Green
Eco Brooklyn Show Garden Seeks Participants
We are planting our front and back gardens at the Eco Brooklyn show house and welcome anyone who wants to be involved.
The gardens are edible gardens as well as aesthetically beautiful. Drawing from horticulture, permaculture, feng shui, xeriscape, gray water and Biodynamic gardening we seek to redefine the definition of a Brooklyn brownstone garden.
It is [...]
How To Grow Fresh Air
Did you know that in addition to carbon dioxide, humans release as much as 150 volatile substances from our bodies, including carbon monoxide, methane, ammonia, phenol, and hydrogen sulphide?!
I got this from the book “How To Grow Fresh Air – 50 House Plants that Purify Your Home or Office” by Dr. Wolverton.
Since we have put [...]
Green Building Directories
There are a number of ‘green’ product listings and databases on the web; Greenspec at BuildingGreen.com and Pharos, for example, but most (if not all) of them require a paid annual membership. One good source of free information on green products is Oikos.com. More than 2,500 companies are listed in a searchable database.
Others are
WNC [...]
Permaculture, Pigs and Bees
Here is a cool insight into nature. It is by Michael Pollan. He also talks about the Polyface Farm which is run by “grass farmer” Joel Salatin. Joel is interviewed a lot in the Food Inc Movie. Check out the talk below, follow the links above. All very cool stuff.
Not directly connected to green contractors [...]
New Green Homes Book
The book “New Green Homes” by Sergi Costa Duran, Liliana Bollini and Ethel Pohl is a focused book. It is an architects visual study of modern homes around the world. They claim the homes are green but I didn’t really see that.
What I did see was a study of a very specific architectural style, and [...]
Building Green Book
This book has a long title: Building Green: A Complete How-To Guide to Alternative Building Methods Earth Plaster * Straw Bale * Cordwood * Cob * Living Roofs. But then again it is a big book.
Written by Tim Callahan and Clarke Snell this book overflows with 600 pages and 1500 images. The book aims to [...]
Food Inc and Green Building
I had been avoiding the movie Food Inc for a while. I’ve seen lots of animal rights movies: they are depressing. They make me angry because of the barbarity and frustrated because I feel helpless.
But one evening I was feeling especially brave. It turns out the movie is UPLIFTING!
Sure it jumps all over the place [...]
Earthen Floor Brownstone
The correct way to finish off a brownstone is to put lots of insulation and then a concrete slab, right? Correct maybe but not the greenest way. Concrete creates way too much CO2. The greenest way and a great alternative to concrete is to put lots of insulation and then an EARTHEN floor. Yes earth, [...]
Natural Green Cleaning
Today’s modern home is loaded with toxic and polluting substances designed to make domestic life easier.
The cost of these commercial, chemical-based products can be high — long term health concerns for the family, and environmental pollution caused by their manufacture and disposal. In the US, for example, 1 in 3 people suffer from allergies, asthma, [...]
Waste, Reuse and Cheese with Worms
I was just speaking with an Eco Brooklyn intern who is an architect for a non-green firm in Queens. She was lamenting a current job she is working on where they are tearing out beautiful cherry wood details to turn the building into crap rentals.
All my workers have similar stories and one of their main [...]