Do You Have Indoor Landscaping?

A few companies now offer a service known as “indoor landscaping”, that is the art of creating living green walls indoors. Germany’s indoorlandscaping create the Grüne Wand, a green wall that adds a welcome green element to sterile office environments and improves air quality while taking up less floor space than potted vegetation does.

Sweden’s Green Fortune, launched by two Swedish entrepreneurs, has already amassed an impressive list of international clients, placing their Plantwalls in offices, stores, restaurants and even car dealerships.

Likewise, French artist Patrick Blank’s meticulously sculpted Vertical Gardens have transformed ordinary walls in Paris and elsewhere into works of foliage art.

[Via: Springwise]

The Story Of Stuff

This 20 minute video, called The Story Of Stuff guides us through the journey of creating those gadgets that we’re so fond of.

Presented by Annie Leonard, 20 minutes of her voice constantly gets a little irritating (variation would have been nice), but she does a hell of a job explaining the production system in a simple and informative way. Also it’s interesting to listen about planned obsolesence - how companies design their products not to last long, but long enough for the consumer to have faith in their brand so they buy another one…

It’s quite US-centric, but absolutely worth a watch, and there’s a blog too. You can download the video (or order it on DVD) and then burn it, share it, or give it away for non-profit educational uses as much as you want.

Quick Green Wall Of Shame Update

We launched the Green Wall of Shame recently and have already had some comments about what to add, so click over here to find out what’s been updated.

Thanks to Beth Terry and everyone else who made suggestions. If you want to make a suggestion yourself, just add a comment below.

How To Build A Green House

I dream of the day I can buy some land and build my own green home. Or at least pay other people to build it for me. A quick search round the web will give you lots of green building projects. One that stands out is Green in Medusa - a husband and wife team of Baldomero and Stephenie Fernandez, along with architect Lynn Gaffney, designing and building an affordable house in upstate New York.

Baldomero took some time out to talk to Life Goggles.

Life Goggles: Can you give us a bit of background and tell us a little bit about who you and Stephenie are?
Baldomero: We met on a photo shoot in Los Angeles in 2000 and have been married six years and are expecting our first baby literally any day now! We share many of the same passions - travelling the world, good food, art, music, city life mixed with country life. We are exposed to many different cultures and choices and that got us started thinking green. We would come back from Africa or Cuba and see the amount of excess and waste all around us in our own lives and here in the US. We started making small choices here and there to live greener, cleaner - reduce, reuse, recycle… and this is just a continuation. Our next project is converting our diesel wagon to bio diesel. We think about the impact of driving upstate - in the meantime we’ve bought a terrapass to help offset our CO2 footprint.

LG: Why did you decide to build an eco house?
B: While building is not inherently “green” We wanted to be responsible and choose healthier alternatives that don’t harm the environment as much as other choices. We found there are increasingly more products and desire out there, and hopefully it will become the mainstream way of doing things instead of the alternative way.

LG: How did you hook up with architect Lynn Gaffney?
B: We had been interviewing and researching architects and builders for a few months - finding someone we both loved was harder than we thought - and we knew that whomever we went with would be a relationship we would have to endure for quite a while. We wanted someone who would help us build our dream house, not their dream house. We had a few we really liked and just when we were about to decide on one we received an issue of Dwell and saw an article on a house built by Lynn for herself. We were inspired by her house and got in touch with her right away. She was lovely from the beginning, offered to meet us up at her house so we could see it in person. We knew Lynn was the one when after spending half an hour with us she basically sketched a house that we had been dreaming of for the past few years… something that no other architect we we interviewed did.

LG: What was the first thing you did to get started?
B: Write a check/cheque to Lynn. Once you start spending money your realise it’s for real.

LG: Why did you buy the land that you have?
B: We live in NYC and started going upstate NY with friends who rented houses up there as a great escape from urban life. We both love the outdoors, camping, hiking and really want to have more of that in our lives. We saw this piece of land and fell in love with the view, the 2400 acres of state forest a couple of hundred yards away, the town of Rensselaerville three miles away also helped make our mind up. We knew we wanted to build our own place, something green and on a strict budget. We’ve had the property for three years… we’ve really spent our time thinking about it, spending seasons up there and now we are finally in the process.
[Read more]

Stand Up Against Poverty

Directed by a good friend, this short video is asking will you stand up against poverty on Oct 16th and 17th 2007? Stand Up and Speak Out Against Poverty is a global effort to end poverty and hunger in Africa and around the world, supported by the UN.

Ewan McGregor travels the Long Way Down with Cafédirect

Cafédirect, the UK’s largest 100% Fairtrade hot drinks company sent us details of how they helped Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman have a regular caffeine fix as they travelled the Long Way Down through Europe and Africa.

They rode from Scotland to South Africa, through 20 countries. As part of their intrepid 15,000 mile motorcycle adventure, which started in May 2007 in John O’Groats and arrived in Cape Town early August, Ewan and Charley visited Uganda. There they met Cafédirect’s grower partners at the Gumutindo Coffee Cooperative – suppliers of Cafédirect Mount Elgon gourmet coffee beans. During their visit they mastered the art of coffee “cupping” (tasting) and learnt how to ‘shlurp and spit’ like professional tasters!

You can watch Ewan and Charley talking to Willington Wamameye, Manager of the Gumutindo Co-operative, on the BBC LWD website.

The adventure will be shown on BBC 2 and Fox TV, starting 28 October 2007. For more information visit: www.longwaydown.com.

What Is Greywater (Or Graywater)?

According to our Green Glossary, graywater/greywater is:

“waste water that does not contain sewage or fecal contamination (such as from the shower) and can be reused for irrigation after filtration.”

Graywater Central, from Oasis Design, defines it in a slightly different manner:

“Any water that has been used in the home, except water from toilets, is called graywater. Dish, shower, sink, and laundry water comprise 50-80% of residential waste water. This may be reused for other purposes, especially landscape irrigation.”

As part of our 100 ways to save the planet, we recommend the re-use of water, but what are the benefits of using graywater? Again, Graywater Central lists a few:

1. Lower fresh water use
2. Less strain on failing septic tank or treatment plant
3. Graywater treatment in topsoil is highly effective
4. Ability to build in areas unsuitable for conventional treatment
5. Less energy and chemical use
6. Groundwater recharge
7. Plant growth
8. Reclamation of otherwise wasted nutrients

Greywater.com is another great source of information that provides step-by-step information on how to set up an irrigation system, how much water you could save, what to do about pollutants and so on. Do you have a greywater system?

[Picture via Greywater.com]

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