From REGREEN’s Remodeling Guidelines to Re-Green Your Interior Design via TreeHugger.

I have no crystal ball here although from my one 2:00 a.m. viewing of Meet the Press (when I couldn’t sleep thinking about the economy) with Maria Bartiromo and someone from The Street, they, these people who watch this stuff all the time, think that what the government is doing will help the economy, eventually.

Aside from that I found the American Institute of Architects Home Design Trend Survey (done quarterly) to be pretty fascinating. While residential architects have reported the weakest business conditions in the three year history of this survey, the remodeling of existing kitchens and baths are on the upswing with increased interest in sustainable materials for both and a greater interest on accessibility and adaptability throughout the house.

Most notably in the kitchen there’s a significant increase in popularity of renewable flooring and countertop materials from 2006 to 2007 such as bamboo and cork for flooring and bamboo and concrete for countertops; drinking water filtration systems were also high on the list while high end appliances have fallen significantly.

Water saving toilets and LED lighting options have become more popular in bathrooms, along with continued strong demand for radiant heated flooring and to promote greater accessibility there is a much greater emphasis on features like doorless and handheld showers. Interesting.

With most specific construction segments showing deep decreases, such as first time buyers or the affordable home market, down by 64%, and the second/vacation home market down by 41%, kitchen and bath remodeling is up by 25% and additions and alterations are up by 22%.

And a recent poll of registered voters revealed that 90% of respondents said they would be willing to pay $5,000.00 more for a house that used less energy and protects the Earth.

So, let’s just keep those green innovations coming; it appears to be where the growth is, as well as people staying in place and investing their money where they know they will get it back when the housing market does improve, kitchens and bathrooms.

That means Economy 0, Earth 1.

You can click here to see the full report.

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These Central Asian textiles made this blog last year courtesy of MyMarrakesh when Trendbites featured the suzani that are part of Maryam Montague’s private stash, along with the ones she herself will be selling on the Peacock Nest, her online shop of all things Marrakesh and other assorted and exotic middle eastern goods. And suzani made a good round on cyberspace about the same time. It was exciting to see what all was available and how. Style Files had a wonderful layout showing how suzani were being used in all different types of applications. If you search suzani now on Google you’ll come up with a whole host of options, not so 4 or 5 months ago.

For April’s issue, Lucky Magazine featured a “trend in the making…” page on suzani, which were really mostly products inspired by the ethnic ancient suzani. The blog, Poppytalk, has actually featured the whole page, but it was a handbag that held her heart…other commenters liked other things. The one that caught my eye was the dining room chair from ABC Carpet which has a 60’s kind of frame to it, but because of the fabric it takes on a whole other modern dimension, or vice versa, the 60’s look took on an ethnic pulse because of the fabric, albeit a fresh pulse.

Which prompted me to check out ABC’s website to see if there were more and voila! there’s a whole round-up of ottomans and chaise lounge chairs and other chairs; a visual delight, sure to satisfy any of those cravings you may have been having for rich sumptuous and exotic textiles. ABC Carpet says the items are one of a kind and made with reclaimed textiles and that vintage material from the villages of Central Asia and the Middle East inspired their creations. Of course, these things don’t come cheap. The dining room chair Lucky featured from ABC is $3,000.00 for a set of two–but I would guess you wouldn’t be trading these in anytime soon, and if you did, well imagine the resale value; they’re keepers, folks, keepers.

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Vogue Living did a feature story for their Jan/Feb 08 issue on a home in Marrakesh melding the styles of Moroccan and Scandinavian design. Norwegian Knut Hovland of Tupelo Arkitektur and Morocco’s Abdelkirim el Achak came together on a mission for the owner, Scandinavian, who wanted to entertain. The most beautiful aspect of this feature, and there were many, was the courtyard, which had b’hoos (freestanding canopied nooks) on either side. The feature was produced and beautifully photographed by James Silverman for Vogue Living Australia.

Maryam Montague of MyMarrakesh blog fame has created for us a dreamy and exotic world, and to see style like the home featured in Vogue Living’s Nordic Sheik at least representative of the culture, also makes me understand Maryam and her architect husband’s mission to build an eco-friendly boutique hotel in Marrakesh, Peacock Pavilions, and online shop, Peacock Nest. On schedule to open this year, the hotel will have 2 pavilions and 5 guest rooms accommodating 10 adults (and children are welcome). You can read all about Peacock Pavilions at its wonderful website, peacockpavilions.com. In the meantime, Maryam was invited to write a travel essay for Budget Travel on the where and how to’s of traveling in Marrakesh…..I encourage you to visit the site for Maryam’s tips and article, “My Marrakech is Better Than Yours.” if there was anyone to show you around the exotic and mysterious land of Casablanca infamy besides Humphrey Bogart or Ingrid Bergman, well Maryam is the one.

Oh, as for the different spellings, Webster’s spells it Marrakech, but Marrakesh is often used because that is how it sounds.

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Just in time given my last post on the Pacific Oceans Plastic Hell. Artist Jane Altfield recycles plastic into chairs; the flecks here give the plastic dimension. I’ll take it. From HauteNature’s blog on Transformations, a virtual exhibit from 2002 that discusses the art of recycling. Thank you so much, this couldn’t have been a more timely find (and found HauteNature when I went looking for a good image of Winnie Liu’s White Chandelier, below post.

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Can you fill in the blank in that statement? I wonder what it will take.

Jellyfish Entangled with ocean’s debris of plastic and ropes. ABC News: Under the Sea: A Garbage Dumping Ground.

Scientists, corporations, politicians, environmentalists, et al are looking to the year 2015 for their efforts to help create actions, products, initiatives to support sustainable living and therefore stave off the disasterous impact of global warming on our climate to see if indeed the situation has begun to reverse itself…..that is only 7 years away.

Kimilo Beach. Oceanographer cites consumer “throwaway” culture as reason for ocean pollution. ABC Nightline’s Under the Sea: A Garbage Dumping Ground.

I can say despite all the gloom that is reported nightly around the world and projections of doom unless things are reversed that I do feel hope. Reason being is that there is so much momentum behind this movement that it is beginning to swoop up the garbage and debree with much the same force as we began dropping it, probably beginning with the industrial revolution.

White by Winnie Liu for Innermost is a chandelier made up of a collection of just what’s around but now a thing of beauty.
Every trade show and conference and then some is having whole show events this year based around what that group can do to alter the impact of global warming. One of the big topics coming out of these shows, (and I’ve covered the topics from the Housewares Show in my posts from all last week) is to purchase better product that lasts longer, to make better product that lasts longer, to design better product that lasts longer and to just say no to buying………

That’s bad news for H&M and Zara’s and maybe Wal-Mart where much of the mass produced product that doesn’t last is sold, used for only a little while and then thrown away. I am torn on this subject because the H&M’s and Zara’s & Wal-Mart’s make many things accessible to people who haven’t had access or otherwise wouldn’t have access. I’d hate to see a “no consumerism” mentality turn into caste systems of haves and have nots……….when we are proposing fair trade as part of sustainable practices, we are also talking about how people are treated. This tact can be a slippery slope.

My own personal opinion, besides reducing greenhouse gases, purchase vehicles (and manufacture them) that get 30-40 mpg city and hwy driving, recycle if your city has this as an option and if not help to make it mandatory by state, stop drinking bottled water (buy other containers to hold your water in and refill), insist that all those companies whose products you and I purchase start bottling them in degradable containers, purchase organic cleaners, use low VOC paints, switch all printing to digital media and if you can’t use recycled paper products………and stop buying plastic unless it is either recycled or degradable, and I say degradable so that it will break down in landfills.

If you didn’t see it, ABC’s Nightline did a segment on the spot in the Pacific Ocean off the Northern Coast of North America where the ocean’s flow creates a swirl effect and pulls in it all of the plastic that we are throwing away…..it’s staying right there in the ocean and makes up much of the water from top to nearly bottom of pieces of plastic (over 80% of the flotsam and jetsam is plastic) over an area the size of Africa. I was sick about it last night (heard about it from one of the speakers at the Housewares Show) and felt the need to make a statement this morning.

More than a few of my clients have based their companies production on injection molded plastic and its been a true blessing in managing most everything we do everyday in efficient and affordable ways, until now. Because most plastic just doesn’t break down in landfills or our plastic Ziploc bags go nowhere but in the ocean as a consequence of littering the majesty of our wilderness and natural havens are being threatened………the pile of toothbrushes that showed up from scavenge hunts on Nightline’s segment was the final straw for me.

The technologies are available; the consumer is there and waiting………..so now is the time to make those changes; it’s an ingredient change and hey we’ve got seven years to do it. If there’s anything I’ve learned in my lifetime, it’s that incredible things can and do happen in the space of one year let alone 7, especially if there’s a massive world-wide effort behind it.

Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, I’m gonna….. (you fill in the blank).

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These were really exciting products from a surface design point of view as well as those incredible handles…..marble and granite are in, why not in countertop kitchen cannisters? Oprah named Oggi’s cannisters in solid black and white a must have because of these handles, but I name it because of the new surface designs. Oggi figures there are plenty of slate and concrete countertops that can use these to accentuate the style but there’s white, black, stainless…….oh, the list goes on in countertop styles that can support these beauties. Visit Oggicorporation.com and their contact us page to find out where you’ll be able to find them and when.

Oh, and what makes these ever so much more unique? They are ceramic, the finish has been created with paint. And the salt and pepper shakers in both marble and granite come with or without the handles (although who would want them without the handles I don’t know, but just in case you have a need for what’s tried and true….) and all pieces are available in both finishes, as of this writing.

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This line of product, reduce, is from basebrands and I found them to be particularly creative, nice and helpful regarding these items and their claims of environmentally friendly materials….also quite solution oriented.

The first is called Melaboo (isn’t that clever?) and is made up of 60% bamboo fiber and melamine compounds. This makes it 100% biodegradable……primarily because of the bamboo, but also because the melamine compounds themselves will break down in the environment, it’s just that the bamboo makes it break down faster and in landfills……then there are the colors we can talk about, which is a pretty wide range to choose from. They were particularly careful to choose colors that worked because the bamboo had a tendency to lighten what colors they used, but these still came out fairly saturated to me, and the dyes which came from the melamine are FDA approved.

Next, WaterWeek, the reuseable water bottles created to address the overuse of plastic water bottles use a material called SAN and are BPA free so you have no leaching of the material into the liquid which is what makes them reuseable, over and over. And if any of you out there are House (the irreverant Dr. House) freaks, like I am, you saw the show where the guy was poisoning himself because he was drinking from plastic water bottles and refilling them repeatedly everyday; because of the type of material the plastic water bottles are made of, you can’t do that……..too much bacteria buildup, as well as the toxins from the BPA leaching. ICK! The reduce bottles are dishwasher safe, made to slip over one of the spindles in your dishwasher and you are good to go. These can be purchased in 5 day packs so you can fill one up for each day and take with, and keep refilling. Fill, chill and go!

Hey, it’s a step toward reducing the over 30 million bottles of water that are thrown out everday. In case you haven’t seen it, I did a post on this devastation in landfills per the CondeNast Portfolio story on photog and artist Chris Jordan’s show “Running the Numbers.” If you haven’t seen it, I strongly encourage you to visit…..it’s an interactive slideshow so you’ll have to be a little patient with it, but the rewards are beyond words, literally. Jordan, in this case image number 2, Plastic Bottles, photographed 400 plastic bottles he had in his driveway over and over and over until he reached the 2,000,000 number which are the number of plastic bottles used every five minutes, and that’s just in the U.S.. When you look at his image from far away it’s hard to break down what it is, but use the reset button in the top right hand corner and you can zoom in to see that these are plastic bottles…..a picture is worth a thousand words on this one. It’ll make you want to buy a WaterWeek five pack for each member of the household.

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PTS America is primarily a dinnerware company. You can see more of their designs by visiting their website and to find out where their products can be found. Their eco line of office supplies in my last post began in 2005 under the brand 222 DECOR……

Lunar Barbecue Dinner Plate. Atlas Salad Plate. Rosie the Riveter Mug.

But they have this great line called “Slice of Life,” (above). And that it is. The dinner and salad plates have a similar look but the particular story being told on each plate is different and can be assorted….mugs too. These would make great conversation pieces over dinner.

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While all of this mind bending revolutionary technology is taking place in a quest for sustainable solutions, there is also just plain ‘ole taking recycled material or waste product and repurposing it for another use instead of letting it sit in landfills forever.

PTS America with their full line of recycled newspaper and magazines in office desk accessories, 222 DECOR, makes a strong statement in desk accessories for the office. These are stiking looking designs, with real utility, and if it recyles a lot of newspaper and magazines in the process, it’ll be a winner. These two particular items are a magazine holder and a garbage can….the outside is made of water hyacinth and cotten thread with the inside made up of recycled magazines.

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The epa.gov site gives a definition of sustainability insofar as it effects all aspects of the developing world with an environment to take care of….frankly, I like it. But I can see as a consequence how sustainable has come to be different things to different people; however at its core is a stewardship of the environment. The word seems to gain greater meaning as manufacturers and technology develop processes and procedures that address progress and saving the environment at the same time.

Here’s the epa’s definition of the word:

Sustainable development marries two important themes: that environmental protection does not preclude economic development and that economic development must be ecologically viable now and in the long run. Common use of the term “sustainability” began with the 1987 publication of the World Commission on Environment and Development report, Our Common Future. Also known as the Brundtland Report, this document defined sustainable development as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” This concept of sustainability encompasses ideas, aspirations and values that continue to inspire public and private organizations to become better stewards of the environment and that promote positive economic growth and social objectives. The principles of sustainability can stimulate technological innovation, advance competitiveness, and improve our quality of life.

For more about what the epa has to say, read more…..

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