The DIY Channel’s new show, “This New House” premieres tonight, July 29th, at 8PM/7C.  If the trailer for the series is any indication, it should be chock full of innovative, high tech products, many of them geared towards energy savings and other aspects of green living.

One of the projects highlighted in the first three episodes is the Cleantech Teaching Center, a state of the art showcase home located in Beverly, MA.  This house features an entirely LED lighting system, rainwater recovery system, geothermal energy, and solar photovoltaic panels.  Sustainable materials were used throughout the interior, including Trend USA’s lovely Trend Q recycled glass tile.  Cleantech Homes, LLC has applied for LEED PLatinum status for the home. Read the rest of this entry »

Wine is a wonderful thing.  I should know, because my husband works in the business.  Yeah, it’s tough being married to somebody who has to bring home bottle after bottle of delicious wine to taste.  I know, I know.  Your heart bleeds for me.

Anyway, wine is a multi-billion dollar, global industry, and anything that big generates a LOT of waste.  So I thought I would share some of my favorite sustainable goods made from the remnants of the wine making process…

Elegant curves define this beautiful folding chair from Whit McLeod.  Made from used oak wine barrels – many of them decades old – this chair is surprisingly comfortable and very chic. Read the rest of this entry »

Remodeling your kitchen?  Designing a fancy new restaurant?  Just looking for something amazing and sustainable?  Here are 6 reasons you should consider recycled glass tile…

Mosaic “wallpaper” by Trend USA

1.  Recycled glass takes only 50% of the energy to produce that virgin glass does.

Oceanside Glasstile

2.  Recycled glass  can be made into any form, color, or shape you can imagine. Read the rest of this entry »

Maybe it’s because I went to high school in “Surf City” (aka Huntington Beach, CA) or maybe it’s just because it’s a cool way to recycle, but I think these surfboard showers are wicked awesome!

All images - Will and Jane Fowler

Created by Will and Jane Fowler out of used surfboards, and then covered in glass and mirror mosaics, each shower is completely unique.

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What do you get when you take the most recycled material in the United States*, and pair it with one of the most rapidly renewable materials in the world?

If you are furniture designer Bill More, you get beautiful tables like this…

Constructed using steel and bamboo, the Ventralis coffee table is one of two striking table designs available through More’s Forged Elements furniture line.

Says More:

“Since I started designing and building furniture over ten years ago I have been conscious of my environmental impact. I always search for used materials and recycled ingredients to work with. Unfortunately, when you need to produce a consistent, high quality product, this is often a great challenge. So when I inevitably have to use new materials, my conscience makes me feel uneasy. I see bamboo and steel as lesser evils, since even new steel is created from a good percentage of recycled content and bamboo grows like a weed. I am constantly searching for new ways to lessen my impact as a craftsman.”

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As every grade school child knows, a broken mirror brings 7 years bad luck,… unless you’re Eco by Cosentino.

Developed by the Spanish multi-national company Cosentino, Eco brand countertops are made of 75% recycled materials.  Those materials include anything from porcelain to stone to glass.  But it’s the three colors, Polar Cap, Crystal Ash and Starlight, which really stand out with their subtle use of broken mirror.  In fact, although not normally a fan of shiny black countertops, I am transfixed by how much the color Starlight lives up to its name.  There is no way to experience what it really looks like except by seeing it in person, but trust me, it’s absolutely lovely.  And shiny.  And sparkly.  And,… I must have been a magpie in another life. Read the rest of this entry »

Crazy though it may seem, the EPA has estimated that 7 out of 10 wine bottles ends up in a landfill.   Considering that over 300 million cases of wine are sold in the United States annually, that’s a whole lot of bottles not getting recycled.  About 2,376,000,000 bottles a year, if my trusty calculator is to be believed.

All images via Bottlehood

While they may not be able to make a huge dent in that statistic, Bottlehood is determined to do what they can by turning some of those unwanted wine bottles into fun vases and glassware.

And if you think a wine bottle makes a good vase, check out what they’ve done with some other types of bottles… Read the rest of this entry »

(clockwise from top) "Gold Coast", "Pompeii", raw safety glass in bag

Quick story – When I was a little girl, I found some broken windshield glass in the alley near our home.  My mother, being the crafty sort at the time, decided to bring it home to experiment with.  Her project, as I recall, involved gluing the pieces of glass around a flower pot for a sort of sparkly mosaic effect.   We’ll never know what the end result might have been, since my toddler sister decided that tempered glass would make a delicious appetizer to the lunch my mother had left the room to make.   Although a frantic trip to the doctor revealed no lasting damage, the great tempered glass experiment quickly made it’s way to the trash, never to be tried again.

I’m so happy that Ellen Blakeley, artist and owner of Ellen Blakeley Studio, had better results!  Just look at the amazing tiles she has created from recycling tempered glass…

Read the rest of this entry »

Have you ever wondered how Vetrazzo makes something like this…

Vetrazzo "Bistro Green" table top

From something like this… Read the rest of this entry »

Here are six stylish and sustainable countertops that have it all over granite:

"Floating Blue" by Vetrazzo - Joel Puliatti, ©2008 Joel Puliatti for Vetrazzo, puliattiphoto@yahoo.com.

1. Recycled Glass Terrazo – Terrazo is an age old method of creating hard surfaces by combining aggregate, such as marble chips, with concrete.  The resulting material is poured into place and smoothed out using grinders and polishers. Companies such as Vetrazzo, Enviroglass, and Icestone have taken this method and replaced the stone aggregate with pre and post consumer glass chips, creating eye catching surfaces. Read the rest of this entry »