On beyond zebra

Sandwiched between Chelsea, Union Square and Gramercy Park is the Manhattan Center for Kitchen and Bath. It is the Mecca of my profession and it defines what a kitchen and bath showroom should be. I walked through its hallowed doors for the first time about four years ago and thought I'd died and gone to heaven. Of the many beautiful things I saw there, one that stuck out more than anything was a counter top made from zebrawood. In fact, here's a photo of the MCKB's showroom and I'll give a quarter to whoever guesses where the zebrawood counter is.

Prior to that, all I knew was that zebrawood was an exotic hardwood and that it was really expensive. I assumed that it was expensive because it was rare and I didn't give it a whole lot more thought. After having made my pilgrimage to the MCKB and seeing how gorgeous a counter made from it is, I started talking up zebrawood like a mad man. At the time I worked at a ridiculously fancy schmancy design studio and I used to specify zebrawood just because I could.



Then I actually looked up what zebrawood was and I learned that zebrawood is expensive because it's rare all right. And it's rare because it's an endangered species. Zebrawood is actually Microberlinia brazzavillensis, a tropical hardwood from Gabon, Cameroon and the Congo. It is not harvested in anything close to a sustainable manner and its popularity is hastening its demise. Ever since I got the straight dope about zebrawood I got religion about it and it is now first on my verboten list.

But leave it up to the geniuses at Smith and Fong to come up with a replacement. Their product Plyboo Neopolitan is a dead ringer for zebrawood only it's made from bamboo. An untrained eye could never tell them apart, and this trained and discerning eye has a hard time. The stuff's great and it represents what the idea of sustainable building products is all about. It's not about doing without. It's about doing things smarter. I have another quarter for anybody who can guess where to buy Neopolitan. Can't think of it? Click here.

A house of straw

This is Kirei, a plywood product from the innovating geniuses at Smith and Fong. Kirei is made from the usually discarded stems of sorghum. That stuff is usually called straw when it has a use and waste when it doesn't have a use.

Sorghum is a grain and the seeds are made into a sweetener that's usually referred to as sorghum molasses. Sorghum molasses' popularity has waned significantly in the US, but it's still a widely cultivated crop in other parts of the world. When it's converted to ethanol, it has a higher yield per pound when compared than corn so there is a growing interested in sorghum cultivation in the US.

Anyhow, Smith and Fong figured out how to make a decorative and structural ply product with the straw that's left over from Sorghum processing and it's really neat-looking stuff. The desk below is made from Kirei and bamboo plywood. What results is a beautiful, functional and sustainable office desk. Neat!

Where is it available? Why, at Indigo of course.

Sustainable lumber that looks great

If you spend any time in art or craft galleries in Florida, you have no doubt run across bowls and vases made from palm wood. There's a detail shot here that shows palm wood's unique, "thready" grain pattern. The structure of a palm tree trunk is essentially a tightly packed bundle of fibers and when its cut and stained the effect is really stunning. I don't know how popular palm wood is outside of areas where palms grown, but in this part of the world it's pretty popular stuff. I love seeing it: it's an organic, local touch and I've always wondered why it doesn't get used outside of bowls and vases.



Enter Smith and Fong's Durapalm. Smith and Fong is a San Francisco-based building product innovator and their Durapalm product is made from culled coconut palms. A coconut palm has about a 100 year lifespan as a coconut producer before it's cut down. Until Durapalm, the spent coconut palm ended up as more agricultural waste. Durapalm takes the palm tree and makes it into laminate plywood, similar to how bamboo gets turned into flooring.

That laminate plywood ends up as a sheet good for use as paneling or cabinet doors, it gets cut into planks for use as flooring, or it gets cut into what are essentially tiles and then used as wall cladding. It's really wild stuff and certainly unlike anything else you're likely to come across in somebody else's house any time soon.

Pretty neat all around. It's unusual, beautiful and sustainable --a triple crown. But where to find it? Why Indigo of course. Hurray Indigo!

Moronic product of the week.

Meet the Love Bottle.


This is a product I saw being hawked on Treehugger last week and if there's a more glaring example of that site's being out to lunch I can't think of it. The Love Bottle is being peddled as a sustainable way to carry around your own water. The bottle's made from recycled glass, so I have to give them that. However, the idea behind the Love Bottle is this, "Did you know that words and pictures have energy and water is affected by that energy?" That's taken directly from their website. I had to read it a couple of times to make sure I had read properly. It's almost a treat to see that kind of jaw-dropping stupidity. Almost.

I nosed around on their site and sure enough, they are dedicated to the insane fiction that water can be imbued with an intention, and in this case the intention is "love." Apparently, the worker bees who make the bottles whisper sweet nothings while the bottles are in production. Then that love magic stays with the bottles for the rest of their useful lives. I don't know what bothers me more about that. That someone can make such a claim without a challenge or that stupid people will buy a product that makes such a claim.

On a deeper level, where did the idea that you have to lug around your own drinking water come from? This bottle-of-water-in-every-hand-phenomenon came out of nowhere over the last 20 years and seems to be the unholy result of American hypochondria, American self-indulgence and a bottled water industry all to willing to ride those less-than-admirable traits all the way to the bank. Prior to the popularization of water as a beverage, who carried around liquids? When you wanted a drink of water, you poured yourself a glass from the tap and that was that. Ahhh, cool clean water with the twist of a tap. Now there's some real magic for you. If you were at work or at the gym, you went to the water fountain and drank some water. Gee, water fountains. Remember them? But that's too simple I suppose and how can you make gobs of money from a public resource?

So I suppose my big beef with the Love Bottle is twofold. Few things go through me like non-scientific and soft-headed claims regarding the miraculous properties of anything, let alone water. The other thing about it that bothers me is that it further spreads the idea that you need to carry water with you at all times. If the Love Bottle people were interested in a sustainable practice, they wouldn't be adding to an already wasteful idea. Behind all of their fuzzy-headed claims of the paranormal, the Love Bottle's real intentions become obvious when you see the $20 price tag. Aha! The myth of altruism gets exposed again. $20 for a glass bottle. Please.



I have an idea. A billion people in the world don't have access to clean and safe drinking water of any kind let alone magic water in a Love Bottle. But there's a product called the Life Straw that's a solution to that problem. The Life Straw is a hand held water filter that works like a straw. To call it a life save for 1/6th of the world's population is an understatement. If you're tempted to buy a love bottle because you think you're doing something to "save the earth." Stop right there. You can sponsor a Life Straw for $15 through the Rotary Club of Fort Lauderdale and in so doing, you'll be saving a life. Several lives in fact. That will leave you with five dollars and with that, you can buy the nicest water glass you can get your hands on. Leave it on your desk and use it every time you want a drink of water.
Then, if you want to witness a real miracle and the only instance of a thought influencing an object try this. Hold up your right hand. Wiggle your index finger. Hey! That's all the miracle you need.

Cool, sustainable countertop materials and where to buy them

I was combing through my blog list over the weekend and shaking my head at all of the hoo-hah being made about granite lately. I specify granite all the time and whatever reservations I have about it, they are not based on bogus health claims. My only reservations about granite are a) it's pretty much everywhere any more and b) comes out of the ground in some less-than-ideal conditions. So what's out there that's unusual, resilient AND sustainable?

Well I came across a mention of Squak Mountain Stone on Apartment Therapy. Squak Mountain Stone is made by made by Tiger Mountain Innovations and is a counter top material that looks like a cross between limestone or soapstone and concrete. Squak Mountain Stone is a fibrous, cast material made from recycled glass, recycled paper, coal fly ash and concrete. Coal fly ash is what's left over after a power plant burns coal to make electricity. Squak Mountain Stone is an interesting alternative to other, non-sustainable counter top materials. Unlike the rest of its competitors, it's possible to buy this material and install it yourself in simpler applications. It's an interesting idea and the resulting counters look great!

The company behind Squak Mountain Stone also has a product called Trinity Glass, an alternative to quartz counters that's made with 75% recycled glass. Trinity Glass brings a whole different aesthetic to the table from its companion product, Squak Mountain Stone. Just as is the case with Squak Mountain, Trinity Glass is available with a do-it-yourself-er in mind.

Both of these products, and a slew of other sustainable building materials are available at Indigo, a green building products vendor in Gainesville. It's a bit of a haul, but worth the drive. Their website is extensive and you can buy samples and supplies through it.

Wanna know what's new in counter top land? You're looking at it.