Kitchen & Bath Sustainable

Greetings greenies!  As the month of January comes to a close, I think we’re off to a good start:  New president, a renewed commitment to the environment, lots of new green products at IBS, new CARB regulations–it’s been a crazy month!

I’m off to Germany for Duravit’s Design Days ‘09 all next week.  I’ll also be getting a sneak peek at some new Hansgrohe products coming down the pipe–uber exciting! 

I thought I’d take this time to share with you where I go to calculate my travel’s carbon emissions and figure out easy ways to offset my own impact, so if you’re interested check that out here.  Offsetting travel costs is just another way to implement green in your own business, so visit TerraPass and Google the host of other great carbon offset sites that are out there.

See you in February!  Stay green, America!

From the “Community Grumbling” department: Last week, the New York Times’ Green, Inc. blog posted a short item on the ongoing debates of energy efficiency/chilly green alien light CFLs versus energy wasting incandescents which have a better range of color temperatures and wattage versatility. It quoted a number of reader comments from previous posts on the subject.

That sparked another round of comments so, today, the blog featured a Q and A with self-proclaimed “CFL Advocate” Michael Siminovitch, a professor and director of the California Lighting Technology Center at the University of California, Davis. The topic is relevant and timely, as incandescent’s prognosis is terminal.

Consumers, the piece asserts, rarely go to Home Depot thinking about energy efficiency.  Instead, if they’ve got a dimmable fixture in the wall, they’re going to want a bulb which dims.  If you plug a conventional curlicue CFL into a dimmable outlet, it will not light.  A consumer looking for a bulb for a lamp by which they read at night, is not going to want a bulb which emits the same light as their office light fixture does. (See mine below as an example of this)

Check out what Siminovitch says is the delay in bringing better CFLs to a wider market and what we can expect for the future, here.

A quick recap of things to come for the bulb of yesteryear: Brazil and Argentina began to phase them out in 2005, Ireland and Switzerland will follow suit in 2009, the UK in 2011, Canada the following year, and us Yankees will kiss them goodbye between 2012 and 2014.

There’s a bit of innovation under way, though, to extend the incandescent’s lifespan: Two years ago, General Electric announced the company was working on a high efficiency incandescent (HEI) which would be four times as efficient as a current incandescent lamp.

Stay tuned.

Here’s a fun story about our new commander-in-chief that comes by way of Benjamin Moore. Perhaps you’ve already seen this photo from January 19 floating around the Internet or on TV, but did you know that the paint that the President is using in that photo is no-VOC Aura by Benjamin Moore?

Obama helped other volunteers roll on Laguna Blue 2059-30 and Yosemite Blue 2059-40 that were provided by Frager’s Hardware, a Benjamin Moore retailer near Capitol Hill. The photo was sent globally on newswires, and the painting session also was featured on television news broadcasts coast-to-coast.

Kinda neat, right? The paint might be blue, but the project is totally green, a nice, sustainable start for our new Prez.

It’s very likely, if you live in the northeast that you’ve heard of Davis & Warshow.  The Maspeth, NY-based company has been a major supplier of kitchen and bath fixtures, tiles and plumbing products for 83 years. KBDN has featured D&W for its achievements in the past, and now K&B Sustainable is working with the company to bring you a snapshot of Implementing Green in action!

So what the heck am I talking about?  Davis & Warshow, which has eight sales showrooms and four distribution centers in New York City, Long Island and Westchester County, NY, is turning its original 8.5-acre Maspeth headquarters into what they are calling “Practically Green.”

“Practically Green” is D&W’s sustainability manifesto, a kind of small business model for committing to green in what the company calls a “pragmatic, progressive” way.

“There’s no way to flip a switch and be carbon neutral overnight,” says v.p. David Finkel.  The company has begun implementing the changes which it hopes will eventually lead the Maspeth location to qualify for LEED status.

(more…)

If you’re anything like me, you probably have a stash of change somewhere in case of a vending machine emergency.  (I never know when I might require peanut M&Ms.) I don’t know if it’s the economy, or if it’s because of the transition in government, or the frantic tone of the news agencies, or the fact that my bank keeps changing names, but I find myself looking at the housing numbers reports and breaking into my emergency vending machine fund more and more often these days.

So any news from the USGBC, which is made up of a bunch of generally bright and cheery folks, is good news and the latest from them is the greatest: a flurry of recently released reports seem to confirm that no matter what ups and downs occur in the building sector, green is going to be a driving force in the overall recovery.  Terrific!  We’ll all have jobs, and I can save my change for New York City parking meters.

Read on here for the better news. (PDF format)

Whew!  Things learned so far in 2009: Christmas trees can be green (okay, kind of).  Other things learned: modular is going green, and doing it with sustainable style.

What am I talking about?  Clayton Homes’ i-House.

 Yeah, wow is right.  Here’s what makes it good and green:

• dual flush toilets
• bamboo floors
• low E efficient windows
• thermostatic climate controls in each room
• butterfly roof designed for rainwater catchment system
• optional solar PV add-on for roof
• Ikea fixtures (and this includes the kitchen cabinets shown below)

Clayton is part of Warren Buffett’s powerhouse Berkshire Hathaway; the company, which expects to roll out the first of these for habitation in May of this year, plans to sell 2,000 of these relatively low-cost units by the end of 2009.

More coverage of the i-House:
TreeHugger
Jetson