As I wrote last week, Tricycle is doing its darn best to eliminate carpet sample waste, but as one reader inquired, what do we do with old carpet sample books?

I put the question to Jeff Carrier, the executive director of the Carpet & Rug Institute's CARE (Carpet America Recovery Effort) program. He advised calling the specific manufacturers, all of whom will take back their sample books, even those with discontinued patterns. Jeff asked me to give you his contact info (706-428-2115, jcarrier@carpet-rug.org) should you have any further questions.

Resource room clean-up day inevitably genera...Read More

Comments (0)

The always-innovative industrial design firm Lunar has recently published a simple, clear, and inspiring Designer's Field Guide to Sustainability. It outlines in just six pages strategies and tactics for all design industries (interiors, architecture, graphics, engineering) to manufacture, construct, and produce more sustainable design solutions.

By asking questions of design processes—from"what is it trying to accomplish?" to "how is it used?" and "where does it end up?"—the Field Guide makes a great referenc...Read More

Comments (0)

For sustainable simplicity, check out the understated but gorgeous furniture line from STAACH: The Cain Collection, available online via Branch Home. The chairs, tables, benches, and stools, are made from sustainably-harvested red or white maple, straight from our own back yard (New York and Pennsylvania).

Designer Seth Eshelman created the line as an affordable and adaptable sustainable alternative. Available in a number of unfinished options or colored lacquer finishes to complement any decor. ...Read More

Comments (0)

In my recent quest for magenta paint, I of course turned to the usual low- and no-VOC options: Yolo, etc. But I was happy to find that my neighborhood Home Depot has begun to carry another great option: Freshaire. The no-odor, Greenguard-certified VOC-free paint has a great texture, and comes in wonderful colors (some no-VOC lines have fairly limited color palettes).

VOCs (v...Read More

Comments (0)

I've just returned from summer camp—seriously. It was the second time in as many months that I've luxuriated in lake life: towering pines, the call of the loons, clear crisp days, and starry, starry nights. We bathed in the lake water, hiked through woods a thousand shades of green, picked wild blueberries, and warmed by the fireplace.

This go-round was on a friend's family compound in the Adirondacks, or camps, as they're called in that neck of the woods. The camp has an Indian name, Wanakiwin, but to me it is "The Healthy Place," where nature and nurture seamlessly converge. My fellow camp-mates and I—there were 17 of us—...Read More

Comments (0)

Here's a quirky yet gorgeous product that would make a great accent in a home office or kid's room. UK-based SmilePlastics has found a clever way to repurpose all those old cell phones we're constantly chucking: Discarded cell phone casings are compressed into usable sheets—Mobiles plastic panels. There's no shredding or cutting, making the original phones' shapes and colors clearly distinguishable. Not to mention each panel is unique. Panels come in 6mm-thick sheets, 1,200 by 600 millimeters.

Via Ecolect

...Read More

Comments (2)

Waste is a terrible thing to waste. Enter Tricycle—a waste superhero worthy of a (hybrid) Batmobile. Fighting against the evils of landfills since 2004, Tricycle has diverted more than 306,000 pounds of carpet samples from the waste stream, and conserved 51,000 gallons of oil, resulting in an economic savings of more than $42 million. Holy methane!

Here's how carpet specifying works: The designer, while scheming a job, looks through carpet folders, selects 30 samples he'd like to consider, and calls his rep who orders them from the mill. The mill produces the tufted s...Read More

Comments (1)

One part great green material, one part childhood nostalgia (remember collecting seaglass on the beach?), Vitrohue is a 100-percent recycled glass line of products with applications in all kinds of contexts. Use the tumbled glass, glass aggregate, or mosaic-stained glass tiles for everything from kitchen and bath tiling to wall finishes and terrazzo flooring.

Unlike many other similar products, Vitrohue has brilliant colors and high transparency. Check out their full product line and color stories at their website.

Via Ecolect

...Read More

Comments (0)

IKEA announced last week that it is soon to sell solar panels off the shelves of their megastores. While their sales are still a ways off, cheers to IKEA for investing $77 million into its GreenTech energy fund in the production and sales of home solar panels, efficiency meters, and energy-efficient lighting. So come 2009, look to the Swedish big-box retailer for your accessible green solutions. We'll keep you posted...

IKEA has made strides in the last few years to integrate more sustainable practices into their production, distribution, and product development. From flat-packing to gree...Read More

Comments (0)

The requirement for earning the certified wood credit in LEED has always been easy to understand: 50 percent of all new wood-based products and materials in a project must be certified in accordance with the Forest Stewardship Council's (FSC) Principles and Criteria to earn one point.

Simplicity aside, others in the forestry industry have been unhappy with FSC's exclusivity, particularly the Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI). Many environmentalists criticize SFI for being too cozy with its developer, the American Forest & Paper...Read More

Comments (1)

I'd like to make an argument for the discarded, the recycled, and the tossed-in-the-dump. Let's be honest here: the organic cotton–clad, the bamboo, the FSC-certified—they're still new objects for the most part. Design, by nature, is dependent on newly-discovered and newly-purchased objects.

Let's take a moment to use what we've got; to scour resources like GoodWill, Craigslist, Ebay, and Freecycle; to find treasures that just need a second chance. Let's tell stories through our design, like that three-legged chair we...Read More

Comments (0)

I've lived with Conrad shades in my various homes for decades, so I'm obviously a fan—and I'm not alone. For more than 50 years, designers have embraced Conrad's window coverings because we love the way they filter light, add texture to rooms, offer multiple design solutions, and, of course, we love the way they look.

But they are also green, and have been since the beginning, before green was green. In their own words: "Though the art of what we create at Conrad is intricate, our materials are simple. We handweave from plants and grasses that are sustainably gro...Read More

Comments (0)