Recycling the Whole Darn House

This is the final guest post from the latest round of additional voices I've featured over the last week. Please welcome Nicolette Toussaint, a San Francisco writer and designer. --Paul

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If old timber could talk, the stairs on David Gottfried’s Oakland, California home (at right) would have some wild tales to tell. The bullet holes testify to something that happened in an earlier life. The wood was once part of a century-old highway bridge, before it became part of Gottfried’s LEED certified home.

David Gottfried's LEED Gold certified home in Oakland, CA.

Photo courtesy of David Gottfried

Gottfried happens to be the founder of the US Green Building Council, and his use of recycled materials is part of a trend. It’s a small trend – currently, less than 1 percent of discarded building materials get reused – but the trend is growing.

New Digs from Old

The LEED rating system encourages builders to re-purpose materials, awarding points when wood, brick or other materials from an earlier structure are reused. The results can make for a good story as well as for a sustainable practice. Recently, Paul Pedini, a civil engineer who worked for 11 years on Boston’s Big Dig, built a house from the site’s leftovers.

Pedini’s comment about this puts the practice of dumping building materials – refuse that takes up nearly 1/3 of the space in many urban dump sites – into sharp focus. “These materials are as good as you can get,” he said. “We were being paid money to junk this stuff. There’s something inherently illogical about it.”

In a few places, there’s also something illegal about it. Here and there, cities have begun writing ordinances to encourage the recycling of not just the odd item or too, but large amounts of building material. For example, Orange County, North Carolina has drafted an ordinance that requires builders to separate wood, metal and drywall discards at construction sites.

Alameda County, California’s Measure D, passed in 1990, called for a whopping 75% reduction of dump-bound refuse over a ten-year period. That 2010 deadline has arrived, and Alameda County has gotten close to meeting its goal, in large part because of the county’s emphasis on recycling and re-purposing building materials.

836 Market Street, renovated by the Challenge Program in Wilmington, DE.

Photo courtesy of the Challenge Program

A Rose by Any Other Name

I’m fascinated by home demolition sites. I find myself peering through the fence at the rubble behind them, wondering what useful treasures are hiding there. Many of the treasures I find wind up in my garden; short of money for the last couple years, I have created quite a paradise from seeds, cuttings and cast-off chunks of concrete that are dignified with the name “urbanite.”

I’m not alone in finding gold amid the dross. Nonprofits like Habitat for Humanity and historical preservationists both share my interest in gleaning gems from old buildings. Kitchen designer and master blogger Paul Anater, who kindly invited me to write a guest post for this blog, tells me that he sends materials salvaged from his remodeling jobs to a ReStore, the materials storehouse run by and for Habitat for Humanity.

As I have worked to launch my home remodeling design business over the past couple years, money has been tight. That hasn’t kept me from my favorite hobby: gardening. The beds in the garden are bordered by discarded brick and the “urbanite” that borders the sedum shown in the top photo.

Art from Found Materials

In addition, a growing number of designers share a fascination in designs that find new uses for found objects. I’m amazed that a couple thousand ordinary paper clips can be woven into the silvery and sinuous chandelier shown here.

Paperclip chandelier. Photo by Pish Posh

I have written several times about furniture makers who make a point of using reclaimed wood, either salvaged from old buildings, wine barrels, or from wind-toppled trees. Master furniture maker and blogger Mitch Roberson and furniture maker Michael Yonke, creator of the gorgeous Diversion Coffee table below, are among my favorites.

Diversion coffee table by Michael Yonke. Color results from the natural aging wood patina from two year open air treatment.
Materials: Reclaimed and re-purposed tropical forest true mahogany.

It was from talking with furniture makers that I learned that reclaimed wood is often much better quality than newly harvested timber. The reason is that old buildings were built from first-growth wood, which is stronger, denser and taller than the second- and third-growth forests now being cut. This is why the length and mass of beams in old buildings is so impressive – they simply don’t grow ‘em like that anymore.

Indeed, the definitive Waste to Wealth website notes that, “The value of recovered wood is rising, because many species of wood are no longer available from forests. Furthermore, older wood typically is stronger and of higher quality than new growth wood, and it has already shrunk to its permanent size. Another key factor is landfill tipping fees, which are $65/ton in Connecticut.”

Back from the Brink of the Grave

It’s expensive and wasteful to bury building materials in what designer William McDonough has called “product graves” – i.e., dump sites. And it’s not just what gets carted away after the wrecking ball hits an old building that gets trashed. Dumps also runneth over with left-overs from new buildings. A new 2,000-square-foot house typically contributes nearly 8.5 tons of materials to the dump!

But spurred both by changing economics, legislation, and a desire to do the right thing, a number of firms across the US now specialize not just in reclaiming and reusing parts of the house, but in deconstructing and recycling the whole darn house! The field, called “deconstruction,” is related to but different from demolition, the traditional swing-the-wrecking-ball method of taking down buildings.

Of course, people have been selectively harvesting items from old buildings for centuries – there are many buildings in Northern England that were constructed of stones taken from Hadrian’s wall. And there has long been a market for salvaged items from Victorian houses, despite the fact that it’s a lot harder to pull nails out than it is to blow them in with a nail gun.

But both the reasons for and ways of recycling building materials are growing, led by firms such as those mentioned at the bottom of this post.

Three Cheers for the Good Guys and Gals

The Reuse People, a mostly-West Coast nonprofit that began in San Diego in 1993, have worked hard to standardize efficient building deconstruction practices. They have taken down hundreds of buildings in the San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle and Boulder areas, and have done much to educate the building trade. They write an informative newsletter called the Velvet Crowbar and and have even written a detailed training manual on deconstruction. Their website includes an annotated listing of 100 related local businesses and resources for deconstruction minded consumers in the San Francisco-Oakland region.

Reconnx, Inc., a deconstruction firm that is located in Boulder, Colorado, has the distinction of creating the Nail Kicker de-nailing gun. The company was started in 1996, by Jon Giltner, a registered structural engineer, who like Paul Pedini, was frustrated by seeing useable 2″ x 12s” and other construction materials being dumped in a landfill. His career in reuse began. He first focused on developing finger jointing, and adapted table saws and multi-phased drills for deconstruction. Reconnx is now the premier equipment supplier for the deconstruction industry.

Another laudable organization involved in deconstruction is the Challenge Program, a non-profit youth training program in Wilmington, Delaware. Through the program 18 to 21-year-olds are given 6 months of intensive construction training that includes 700 hours of site-based construction training, deconstruction of buildings and on-site classes. As the biographies of the participants make clear, trainees come to the program without high school diplomas, but in many cases with prison records. Through the program, they gain both their GEDs and job skills. So it’s not only building materials that are being “upcycled” – it’s also human lives.

Habitat for Humanity Restore volunteers Vince Perkins and Bill Bumby (wearing red hat) remove salvaged doors from the Rennebohm building at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Photo by Jeff Miller

Resource Links

• Building Materials Reuse Association
• Challenge Program: youth working in deconstruction
• Directory of Deconstruction Groups (multi-state)
• Economic costs of deconstruction versus demolition: chart from Reuse Peoplee
• Gottfried Regenerative Home
• Habitat for Humanity ReStores
• Living in Comfort and Joy, the author’s home blog
• Michael Yonke’s Upcycling blog spot
• National Association of Home Builders-Research Center
• Posh Posh: Amazing Chandeliers from Everyday Objects
• Remodeling magazine: Deconstruction v. Demolition
• Smart Growth.org: Deconstruction v. Demolition
• Waste to Wealth: Deconstruction Business

This post is a guest blog written by Nicolette Toussaint, who is visiting from the San Francisco Bay Area. Nicolette is the author of Living in Comfort and Joy.

Watering Can Wisdom

I am back again for another post today as a guest writer on Kitchen and Residential Design; if you missed the announcement of the Little Bert Chair Giveaway at GrassrootsModern earlier today, please check it out!

As "green" "organic" and "natural" become such promiscuous advertising buzz words you want to throw up your locally grown lunch in the 100% post-consumer recycled paper bag it came in, I hesitate to propose any ideas on conservation. This simple suggestion is so easy though, and anyone with plants can appreciate it.

About two years ago, a friend of mine who I affectionately call an "old hippie" let me know that the watering can in her bathroom was not just there for decorative effect. In fact, she collected the water from her tub faucet as it warmed up before showering. She then used the collected water for her extensive plant collection. A simple idea indeed and I tried it at home immediately. I reported back to her that I now follow her example and thanked her for the idea. She laughed and told me that she had heard it a long time ago, and had been doing it for many years.

Since she shared the idea with me, I have shared it with two friends who now collect their pre-shower water. I know not everyone's water takes as long as mine to warm up, but for those of us who have to wait, this simple idea saves some water. Hopefully, other readers will try it too, and pass it on.

Screw "greening" your Christmas, make it sustainable instead

Someone sent me what has to be the fourth or fifth list of the ways I can "green" my Christmas yesterday and I've about had it. To a one, each of those lists concerned ways I could either spend more money than I would otherwise on unattractive crap or new and inventive ways for me to wear a hair shirt in public and thereby prove my "green" bona fides to passersby. Please.

Human civilization faces some very real and very pressing environmental problems. Left unchecked, a number of these have the potential to grow into outright crises and they need to be dealt with decisively and immediately. All of them can be traced to an American (and increasingly global) pattern of consumption. It's not just a matter of quantity of that consumption either, it's more a problem of that consumption's inefficiency.

The contemporary "green" movement was no doubt founded with the best intentions, but the more of its popular expression I see the less enthused about it I become. These Christmas lists I've been seeing are a terrific case in point. The problem is excess and inefficient consumption. So the solution cannot be more consumption. Buying a $75 Christmas tree ornament made from an old sock is still buying more unnecessary stuff. It's a more sustainable idea to just keep using the Christmas tree ornaments you already have.

The overpriced "green" trinkets and gewgaws being pitched around the internet are just another manifestation of this consumption problem. What needs to change is the impulse to buy stuff for the sake of buying stuff. "Green" consumerism is still consumerism.

A better way to think about your role in the face of these looming problems is to commit to using scarce resources wisely and efficiently. That goes for all scarce resources: energy, land, water, time and your money. Make a commitment to yourself and at the same time a co-commitment to the people with whom you share the earth.

So rather than a bunch of simple minded lists of how to have a "green" Christmas, why not just stop buying crap? Stop substituting things for your time for and emotional availability to the people you love. Gift giving is a great custom, one of my favorites in fact. But how smart is it to go broke every December?

"Green" ideas for this or any time of year start with the best intentions, but all too quickly become the social equivalent of methadone. Buying crap is still buying crap, regardless of its recycled content. So don't buy crap. See? No hair shirt.

I MUST have this chair!

Mein Gott in Himmel! Three cheers for the artistic use of found materials.

Builder and visionary Dan Phillips on a walkway made from
Osage Orange branches. Osage Orange is a wood species usually
thought of as useless scrub.

Yesterday's Home section of The New York Times featured a story about a different kind of home builder in Huntsville, Texas. Dan Phillips builds affordable housing from discarded and reused building materials and the results of his labors are as sensible as they are sustainable.

These are the bottoms of wine bottles made into
a stained glass panel in a Dutch door.

Since 1997, Phillips' construction company, The Phoenix Commotion, has built 14 homes in Huntsville. On the whole those 14 homes were built from the ground up and 80% of their materials were salvaged from construction sites, hauled out of trash heaps or simply found along the road.

These house numbers are made from the bones of cattle
from a nearby slaughterhouse.

Homes built by The Phoenix Commotion are quirky and oddly beautiful. There's a rhythm to the images here and patterns emerge from the seeming randomness of these found objects. The man's a real visionary and what he's building is the anti-tract home, the anti-poverty trap. What Phillips and Phoenix Commotion are doing too is shooting holes in the idea that "going green" means spending great wads of green.

This is a cork floor made from grouted in wine corks.

Too often, what's marketed in the US as "green" is synonymous with expensive and "going green" is an opportunity to strike a sanctimonious pose. What gets lost in the sticky gobs of marketing speak is the idea of sustainability. Sustainability's all about the wise use of resources, and so many of "green" products spawned by consumerism have nothing to do with using resources wisely and everything to do with the pose. The projects from The Phoenix Commotion profiled in The Times yesterday are a brilliant example of an anti- "green" green and represent the spirit embodied in the word sustainability. Read the article, it's a great story.

This ceiling is made from discarded frame samples from a frame shop.

This is a roof made from mis-matched roofing shingles and
arranged by color into stripes.

This is an exterior wall made from discarded lumber. Beautiful!

And of course, The Chair. It's made from chair parts and cattle bones.
The vertebrae finials remind me of doves.

All photos by Michael Stravato for The New York Times.

Local Recycled Glass And More.

About two weeks ago, I posted about some companies I found that create tile out of recycled glass. That post was only part of the story - the search for recycled glass products ultimately led me to look around my home state and home town for locally sourced recycled glass products. The emphasis on recycled or "green" products should also include considerations on using local materials and local businesses as a way of cutting the necessity of shipping and packaging, as well as keeping money in the local economy.



The first company I came across that featured many kinds of recycled products was Coverings Etc based in Miami. They carry several materials that utilized recycled or cast-off components including their Bio-Glass which is pictured above. The customer service at Coverings Etc was top-notch over the phone and they quickly followed up with detailed information about several of their products (thanks Jennifer!).



Probably the most unusual material they feature though is a recycled aluminum tile that is made from old aircraft body panels called Bio-luminum. The tiles are made by remelting the old aluminum, casting a block, and then cutting it into tile. Coverings Etc describes their aluminum tile as having "a very distinct, almost industrial aesthetic", and I could not agree more. It does not have the warmth and three dimensional quality of their Bio-Glass but I love the striations on the surface of the tiles from the cutting process and its subdued metallic luster
.

The Bio-Glass really intrigued me so I headed down to Indigo, the local green building supply here in Gainesville. They carry a large stock of samples that you can handle and drool after, plus the owner and staff warmly welcome you and whatever questions you might bring. We are extremely lucky to have a resource like Indigo in our community.

Liberty, the owner of Indigo, also referred me to a local concrete specialist whose work amazed me. His name is James Catabia, and owns a local concrete countertop business called Casting Impressions. James gave me a thorough interview when I called him on a Friday afternoon while his latest project was curing.


He custom colors his concrete to whatever shade you need, mixes and pours exactly to minimize waste, and locally sources his raw materials. He can produce terrazo utilizing recycled glass, as seen below.



His drive to create custom colors and commitment to local sourcing matches his earnest customer service nicely. James told me that if people in other areas were looking for a local concrete specialist, they can find one easily at the concretenetwork.com. Hopefully, the services listed on there in other areas produce the same high quality work found with Casting Impressions.

For the Greater Green

Hi everyone! Saxon Henry here. For my guest-post, I’m going to turn an old adage on its ear. Though there is great truth in the caveat “while the cat’s away the mouse will play,” my homage to Paul’s terrific blog is a bit more like “while the cat’s at play, the mouse doesn’t stray,” as I’d like to mention the importance of sustainability in the kitchen. With 41.5 percent of a home’s energy consumption centralized in the kitchen (according to the U.S. Department of Energy), going beyond Energy Star appliances, compact florescent and LED light sources, and water-conserving faucets is becoming increasingly necessary if we want to be truly “green.”


Cabinetry companies with eco-friendly features like non-toxic paints and lacquers, and heavy metal-free compositions for fewer emissions are more plentiful than they have been in the past. A great example is ALNO, whose cabinetry was used in the Healthy Child, Healthy World green home in Austin, Texas.


Another segment of the Kitchen & Bath market that is making a commitment to green practices and materials is the tile industry. Ceramic Tiles of Italy’s contingent of manufacturers was early on the scene with state-of-the-art facilities that allow for sustainable production. Products of the organization’s companies have received some important certifications, from the prestigious European Union’s Environmental Management Program (EMAS) and ISO 14001, which mandates guidelines dictating limitations on pollution and energy consumption during the manufacturing process.

Examples of the certified products are Casalgrande Padana's Granitoker and Pietre Native collections, which received both certifications; the company’s Marte tile, which received an EMAS; and Caesar's More, Feel, and Glam collections, which received the ISO 14001 certification.


One of the best examples of stateside companies making a dynamic commitment to sustainability is Trend USA. The company’s entire Trend Q Collection has just received Greenguard certification for Schools and Children, which represents the strictest standards for low VOC emissions. Trend Q has actually received one of the lowest emission rates in the industry with a total VOC emission of 0.012 mg/m3. The collection of 49 colors contains up to 72% post consumer recycled content, which is integrated with glass from recycled beer, gin, and water bottles, copper infused Aventurina, and mother of pearl. Trend’s FEEL collection, which comes in 12 colors and a variety of patterns, has a minimum of 80% post-consumer recycled glass.

Brazilian manufacturer Eliane has brought EcoStone to the U.S. The porcelain tile contains 60-percent post-industrial recycled raw material, and is manufactured with a sustainable process that reuses 90 percent of the water, and nets energy savings of up to 50 percent each cycle. EcoStone won the 2009 Fritz Muller Award for being the first ecological porcelain from Brazil. I featured the company on Design Commotion this month, as Eliane’s CEO Edson Gaidzinski will accept the award on August 31.

Summer’s end is approaching fast and we’ll all soon be spending more time in the kitchen. Wouldn’t we breathe a little easier if every material used in constructing our environments were considered so seriously? In case this post feels a bit preachy, I’d like to point out that there’s no need to sacrifice beauty and style when going green, as the images I’ve posted here illustrate.

This puts the P in PSA

This video was making the rounds across the wide expanse of the Internet yesterday and it hits on a topic I haven't barked about in far too long. I'll get to that in a sec, in the meantime, get a load of this:

The ad's playing on Brazilian TV right now and translated into English it reads something like this:

Pee in the shower! We want everyone to do it! Men! Women! Children! Brazilians! Or not! Nobles! Commoners! Musicians! Sports stars! People half-human, half-monster! Twilight creatures! Brazilian legends! Greek legends! Good people! Not so good people! Artistic geniuses! Scientific geniuses! Circus performers! Lovers! People from other planets! Movie stars!

To sum it up: If you pee, we want you to do it too! (when you flush you waste up to 12 liters of drinkable water / 4380 liters in one year)

Pee in the shower! Save the Atlantic Forest.

This ad was produced by Saatchi and Saatchi for the SOS Mata Atlantica Foundation, a non-profit, non-political foundation dedicated to the preservation of the Atlantic Forest. The Atlantic Forest is a unique, enormous forest that encompasses an area that includes coastal Brazil and Uruguay and then extends inland to Paraguay and northernmost Argentina. The Atlantic Forest surrounds some of Brazil's major population centers. It's a fragile, wildly productive ecosystem and Brazilians are right to be concerned about how their activities impact this region.

Like everywhere else in the developed and developing world, urban Brazil has water problems. One of the many reasons countries around the world are having water problems is the omnipresence of the flushing toilet. Wise resource use is a bit of a hot button issue of mine. Unfortunately, so much of the "greening" of the world is a marketing campaign that really doesn't accomplish a whole lot. Using less water is hard to make a lot of money from, so it tends to get overlooked. The US leads the world in household water consumption (no surprise there) and the EPA estimates that on average, 27 % of the 400 gallons of potable water consumed by an American household gets flushed down toilets.

I for one would like to applaud the the SOS Mata Altantica Foundation for making what's not a bad idea to begin with palatable to the masses. Well, the Brazilian masses at any rate. Can you imagine something like this showing up during commercial breaks for American Idol? Not bloody likely.

Peeing in the shower would save at least a flush per person per day. It doesn't sound like much but that's 1.6 gallons with a modern, efficient toilet. It's up to seven gallons on an older toilet. Those kinds of changes add up. So whattya say? Who's ready to xixi no banho?

Beware sketchy, industry-sponsored "research"

I read a blog every day called Barf Blog. Barf Blog is a project of University of Kansas associate professor of Food Safety Doug Powell. Powell has an extensive background in microbiology as well as a biting, entertaining wit. Barf Blog may be an academic exercise, but it sure doesn't read like one. Several times a day, Powell and a bunch of his food safety pals publish posts about how food safety and microbiology effect every day life. They do this with a tremendous sense of humor and a complete disavowal of scare tactics. Barf Blog is living proof that reason and rational thought will save the day every time.

OK with that said, last week, Ben Chapman wrote a great post debunking the results of a bogus study commissioned by the Canadian Plastic Industry Association that purported to prove that reusable grocery bags are a health hazard. They proved no such thing, but the story made it into the pages of my local paper anyhow.

Swab-testing of a scientifically-meaningful sample of both single-use and reusable grocery bags found unacceptably high levels of bacterial, yeast, mold and coliform counts in the reusable bags. The swab testing was conducted March 7-April 10th by two independent laboratories. The study found that 64% of the reusable bags were contaminated with some level of bacteria and close to 30% had elevated bacterial counts higher than the 500 CFU/mL considered safe for drinking water.

Coliform bacteria, yeast and mold are everywhere and trying to eliminate them is the ultimate fool's errand. Their presence on the surface of a grocery bag, an apple or your hands means nothing. Coliform bacteria in your drinking water is an all together different situation, but a grocery bag isn't a glass of tap water. There is coliform bacteria anywhere where there are life forms that poop nearby. Finding generic coliform bacteria in water is a test to see if a water source has been exposed to poop or not. Poop, human and otherwise, can carry all manner of dangerous pathogens and coliform counts in water samples are an an important and easily detectable warning sign. On its own, most coliform bateria is harmless. However, a very specific form of it is bad news and that form has a name, E. coli 0157:H7. The study found zero traces of 0157:H7 and states that finding clearly:

No E. coli or Salmonella was detected in any of the bags.

However, it follows up immediately with the conjecture that they might find some if they look harder. Spare me. That finding is buried in the Specific Results section of this paper:

The unacceptable presence of coliforms, that is, intestinal bacteria, in some of the bags tested, suggests that forms of E. coli associated with severe disease could be present in small but a significant portion of the bags if sufficient numbers were tested.

The finding of 500 CFU/mL makes me wonder too, because that's a measure for liquids. It means Colony Forming Unit per milliliter. The authors of this "study" found 500 colony forming units of coliform bacteria in a milliliter of grocery bag. Huh?

Clearly, this study was the handiwork of an industry feeling the pinch of people switching to reusable grocery bags and that's it. Releasing unscientific findings in the form of press release preys on most peoples' scientific illiteracy and fears. It's ridiculous, but what's really ridiculous is the outright fear mongering and the illogical leap to the idea that reusable grocery bags are responsible for food-born illness. 

But I suppose it's no more illogical and ridiculous than the claim that I need to use reusable grocery bags so that I can save the earth, what ever that means.

So why not this? The simple and rational reason to switch to reusable grocery bags is that they are a more efficient use of resources and they cost less money over time. You're not going to get impetigo from them any more than you're going to save the rain forest. What you will do though is reduce the amount of solid waste you generate, help to reduce the US's dependence on imported oil and you'll help to cut down on the amount of garbage that ends up being washed into waterways.

Their use is a smart way to lead a more efficient life, so go be more efficient and ignore industry-sponsored findings.

Thank you Florida Legislature, now it's your turn Charlie

photo by Chris Zuppa, the St. Petersburg Times

In a surprise move from an organization better known for its pandering and grandstanding, the Florida Legislature passed Senate Bill 2080 and it now sits on our mannequin of a Governor's desk, awaiting his signature.

Senate Bill 2080 empowers any homeowner in Florida to install what's called a Florida Friendly yard, despite what their homeowners association has to say. If you're a Floridian, call the Governor's office and insist that he sign this rare breath of common sense.

Now for some background, since most of you reading this aren't Floridians. Florida is home to a vicious form of governance called a Homeowners Association. States all over the country have HOAs enshrined in law, but Florida's HOAs are particularly empowered. What this means is that if you buy into a neighborhood with an HOA, that HOA writes and enforces the covenants and restrictions placed on a homeowner. Restrictions like banning yard signs or wash lines, forbidding certain paint colors, limiting the number of guests a homeowner can entertain, etc. All of this is Gladys Kravitzism is passed and decided upon in the name of preserving property values. This stuff would be an irritant and little more except for the other side to these deed restrictions and covenants. Florida law grants these HOAs enforcement power and most of them don't hesitate to use it.

Last October, a 66-year-old man was jailed without bail over his brown lawn. He'd run afoul of his HOA and they had him arrested and jailed because his lawn had died. Here's the story from the St. Pete Times.

Anyhow, most if not all of the HOAs in Florida require that all lawns be sodded with lush, green St. Augustine grass. St. Augustine is the only real lawn grass suited for our climate. Sort of. It can handle our sun and heat without any trouble. However, what it can't handle is that it doesn't rain here in the winter. From October to May, it's as dry as a bone and St. Augustine grass will turn brown and die within a matter of weeks. Enter the sprinkler system. St. Augustine needs to be irrigated at least once a week in order for it to eek by. In order for it to look its best, it needs to be irrigated a lot more than that and it needs that irrigation year-round, even during our rainy season.

Public enemy #1

Senate Bill 2080 will allow anyone to tear out his St. Augustine lawn and replace it with a landscape that doesn't need to be irrigated. How revolutionary. Predictably, HOAs are having shivering fits while the water authorities can barely contain their glee.

So omnipresent has St. Augustine grass become that 62% of the potable water used in the great state of Florida gets sprinkled on lawns. I was barking like a mad man about it last March. Sixty-two per cent. That is an unconscionable amount of water wasted in the name of preserving property values.

It gets worse. Florida is in an extreme water crisis. We're three years into a serious drought and municipal water supplies are dwindling all across the state. Until someone finds a solution, we're headed for a world of hurt. This crisis could have been avoided to begin with and could be mitigated now if we do something about that 62% number.

Water is a limited, public resource. How other people use it is a concern all members of a community hold in common. The water people waste on their lawns really is going to start affecting everyone and it will happen a lot sooner than people think it will. Charlie, please sign Senate Bill 2080.

Break a CFL? Don't panic.

Lisa Sharkey had a piece in yesterday's Huffington Post where she described her panic over a broken compact fluorescent light bulb in her home. She then listed a series of clean up procedures that could only have been written by a personal injury attorney. Sheesh. Calm down already!

All fluorescent light bulbs contain elemental mercury. That includes the long, skinny ones in offices and schools. Elemental mercury is a naturally-occurring heavy metal that's also a neurotoxin in high enough doses. Elemental mercury is a liquid at room temperature and it evaporates into a gas easily. That gas glows when electricity passes through it. Hence its use in light bulbs. Mercury has a long list of practical uses and is found in everything from Mercurochrome to mascara. High concentrations of elemental mercury are more damaging as a gas than as a solid, so there are some sensible precautions you'll want to take should you break one of these bulbs.

But let's get a little perspective first and do some math.

Let's say you break a CFL containing five milligrams of mercury in your child’s bedroom. Further, let's say that bedroom has a volume of 25 cubic meters (that's a medium-sized bedroom). For the sake of illustration, let's assume that the entire five milligrams of mercury in the bulb vaporizes immediately. This would result in an airborn concentration of 0.2 milligrams per cubic meter. This concentration will decrease with time, as air in the room leaves and is replaced by air from outside or from a different room. So even if you do nothing, the concentrations of mercury in the room will likely approach zero after about an hour or so.

Under these relatively conservative assumptions, this level and duration of mercury exposure is not dangerous, since it's lower than the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) standard of 0.05 milligrams per cubic meter of metallic mercury vapor averaged over eight hours. 

To equate the level of exposure in our broken bulb scenario with OSHA's eight-hour standard Imagine the immediate level of mercury in the room immediately after the bulb broke to be 0.2 milligrams of mercury per cubic meter. If we assume the air in the room changes every hour, then the eight-hour average concentration would be .025 milligrams per cubic meter.

See? No need to panic. While I wouldn't call it harmless exactly, it's not something you need to call a Hazmat team over.

So, in the event that you break a CFL, open a window to speed up the dispersal of the mercury vapor. If it makes you feel better, leave the room for a half an hour. Then come back and clean up the broken glass. 

Fix that leaking faucet already

March 16-20 has been designated National Fix a Leak Week by the United States' Environmental Protection Agency. They're onto something. Check it:

Leaks account for, on average, 11,000 gallons of water wasted in the home every year, which is enough to fill a backyard swimming pool.

The amount of water leaked from U.S. homes could exceed more than 1 trillion gallons per year. That’s equivalent to the annual water use of Los Angeles, Chicago, and Miami combined.

Ten percent of homes have leaks that waste 90 gallons or more per day.

Common types of leaks found in the home include leaking toilet flappers, dripping faucets, and other leaking valves. All are easily correctable.

Fixing easily corrected household water leaks can save homeowners more than 10 percent on their water bills.

Keep your home leak-free by repairing dripping faucets, toilet valves, and showerheads. In most cases, fixture replacement parts don’t require a major investment and can be installed by do-it-yourselfers.

The vast majority of leaks can be eliminated after retrofitting a household with new WaterSense labeled fixtures and other high-efficiency appliances.

Now if they were serious they call for a National Tear Out Your Lawn Week. But more on that topic later.

IceStone recycled glass counters... cool!

IceStone is a Brooklyn-based manufacturer of recycled glass and concrete durable surfaces. For most people, a durable surface is another name for a counter. It needn't stop with counters though, IceStone can be used as flooring, shower enclosures, back splash or for any other purpose where there's a need for a durable, water- and stain-resistant surface.

IceStone earned the Cradle to Cradle Gold certification from McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry, the organization that grants this certification. To quote from their press release:

New York – IceStone, the NY-based maker of green, durable surfaces used for countertops, bar-tops, bathrooms, flooring and other applications, announced today its achievement as the first and only surface manufacturer to receive the prestigious Gold level, Cradle to Cradle certification. Given by McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry (MBDC), this certification shows that IceStone’s company and products have passed stringent manufacturing standards that measure toxic ingredients, emissions levels, water and energy usage, renewable investments, on-going data collection systems and recyclability, as well as a code of corporate ethics and labor standards.

IceStone looks like quartz composite. Actually, quartz composite looks like terrazzo, and terrazzo is exactly what IceStone is. IceStone's use of cement rather than the polymers used in quartz composite is the key to its status as a sustainable product, though their use of 100% recycled glass doesn't hurt either.

IceStone looks pretty cool, I like how it shows and I like the fact that it's a sustainable product. In the market for a durable surface? Take a look at IceStone.

Concrete done right

As a tie-in to my hot lead on new sinks from Web Urbanist this week, I came across a sink they'd highlighted that stopped me in my tracks. Here's the sink in question.

It's gorgeous and unlike anything I've ever seen before. I have a thing for maps, the more technical and topographic the better. And that sink reminds me of the contour lines on an orienteering map like this.

It's part orienteering map and part nautical chart and all breathtaking. Here's an overhead shot of that same sink. Ahhhhh.

I followed the link on Web Urbanist back to the source for these beauties and found myself on the website, Gore Design Co. Gore Design Group is a Tempe, Arizona-based purveyor of fine concrete, according to their website. They are also artists who heed the call of a different muse and I find their philosophy to be intoxicating. From their website:

2004 – who we were:
A raw, unconverted industrial space. A few years’ worth of savings and a bunch of credit cards. One guy who’s decided he wants his own design company. Who believes in sustainable design, who knows he wants to work in concrete. Who knows this is absolutely what he wants to do and who knows he has absolutely very little idea how to do it – how this is supposed to work, what comes next, how, exactly, one runs his own design company.

2008 – who we are:
A full-blown green design studio. Fewer credit cards. One guy plus a small creative team who’ve decided this is where they want to be. We’re a little off-kilter. We like caffeine. We were damaged by soul-draining corporate jobs. We’ve recovered. We wear shorts and T-shirts to work. We eat a lot of sandwiches. We recycle. We make beautiful, functional art. We’re believers in change. There’s little that we don’t see within our reach. We love what we do. We know we can do more, and we will...

Man, what's not to love? I see a lot done with concrete --sinks, counters, floors and the like. Most of it's really heavy-handed and ungainly. Until I wandered onto Gore Design Company's website, I have never seen something made from concrete that could be called graceful. That's exactly what these sculptural sinks are though. The very poetry embodied in the buttes and washes of the American Southwest has been breathed into these forms.

Wow. Once again, their website: Gore Design Group. Spend some time looking over their portfolio and tell them I said hello.

On the horizon: The Water Mill

This is the Watermill by Element Four. Element Four is a British Columbia-based company that's determined to solve the world's potable water problems and their first product in that direction is their Water Mill.

The Water Mill mounts to the exterior of your home and distills pure water from the air. It's estimated to cost 35 cents a day to run and it cranks out 3.2 gallons of water a day. The Water Mill can be connected to a sink top dispenser, the ice and water dispensers on a fridge, its own wall-mounted dispenser or it can run into a separate, refrigerated appliance dispenser. The diagram below shows these four dispensing options pretty well.

While the Water Mill can't supply all of a household's water needs, it can provide ample drinking water for a family or individual and it will help you throw away the bottle for once and for all.

More proof that bottled water is a pre-packaged LIE

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) commissioned a study of the quality of 10 domestic brands of bottled water. The ten brands were purchased from eight different states and the District of Columbia, then sent to the University of Iowa's Hygienic Laboratory for analysis. Samples were also sent to the University of Missouri for further analysis. You can read about the methodology of the tests here.

Municipalities are required to test for contaminants every year and then to make the results of those tests available to the public. Check the website of your municipality to find out what's in your tap water. The bottled water industry has no such requirement.

The EWP's study concluded:

Altogether, the analyses conducted by the University of Iowa Hygienic Laboratory of these 10 brands of bottled water revealed a wide range of pollutants, including not only disinfection byproducts, but also common urban wastewater pollutants like caffeine and pharmaceuticals (Tylenol); heavy metals and minerals including arsenic and radioactive isotopes; fertilizer residue (nitrate and ammonia); and a broad range of other, tentatively identified industrial chemicals used as solvents, plasticizers, viscosity decreasing agents, and propellants.

Read the study. Stop buying and using bottled water. Today.