Image credit: The Guardian 20,000 honeybees released: great news, but why such big news? Anyone who has spent time campaigning on environmental issues will know that it can be hard to get the general public engaged with the plight of an endangered species, or worried about pollution. We all lead busy lives, and sometimes the environment plays second fiddle to economics, politics or even TV reality shows when it comes to public attention. So what is it about honeybees that has so strongly captured our collective imagination? ...
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exterior photos by Kelly Rossiter The same week that Alice Rawsthorn was writing about A Prefab House That Dazzles Still, the Pacific Palisades home of Charles and Ray Eames, I was in Paris, visiting another dazzling steel and glass house, the Maison de Verre, designed by Pierre Chareau for Dr. Jean Dalsace and his wife, Annie in 1931. They are both seminal houses that have influenced generations of architects, but ultimately, the Maison De Verre has perhaps far more relevance to sustainable design and architecture today than does the Eames House....
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photo: Rodrigo Soldon via flick Brazil is renowned for being a world leader in ethanol use and this telling statistic bears that out: According to Petrobras CFO Almir Barbassa ethanol now powers more than 50% of all the light vehicles in the nation. Biofuels Digest quotes Barbassa as saying that gasoline has now become "the alte...
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Screenshot via ReadWriteWeb Around every corner is a list on how to cut down on your home energy use. The problem with most of these tip sheets is that the suggestions don't fit your circumstances. Usually we skim through and pick out the small handful that apply to us and that we can follow, and discard the rest of the list as useless. It's a fairly dissatisfying process, and Microsoft has recognized that. The company has come out with Hohm, a tipster software that bases its advice on customized information, and eventually on data provided by your ut...
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Park your plug-in hybrid under Phat Energy's carport. Photos by RCruger Day two at the Dwell on Design Show in downtown Los Angeles was open to the public who came in droves, filled showroom aisles to peruse eco-friendly, modern furnishings, and listen to speakers on a variety of topics from sustainable design to the garage of the future and ideal green kitchen. On the floor, Phat Energy, a Southern California solar company, displayed their PhatPort, a solar-powered carport/patio awning and promoted its attic fan as a way to reduce energy costs and avoid ...
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Turn your wall into a white board with Idea Paint. Photos by RCruger. Gorgeous green homewares, scintillating sustainability forums, abfab prefab displays, green designs and architecture are the focus at "dwell on design," dwell magazine's fourth festival of modern design and it’s second in LA (where its biggest chunk of subscribers dwell). With lots of exhibitions, panels, interviews, home tours, films, innovative environmental ideas, and enticing events, the first jam-packed day kicked off the weekend show in green ...
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Image: Flickr, Between a Rock Twitter House aka Twitter Cottage Prepare for a case of job-title envy. Engineer Andy Stanford-Clark works on the kind of projects that usually appear first in advertisements that anecdotally demonstrate a company's forward thinking. He is a "Master Inventor" for IBM. But IBM is not tooting its own horn: news of Andy's recent project is picking up speed in media and the blogosphere after being highlighted by BBC...
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