I'm amazed by what can be found on Flickr.  Just in the last couple weeks, someone posted photos of their friend's LVL home by Rocio Romero.  It's quite nice both inside and out.  And we've talked about Rocio Romero prefabs before, including this Napa LV Home and this Arkansas LVL Home, and what's interesting is: how they're customized.  Every Rocio Romero home starts with a primary focus on quality, sustainability, and design — from there, owners tend to add their own personality to the inside and out. 

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About ten years ago, I worked at UPS in their "boneyard" — a place where all the pallets were unloaded and strewn in huge heaps on an asphalt parking lot.  We’d neatly stack the pallets, place them in a trailer, and UPS would get rid of them, netting about $0.25 per pallet saved.  At the time, I didn’t realize the amount of pallets in circulation around the globe.  It’s estimated that there are about 2 BILLION ordinary unit load pallets in circulation globally, and about two-thirds of these are only used once.  It’s further estimated that U.S. companies throw away roughly 4 billion board feet of wood pallets every year.  Pretty crazy, I know. 

So HDR Architecture came up with Unit Load_Redux, a temporary exhibition intended as a probe for sustainable living through the redux of pallets and the use of bicycle energy.

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Atlantic City Convention Center has just signed a 20-year agreement with Pepco Energy Services to have a 2.36 megawatt solar roof installed on the building.  When completed by the end of this year, the project is projected to be the largest single-building solar energy project in the United States.  That’s 13,321 photovoltaic panels covering roughly two-thirds of the building AND a savings of roughly $4.4 million in electricity costs over the 20-year deal. 

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Conserval Engineering just announced the release of their newest product, SolarDuct PV/T, which is a rooftop solar PV system that goes beyond generating renewable energy from on-site solar power.  With the SolarDuct PV/T system, solar panels are mounted on metal collector panels that channel excess heat from the solar array into the building’s HVAC system.  As a result, this system, which is part photovoltaic and part thermal, can generate electricity and put heat to use when heat is needed in the building.

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Looking for a simple, affordable, and eco-friendly way to furnish a home?  Check out Victory Vintage Home for vintage furniture and accessories.  One of the most environmentally friendly things that you can do is to re-use materials that already exist.  Even new, environmentally-friendly materials often have some negative impact on the environment.  For instance, furniture made from bamboo is called eco-friendly because bamboo is a rapidy renewable resource, but you then have to figure in the distance that bamboo usually travels to get to the United States.  You would also want to know how it was harvested and a variety of other environmentally important factors.

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