Eco-friendly hardware can certainly be a challenge to find, but Eleek Incorporated of Portland, Oregon offers a hip line of recycled metal hardware for your home. Their offerings include door handles, door pulls, switch-plates, house numbers, and signs in addition to unique lighting options and beautiful recycled metal sinks for bath and kitchen.
Why not build a prefab almost entirely out of reclaimed materials? That's what Reclaimed Space founder Tracen Gardner wants to do. Mr. Gardner was in between contracting jobs and began constructing a portable building using primarily reclaimed materials. In the process, he liked what he was doing so much that he decided to create Reclaimed Space to continue building modular, passively-designed cabins. To start off with, the company will build spaces from 240 square feet and at prices in the range of $115 to $160 psf (min. $25k).
A combination of various groups, including AIA Newark, Skanska, and Young Architects Forum, put together the Live The BOX competition to find innovative, visionary, and compelling proposals for container constructed, multifamily, mixed- use projects. The competition received tons of interesting container design entries, but only three won (with three more Honorable Mentions). Designs had to use standard shipping containers of 8'-6" height and either 20' or 40' length as main building blocks for the structure. Make sure to check out the winners below ... Also, I'll update this article as I find better images.
I've just recently come across an interesing company, Way Basics, that's making eco-friendly furniture blocks called zBoards. zBoards are made from post-consumer recycled paper and can be recycled with no waste when their use is over. Their website markets the zBoards with one, main, simple statement: No Waste. No Rules. No Tools. And it's a compelling premise, especially if you've ever spent some time putting together an IKEA drawer or something. zBoards and blocks are put together using a super-strong adhesive tape (not sure whether the tape is low-VOC or anything like that).
I find the stories behind green homes to be quite interesting. I was at the gym and happened upon this article in Home Magazine about Adam Coulter, a 27 year-old screenwriter and actor living in LA. He successfully battled cancer in his teens and has been in remission since that time. But since his bout with cancer, he's always attempted to live in the healthiest environment possible. This third-floor condo is an example of Couter's quest for healthy living -- it's been renovated with bamboo flooring, organic linen draperies, recycled glass tiles, zero-VOC paints, and locally produced, sustainable materials, etc.
Recycling The Past is a vintage/antique building supply store located in New Jersey. The store offers a wonderful variety of products ranging from mantles to hardware to doors, all of which may be viewed online. Two of my favorite products are the sinks and the tiles. There are nine pages of stunning tiles in a range of shapes, colors, and styles. The collection of decorative tiles is incredible; some of them are amazingly detailed.
Surfing Cowboys, located in Venice Beach, California is a hip spot for vintage shopping. The store offers furniture, accessories, lighting, artwork, and a unique collection of vintage surfing and skateboarding items. And if you can't make it to Venice Beach, you can shop their store online.
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.
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.
Oceanside Glass Tile offers an absolutely beautiful line of glass tiles. Not all tiles contain recycled content, but a good amount of them do. The recycled content is according to the tile color. For instance, cobalt, has almost 75% post-consumer content. The great thing is that you can see which colors contain recycled content, and how much, right on their site; there is a simple table that makes it easy to evaluate your color choice.
