The deathcare industry is getting on board too. You can now be burried in a basket, without embalming, in what is essentially a nature preserve. You can decompose as nature intened! Oh, and they promise not to reuse the burial site, so the land will always be sacred.
everytime i do laundry, i separte darks from lights
put the clothes in the washer, wash them, and then dry
them.
everytime i dry them, i take out the lint/fluff collector
and theres always alot, and i say something like "man thats alot!
i got enough to clothe a family, jeez!"
so i was thinking, what if everyone started saving that fluff
left over from dried laundry, what could we do with it? im sure something could be figured out, mabe i could wash it and make
a pillow, or maybe a whole bunch could insulate a house, or maybe if we add tons of heat itll become some sort of material that can be wovel into somthing strong or durable, or maybe we just start cleaning it and making clothing out of that. theres gotta be some natural resource or amount of energy that we could save doing that right?
has someone thought of this and im just the last to know?
i was just thinking itd be cool if we could do something
with this everyday fluff that we just throw away.
there was a project recently where they insulated, as you said, their house with it. I however don't see that section in the recycling bin - paper, plastic, lint. But perhaps there should be
cd cleaners
fluff for pillows
the fluff on the end of a bass pedal
carpet maybe? it is really soft
i thought on it a bit more, but i cant think
of anything thats super helpful, cd cleaners? yea the
world needs those for sure, know what i mean?
but im still gonna save the fluff in a bag and im still
gonna find some way to make it useful. ill think of
something.
Then again, if you could find a creative use for it that substituted for half a cent of something else for each wad, and you earn $25/hr at your job, the value of the lint would be used up in your labor over it in about one second of your time...
Has anyone heard of or seen any of the Project Earth episodes on the Discovery channel? I watched the second one on Friday and thought it very interesting. I was unaware of how important mangrove forests are for carbon aborption until now.
and a question about the sustainability of ETFE foils: while the embedded energy of Ethylene Tetra Flouro Ethylene is low, I'm suspicious of how toxic it may be. Greenpeace has a new missive about the climate dangers of F-gases (CFCs & CHFCs), and there is fluorine in the ETFE... Is ETFE benign/better choice compared to the alternatives?
Minnesota has been dealing with ground pollution from 3M's manufacturing of teflon and i think the processes are similar.
just some news from Jamaica. On Saturday all filling stations will be offering E10 (10% ethanol) as the primary gasoline option at filling stations. The raw material for the ethanol production is sugar cane (by product), from Brazil but will shift to locally harvested cane once the production. The assignment for the e10 is meant to be conditional, raising to 15% (e15?) within the next 5 years, and so on and so forth until further advancements have been made to alternative bio-fuels
1. Wind power
2. concentrated solar power (CSP)
3. geothermal power
4. tidal power
5. solar photovoltaics (PV)
6. wave power
7. hydroelectric power
8. a tie between nuclear power and coal with carbon capture and sequestration (CCS)
r- that's your task with 'landscape 2030' - most of the other research is similarly challenged graphically and obviously hasn't been touched by Tufte or the amazing rationalista
tackles the worlds biggest problems from an economics perspective in his TED talk. Climate change is the lowest priority because it's an inefficient use of money- spending $150B might just delay warming by 6 years... so will $400b delay release of GHGs to a point that future generations won't be impacted?
There's an interesting new analysis by a physical economist, Charles Hall and his group, that indicates the trend of diminishing returns on energy investment may increase the energy costs of obtaining energy above the sustainable level soon. The dilemma is very real. It's one of the ones I've been trying to point to for a long time, that as a growth system expands it uses up the remains of it's seed resource faster and faster, and how you can tell is by necessities becoming more and more expensive. The problem is crossing threshold of sustainability, i.e. going so far beyond the point of diminishing returns that you get to the point of vanishing returns... As serious as it is the scientific community is blithely unaware of it because it is actually hard to for scientists to define measures of whole uncontrolled systems.
Charlie's paper is: “What is the Minimum EROI that a Sustainable Society Must Have” [http://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/2/1/25].
One of my discussions of the principle is: "Profiting in Scarcity" http://www.synapse9.com/drafts/ProfitingInScarcity.pdf
After so long, I'm FINALLY doing it... going car-free! The details proved much more difficult than originally intended, but the end result is that the people who handle donations for the Goodwill are coming to get my car tomorrow. I haven't driven it for seven months at this point, so there's not any real change in my environmental impact, but I'm still pretty happy.
tk, love it. Now I will have a new distraction....
le sigh, it's been so long since I've been on GTC! I missed it. I'll admit that I was seeing other green Web sites on the side though. I hope GTC can forgive me.
Hi yall green experts...
I have no news, but a question. I hope this is the right place to ask, and I felt it would be better not to create anew thread for this.
I'm genrally not that knowledgeable on natural ventilation other than the basic principle of compartmented double skin (cold air at the bottm enters, hot air at the top leaves...)
Our office is currently working on a rather big public project for a country in western africa with a very hot and humid climate (about 85% humidity average).
here is a horrible sketch to show you the basic shape we're working on (very very basic at this point):
My question is this: as you see on the horrible sketch, there are three buildings, two squares and a long rectangle, covered by a large roof. The whole structure is about 30 meters high.
the doted line around the building would be an intermediate space to manage circulation and visual communication between the three buildings. I'm not sure yet about the nature of this skin.
Could I use it for natural ventilation, in the same way as a standard double skin works? Usually, the distance between the facade and the outer skin is quite small to pressure the air so that it goes up and doesn't spread. But if I use prevailing winds to force it into a larger volume, is the pressure enough to force it up?
thanks for your help guys... Sorry to bother everyone if it's not the place for that!
first - figure out the prevailing wind direction. either get an .epw file from eere which has data for many spots around the world (if you can't find a location near by, send them an email asking if they have a file thats not posted) and use climate3 or energy plus to access the data. The other way of figuring out wind direction is to find a nearby airport - the runways will be aligned with prevailing winds or if they are in a triangle, you know that there is no one dominate direction.
next look into either solar chimneys or wind scopes that use the prevailing wind to augment the natural convective current.
Ken Yeang is my guru for natural ventilation - keep it simple and avoid double facades unless you can ensure air tightness of the skin/workmanship. rain screens and shading will reduce heat gain, but you'll need to build/run a cfd model to explore if your initial concept works. otherwise look to the local vernacular and mimic what is proven for that climate.
Thanks treekiller, and sorry for the late reply.
Well as usual, your hints show me how much a good environmental implementation relies on a good knowledge of local conditions on site, and not so much on general technical knowledge.
I already had figured out the prevailing wind directions and I think we're going to focuss now on building orientation and shaping, both for the reiforcement of the wind direction and solar orientation to minimize bad solar impact on the building; since the whole thing is covered with a roof it shouldn't be a problem.
Your note on the double skin facade is particularly accurate under such climates: the thin space contained between the two layers is apparently rapidly covered with moss and the compression of the volume of air also intensify the humidity, wich is really not a good think for the resistence of the metal structure of the facade.
So we'll try to avoid it; if there is a double skin, it will be for solar impact reduction more than for ventilation, wich implies a permeable skin, so no humidity or moss problems.
Thanks for the input aniway, and sorry for my english being worst and worst (I need to travel back to the states to practice more...)
If anybody has other informations they are welcome. I'll try to keep you guys updated as soon as the project gets somewhere...
French, tk beat me to a response but he knows what he's talking about :o)
I'm a little lost in your sketch but I also wanted to mention that a double roof system would take some of the thermal stress off of the roof of the main space. I don't know if this is an option but like I said, I thought I would mention it anyhow.
so i went in to my first LEED Platinum building yesterday - The David Brower Center in downtown Berkeley.
i must say i was very impressed. there are some gorgeous details (hello handrails!) some lovely gallery spaces, and really precious little planting arrangements in the patios. and the noticeable improvement of IAQ for a new building as astonishing.
so much so, in fact, that when you walk into the auditorium, because there are no fire-rated foam seat pads for assembly spaces, you can suddenly smell the strong off-gassing. wow!
there's a huge curvilinear solar array on the roof, don't know the zie, but it's generating 70% of the building's power. all the offices are 100% daylighted and all have floating floor systems for rerouting of utilities for future tenants.
it's not quite complete, but i have a client doing work over there at present and got a great behind the scenes tour.
Big up to the late David Brower
I watched this documentary the other day on the creation and spread of deadzones-defined as low oxygen areas in the ocean where fish and plant life are unable to survive. Its amazing how these areas were created and scary how they have increased in numbers since the 70's.
Check out the link below to watch the video.
Figure 2. Implications of the `Stern scenario 80% global emissions reduction: the top panel shows historical emissions as in figure 1. It is assumed that future emissions rise for a short time and are then cut until the target of 25% reductions by 2050 is reached (only half the G8 Commitment), but then continuing at the same rate of decline until 80% cuts (relative to 2007) are achieved. Peak emissions are later and higher, and the rate of subsequent reductions is slower, than in the G8 scenario.
An economic downturn that has pulled the plug on many design and building projects in recent months hasn't been enough to quell interest in sustainable design practices among architects. The 2009 DesignIntelligence Sustainable Design Survey, which draws data from architecture and design firms throughout the United States, finds that most firms claim a majority of their projects are environmentally responsible.
Of particular interest in the survey are the individuals and organizations that architects cite as role models.
Top 5 individuals cited as role models of green and sustainable design:
1. William McDonough
2. Ed Mazria
3. Bob Berkebile
4. Amory Lovins
5. Barack Obama
Top 5 firms cited as role models of green and sustainable design:
1. HOK
2. Perkins + Will
3. BNIM
4. Kieran Timberlake
5. (tie) Arup
5. (tie) Mithun
5. (tie) William McDonough + Partners
In addition to citing contractor and product manufacturer role models, the annual Sustainable Design Survey also records how well architects believe their own firms are progressing in achieving higher levels of sustainable design, if their firms are behind or ahead of their peers in that regard, and the most popular ways that design leaders are changing their personal habits in their desire for a smaller carbon footprint.
So how can Bill be the top role model, yet his firm be tied for number 5?
A Post-occupancy study done on BedZED seven years on with regards to examines whether or not BedZED actually lives up to its original goal of minimizing its residents ecological impact, and if so by how much.
Green Thread Central
carbon abatement costs.
thanks to worldchanging for finding this report (you gotta register - but it's free).
and mckinsey used one of my favorite photogs - toshio shibata
oh shit... somebody told the lawyers about sustainable design... a more detailed explanation here
The deathcare industry is getting on board too. You can now be burried in a basket, without embalming, in what is essentially a nature preserve. You can decompose as nature intened! Oh, and they promise not to reuse the burial site, so the land will always be sacred.
everytime i do laundry, i separte darks from lights
put the clothes in the washer, wash them, and then dry
them.
everytime i dry them, i take out the lint/fluff collector
and theres always alot, and i say something like "man thats alot!
i got enough to clothe a family, jeez!"
so i was thinking, what if everyone started saving that fluff
left over from dried laundry, what could we do with it? im sure something could be figured out, mabe i could wash it and make
a pillow, or maybe a whole bunch could insulate a house, or maybe if we add tons of heat itll become some sort of material that can be wovel into somthing strong or durable, or maybe we just start cleaning it and making clothing out of that. theres gotta be some natural resource or amount of energy that we could save doing that right?
has someone thought of this and im just the last to know?
i was just thinking itd be cool if we could do something
with this everyday fluff that we just throw away.
phil,
we use it for starting campfires when we go camping or to the beach...
I compost my link/vacuum hairballs...
there was a project recently where they insulated, as you said, their house with it. I however don't see that section in the recycling bin - paper, plastic, lint. But perhaps there should be
camp fires
compost
hosue insulators
cd cleaners
fluff for pillows
the fluff on the end of a bass pedal
carpet maybe? it is really soft
i thought on it a bit more, but i cant think
of anything thats super helpful, cd cleaners? yea the
world needs those for sure, know what i mean?
but im still gonna save the fluff in a bag and im still
gonna find some way to make it useful. ill think of
something.
Then again, if you could find a creative use for it that substituted for half a cent of something else for each wad, and you earn $25/hr at your job, the value of the lint would be used up in your labor over it in about one second of your time...
CAKE is currently producing their sixth album of original songs. All the tracks will be recorded using 100% solar energy.
Has anyone heard of or seen any of the Project Earth episodes on the Discovery channel? I watched the second one on Friday and thought it very interesting. I was unaware of how important mangrove forests are for carbon aborption until now.
Bump
A donation to the collective wisdom: Ken Yeang on designing in a hot humid climate.
and a question about the sustainability of ETFE foils: while the embedded energy of Ethylene Tetra Flouro Ethylene is low, I'm suspicious of how toxic it may be. Greenpeace has a new missive about the climate dangers of F-gases (CFCs & CHFCs), and there is fluorine in the ETFE... Is ETFE benign/better choice compared to the alternatives?
Minnesota has been dealing with ground pollution from 3M's manufacturing of teflon and i think the processes are similar.
thanks trinifar
, found on treehugger
while this analysis focuses on consumers, architects have an even greater influence on GHGs:
17% residential bldgs
14% commercial bldgs
plus
a fraction of the 17% for passenger cars via sprawl and urbanism
same goes for the 9% of commercial vehicles
another fraction of the 1% of sea transport for building materials and filling the mcmansions
and a big chunk of the power and non-CO2 industrial emissions
Interesting article Scientific American Energy versus Water: Solving Both Crises Together
just some news from Jamaica. On Saturday all filling stations will be offering E10 (10% ethanol) as the primary gasoline option at filling stations. The raw material for the ethanol production is sugar cane (by product), from Brazil but will shift to locally harvested cane once the production. The assignment for the e10 is meant to be conditional, raising to 15% (e15?) within the next 5 years, and so on and so forth until further advancements have been made to alternative bio-fuels
spotted on world changing- Stanford U Civil Engineering prof evaluates our renewable energy options
Best to worst 'green' electric power sources:
1. Wind power
2. concentrated solar power (CSP)
3. geothermal power
4. tidal power
5. solar photovoltaics (PV)
6. wave power
7. hydroelectric power
8. a tie between nuclear power and coal with carbon capture and sequestration (CCS)
interesting that nuclear is shown as being outside of the 'recommended' zone...
it has to do with the footprint of extracting/processing/waste of nukes. Also note that biofuels are outside the recommended range.
I hadn't noticed, his codes are obscure to those of us not in a laboratory setting. I would've had no clue what CCS was if you hadn't mentioned it.
Clearly, he needs some help with his information design.
Link to affordable (100k) LEED-gold homes:
http://www.wbir.com/news/green/story.aspx?storyid=72060&catid=137
r- that's your task with 'landscape 2030' - most of the other research is similarly challenged graphically and obviously hasn't been touched by Tufte or the amazing rationalista
tackles the worlds biggest problems from an economics perspective in his TED talk. Climate change is the lowest priority because it's an inefficient use of money- spending $150B might just delay warming by 6 years... so will $400b delay release of GHGs to a point that future generations won't be impacted?
There's an interesting new analysis by a physical economist, Charles Hall and his group, that indicates the trend of diminishing returns on energy investment may increase the energy costs of obtaining energy above the sustainable level soon. The dilemma is very real. It's one of the ones I've been trying to point to for a long time, that as a growth system expands it uses up the remains of it's seed resource faster and faster, and how you can tell is by necessities becoming more and more expensive. The problem is crossing threshold of sustainability, i.e. going so far beyond the point of diminishing returns that you get to the point of vanishing returns... As serious as it is the scientific community is blithely unaware of it because it is actually hard to for scientists to define measures of whole uncontrolled systems.
Charlie's paper is: “What is the Minimum EROI that a Sustainable Society Must Have” [http://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/2/1/25].
One of my discussions of the principle is: "Profiting in Scarcity" http://www.synapse9.com/drafts/ProfitingInScarcity.pdf
There are some decent comments under that Lomberg video.
[imghttp://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/02/14/business/0215-sbn-webCOAL.gif width=418[/img]
quitting coal
After so long, I'm FINALLY doing it... going car-free! The details proved much more difficult than originally intended, but the end result is that the people who handle donations for the Goodwill are coming to get my car tomorrow. I haven't driven it for seven months at this point, so there's not any real change in my environmental impact, but I'm still pretty happy.
I might have posted this before, but worth repeating:
sankey diagrams from around the world
rationalist, I missed it, yay for you!
tk, love it. Now I will have a new distraction....
le sigh, it's been so long since I've been on GTC! I missed it. I'll admit that I was seeing other green Web sites on the side though. I hope GTC can forgive me.
Hi yall green experts...
I have no news, but a question. I hope this is the right place to ask, and I felt it would be better not to create anew thread for this.
I'm genrally not that knowledgeable on natural ventilation other than the basic principle of compartmented double skin (cold air at the bottm enters, hot air at the top leaves...)
Our office is currently working on a rather big public project for a country in western africa with a very hot and humid climate (about 85% humidity average).
here is a horrible sketch to show you the basic shape we're working on (very very basic at this point):
My question is this: as you see on the horrible sketch, there are three buildings, two squares and a long rectangle, covered by a large roof. The whole structure is about 30 meters high.
the doted line around the building would be an intermediate space to manage circulation and visual communication between the three buildings. I'm not sure yet about the nature of this skin.
Could I use it for natural ventilation, in the same way as a standard double skin works? Usually, the distance between the facade and the outer skin is quite small to pressure the air so that it goes up and doesn't spread. But if I use prevailing winds to force it into a larger volume, is the pressure enough to force it up?
thanks for your help guys... Sorry to bother everyone if it's not the place for that!
a smaller image:
And since I'm in the process of asking you guys questions, here is another one: how efficient are photovoltaic cells under a hot and cloudy climate?
first - figure out the prevailing wind direction. either get an .epw file from eere which has data for many spots around the world (if you can't find a location near by, send them an email asking if they have a file thats not posted) and use climate3 or energy plus to access the data. The other way of figuring out wind direction is to find a nearby airport - the runways will be aligned with prevailing winds or if they are in a triangle, you know that there is no one dominate direction.
next look into either solar chimneys or wind scopes that use the prevailing wind to augment the natural convective current.
Ken Yeang is my guru for natural ventilation - keep it simple and avoid double facades unless you can ensure air tightness of the skin/workmanship. rain screens and shading will reduce heat gain, but you'll need to build/run a cfd model to explore if your initial concept works. otherwise look to the local vernacular and mimic what is proven for that climate.
good luck!
Thanks treekiller, and sorry for the late reply.
Well as usual, your hints show me how much a good environmental implementation relies on a good knowledge of local conditions on site, and not so much on general technical knowledge.
I already had figured out the prevailing wind directions and I think we're going to focuss now on building orientation and shaping, both for the reiforcement of the wind direction and solar orientation to minimize bad solar impact on the building; since the whole thing is covered with a roof it shouldn't be a problem.
Your note on the double skin facade is particularly accurate under such climates: the thin space contained between the two layers is apparently rapidly covered with moss and the compression of the volume of air also intensify the humidity, wich is really not a good think for the resistence of the metal structure of the facade.
So we'll try to avoid it; if there is a double skin, it will be for solar impact reduction more than for ventilation, wich implies a permeable skin, so no humidity or moss problems.
Thanks for the input aniway, and sorry for my english being worst and worst (I need to travel back to the states to practice more...)
If anybody has other informations they are welcome. I'll try to keep you guys updated as soon as the project gets somewhere...
French, tk beat me to a response but he knows what he's talking about :o)
I'm a little lost in your sketch but I also wanted to mention that a double roof system would take some of the thermal stress off of the roof of the main space. I don't know if this is an option but like I said, I thought I would mention it anyhow.
for the green geeks:
Assesment of vernacular architecture - check out the CFD simulation of an igloo!
green glossary 1, glossary 2, glossary 3
so i went in to my first LEED Platinum building yesterday - The David Brower Center in downtown Berkeley.
i must say i was very impressed. there are some gorgeous details (hello handrails!) some lovely gallery spaces, and really precious little planting arrangements in the patios. and the noticeable improvement of IAQ for a new building as astonishing.
so much so, in fact, that when you walk into the auditorium, because there are no fire-rated foam seat pads for assembly spaces, you can suddenly smell the strong off-gassing. wow!
there's a huge curvilinear solar array on the roof, don't know the zie, but it's generating 70% of the building's power. all the offices are 100% daylighted and all have floating floor systems for rerouting of utilities for future tenants.
it's not quite complete, but i have a client doing work over there at present and got a great behind the scenes tour.
check it here: http://www.browercenter.org/
Big up to the late David Brower
I watched this documentary the other day on the creation and spread of deadzones-defined as low oxygen areas in the ocean where fish and plant life are unable to survive. Its amazing how these areas were created and scary how they have increased in numbers since the 70's.
Check out the link below to watch the video.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/poisonedwaters/view/
While I enjoy the article, I was most struck by the line wearing angular eyewear and tidy seersucker tops
Really, seersucker? Who wears seersucker besides Tom Wolfe (who isn't an architect)? And tidy?
um, i have seersucker shorts. wore them sunday!
and seersucker is very popular at churchill downs...
Here's my 'Green' AFV 1967 Plymouth(albeit defunct) Barracuda.
It runs completely on E85. Someday, we'll have cellulosic ethanol available & I'll be ready for that.
Here's the 'money shot' for some reason it didn't upload before:
Is this really the 'best case scenario'?
The `G8 scenario' (figure 1) cuts current (2007) global emissions by 50% by 2050, with emissions then held constant at this target level. Atmospheric CO2 concentration continues to increase after 2050. By 2100 the CO2 concentration is 470 to 590 ppm and the global-mean temperature is 1.3–3.1 °C above pre-industrial levels. By 2300 CO2 concentration has risen as high as 640–980 ppm, temperature has risen by 2.2–5.7 °C and both continue to rise rapidly thereafter.
or can we accomplish this?
Figure 2. Implications of the `Stern scenario 80% global emissions reduction: the top panel shows historical emissions as in figure 1. It is assumed that future emissions rise for a short time and are then cut until the target of 25% reductions by 2050 is reached (only half the G8 Commitment), but then continuing at the same rate of decline until 80% cuts (relative to 2007) are achieved. Peak emissions are later and higher, and the rate of subsequent reductions is slower, than in the G8 scenario.
thanks IBM
so we should eat paper?
LOL the onion's take on weatherization...
An economic downturn that has pulled the plug on many design and building projects in recent months hasn't been enough to quell interest in sustainable design practices among architects. The 2009 DesignIntelligence Sustainable Design Survey, which draws data from architecture and design firms throughout the United States, finds that most firms claim a majority of their projects are environmentally responsible.and more seriously, Design Intelligence's Role Models of Sustainability Leadership
Of particular interest in the survey are the individuals and organizations that architects cite as role models.
Top 5 individuals cited as role models of green and sustainable design:
1. William McDonough
2. Ed Mazria
3. Bob Berkebile
4. Amory Lovins
5. Barack Obama
Top 5 firms cited as role models of green and sustainable design:
1. HOK
2. Perkins + Will
3. BNIM
4. Kieran Timberlake
5. (tie) Arup
5. (tie) Mithun
5. (tie) William McDonough + Partners
In addition to citing contractor and product manufacturer role models, the annual Sustainable Design Survey also records how well architects believe their own firms are progressing in achieving higher levels of sustainable design, if their firms are behind or ahead of their peers in that regard, and the most popular ways that design leaders are changing their personal habits in their desire for a smaller carbon footprint.
So how can Bill be the top role model, yet his firm be tied for number 5?
Persona/Publicity??
A Post-occupancy study done on BedZED seven years on with regards to examines whether or not BedZED actually lives up to its original goal of minimizing its residents ecological impact, and if so by how much.
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