Illinois, that the decorative floorboards and moldings are made from parts of disposable diapers.

Photo courtesy of Rolf van Melis.

The California Academy of Sciences next week begins its “Great Migration” from its Howard Street museum and aquarium to a cutting-edge, green-designed new facility in

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Green Hub Concept by Shelter ArchitectureGreen design at its finest is not only sustainable, but low-cost, beautiful, useful, and maybe even life-saving. Combining urban renewal, social action, and green architecture is the Clean Hub.

This portable, self-powered water and sanitation station has many sustainable features, including a composting toilet, rainwater collection and filtration system, and solar panels that, along with a battery, provide all the

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