apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Ultimately, shopping "green" won't save us.. but shopping LESS will.

Great... a "green" book that's not even biodegradable.

hejiranyc - did you read the part about what the book is made of?

It's made of a material that can be recycled. You can literally drop this book in the recycling bin. The hope is that one day we can make things like books out of materials like this so instead of throwing them away and waiting for them to "biodegrade" we can recycle them and use them again for the same product.

One of the ideas behind cradle to cradle is that currently when you recycle a plastic bottle for example; you can not make it into another plastic bottle. It loses certain properties during the recycling process. Wouldn't it be fantastic if we could make products that did not lose those properties and could be made into the same exact thing over and over?

See, it's not about biodegrading because that takes a long time and that takes space.. we should use products that can be reused or remade into the same thing so that we never have waste at all.

the book looks interesting!
i live in Cedar Rapids and when the flood waters were at their peak, i brought up the possiblity of global warming as the cause or proponent of the flood with some co-workers and surprisingly i found myself outnumbered by global warming "non-believers".
not enough people are going to want to voluntarily change the way they live. individually, we can strive to buy green, but corporations/the government should give people more affordable ways to change on a greater scale. Options like these are hard to find in smaller midwest cities and towns.
nevertheless i look forward to reading this book.

Wait, did I miss something? Isn't *paper* recyclable? And doesn't it come from sustainable/renewable sources instead of polymer chemicals??

I don't get it -- isn't a regular paper book recyclable?

And isn't a book that can be read online really the thing?

Meanwhile, while I'm sure these guys know what they're talking about and the book is great, I'm sick of the Greening of Consumerism. Or green fatigue as Maxwell calls it. It's like that page in Domino where they show how a green person gets thru the day, "put on hemp jeans ($160 at blah blah) and vegan shoes ($350 at blah blah)." How about we all stop buying so much shit and just wear the jeans we wore last year?

No, actually paper can be recycled but it can not continuously be recycled and become what it previously was. Just like the plastic water bottle can not become another plastic water bottle.

Global warming may or may not be involved. I tend to think it is causing more extreme weather, but most of the rainfall issues we're seeing are on the high side of normal. This type of weather isn't totally unprecidented. What has changed is 40 miles upsteam from an established city (like Cedar Rapids) istead of wetlands or farmland that would be 'allowed' to flood, there is a new subdivision, strip mall or other development that just wasn't there 10, 20, 40, or 60 years ago. The development is protected by a levy. The levy holds for a while (instead of allowing the area to act as a natural flood plain). The levy is eventually overwhelmed (the generally don't fail...water often goes over the top of them). The new development floods. But because the floodplain didn't flood right away, large volumes of water pushed downstream and overwhelm the established community. Repeat this pattern along the entire Mississippi and you get the problem the Midwest is having now.

The problem is bad design, but recycling more isn't going to help with this issue (I'm not saying don't recycle...I'm all about recycling). The bigger problem here is incredibly poor urban and rural planning (really, no rural/suburban planning ar all). Floodplains need to exist for a reason. They might not be 'used' by mother nature to their fullest extent every year, but they should not be developed.

cool, and producing it is greener too I suppose.

(The other thing about green shopping that is frustrating is that something is marketed one way -- like hybrid cars -- and then when you look into it and find that it takes far more energy to build and the batteries can't be reused for anything.

Clearly, these guys would know what paper-like product to use, I'm just saying it's a frustration with green marketing in general)

and I agree the issue with these floods MAY be about global warming but they're certainly about poor planning and our weakened infrastructure.

I keep noticing on this site that people will make comments to the effect of 'reading online is always more environmentally friendly than reading from print'. This isn't necessarily true, all of the time. While the article below is mainly comparing e-books to print, in its depths it does talk about web-reading compared to print. For example, if you read a newspaper, your carbon footprint is only lower if you can read the paper online in less than 30 minutes. Also, the article states web-based reading puts out more toxic chemicals than print reading.

Obviously there is no clear winner between web-based reading and print reading, and I certainly don't promote one over the other, but it is something to keep in mind.

http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/esthag-w/2008/may/tech/ee_ebooks.html

It's posts like this that make me think there's no real compromise within the green community. I've read three different viewpoints on paper vs. resin vs. online books and all of them discredit the others.

Maybe I'll give up reading all together and spend that time sitting in a cave thinking about what a bad person I am because I own books instead of a library card.


(Sorry, I'm cranky because I have to go to the dentist in an hour. Hopefully he doesn't let his spittoon run water constantly and uses biodegradeable bibs. Damn, there I go again...)

biology and nature pretty much point to biodegrading and the entire 'cradle to cradle' lifecycle as better than creating and recycling only. thermodynamics, biology--if you missed those classes and you are in design, you may want to take a night course. it will change your design. waste does equal food.

recycling equations are not weighted correctly, from my experience--it's a big challenge to see the big picture. i keep searching.

AT comments have included an important player not mentioned widely enough--the institute for transformation to market sustainability, or mts. see mts.org

the mts new SmART Technology specification checklist includes everything from fair trade/no child labour to ''grave'' consequences. clients/consumers, as well as designers, should see it.

cradle to cradle is an important read, but for birthdays and holidays, perhaps send digital copy or even carry around a few small pocket sized copies of the hannover principles to give as gifts. draws folks in who may not be as aware.

then, there's the debate over biomimicry, janine benyus. she's a compelling speaker, and at least raises good discussion. the reading list is interesting--see http://www.biomimicryinstitute.org/resources/ and a handbook is coming.

I highly recommend "Cradle to Cradle" to anyone who cares about the environment and loves design. Several enlightening points are made. For example: they point out that items made from recycled bottles (i.e. outdoor mats) actually give off toxic fumes.

great look




http://www.modern-sofa.net/

its a great book, one of my favorite.

this book is great, i definitely recommend it for designers and engineers (like moi) alike!