From an Andy Singer cartoon; see it all here at NPR Everyone is familiar with the term greenwashing (the practice of companies disingenuously spinning their products and policies as environmentally friendly) now, and TreeHugger has been using the term greenwrapping (the practice of sticking solar panels and wind turbines on noxious uses) for a whi...

Summer kitchens were very common a hundred years ago; a stove took a long time to heat up and cool down, and if you used it in the summer it would make the whole house unbearable. Then gas and electric ranges came into use, heating up much more quickly, and we got air conditioning, so we could use fuel to make the heat and use more fuel to take it...

Michal Czerwonka Public Space as Alternative to Law Enforcement At night, urban parks can become hives for gang activity and violence. A program in Los Angeles, the American gang capital, seeks to combat that phenomenon simply by keeping the lights on until midnight, reports the New York Times. To both locals and police, it's a bright idea. Last y...

Image via: Hannaford Supermarket Hannaford Supermarket, which first opened in 1883, and is known for their Guiding Stars program, is now the first supermarket in the US to be Platinum LEED certified. They also use about half of the energy of a normal supermarket thanks to the help of their rooftop solar array, the largest in Maine.... ...

images by Jim O’Connell for The New York Times Two years ago we covered the imminent demolition of the Kurokawa's iconic Nagakin Capsule Tower, where 140 prefab capsules are attached by high tension bolts to a central core. It is getting old, but is fixable; before he died, the architect proposed “unplugging” each box and replacing it with a...

Image via: Chrissy Hunt on Flickr.com Unfortunately not all of the dorms at University of Virginia (UVA) are coming outfitted with snazzy, new green products, but the demonstration dorms on campus now feature green cleaning products, green school supplies and even electronics, reports The News Leader. The new products are also available for purcha...

images from Knoll and Inhabitots I don't quite know what to think about this. I always wanted Mies Van Der Rohe-designed Barcelona chair, but could barely afford the VITRA scale version. Now Knoll is making them for kids. Jill at Inhabitots says they are green- (GREENGUARD Indoor Air Certified, meaning that they are low or no VOCs, no formaldehyde...

London Bridge isn't falling down, it is just really boring. It used to be an exciting place, an inhabited bridge full of shops and taverns, but they got rid of all that centuries ago and then shipped the thing off to Lake Havasu in Arizona. But the idea of London Bridge is 800 years old this week, and the Royal Institute of British Architects and ...

As noted in the previous slideshow about packaging design at its worst, designing and implementing packaging can go horribly, horribly wrong. Thankfully, there's a greener side to the equation, where fewer, greener materials meet with clever design -- for everything from furniture to home electronics -- to radically cut back (or altogether elimina...

"The Search for The Perfect Assembly-line House"- That is how John Bentley Mays, architecture critic of the Globe and Mail, describes the work of architectural firm rvtr. They won the Prix de Rome, Canada's big architecture prize last week, for their research into sustainable prefab for cold climates. John Bentley Mays writs that Paul Raff, Kathy ...

Image credit: Green Roof Service Cruise Ship Features Green Roof and other Efficiency Measures Cruise ships and shipping are a massive source of pollution. Moves are underway to explore biofuels for cruise ships, and to utilize cruise ship traffic as a force for conservation- you can even take a look at Kristin's list of ...

Bellevue House, Amherstberg ON: Built in 1816 by officer returning from War of 1812, developer wants to build condo on site, has left it empty and abandoned since 2001. I do go on about how the greenest brick is the one already in the wall, how old buildings are green, and that fixing them puts people to work. Imagine my surprise to find that Cana...

images via Houseplans.com It is exciting to see Passive House design come to North America; it makes so much sense to design a house so that it doesn't need a lot of technology to keep warm or cool, just careful design and siting, lots of insulation and sealing, and good ventilation. It works really well in temperate climates like British Columbia...

Image credit: Datexx 3W LED Lamp Detects Movement Before I started writing for TreeHugger, I never knew how excited people could get about LED lighting. I'm more of a compost guy myself. Whether it's this 9W LED bulb replacement for incandescents, or this remote controlled tunable LED Bulb from Sharp, posts about LEDs (even ugly ones) create both ...

The light-filled offices of the Turkcell R&D building. Image courtesy Erginoğlu and Çalışlar Architects via DesignBoom.com. Architect Hasan Çalışlar says he doesn't incorporate "green" features in his buildings because they're environmentally friendly -- he only uses them if they "make you feel better in the space." For his firm's desig...

We're fans of Core77, "a gathering point for designers and enthusiasts alike". Clogger Allan Chochinov also teaches at the School of Visual Arts in New York, in a course called "MFA Designer As Author" where they look at the issues of design and- Our focus is on authorship in the broadest sense: Beginning with a viable concept we encourage student...

Photo: Core77 The Secret Ingredient is Love Our friends at Core77 know beautiful design, but they're really surpassed themselves with the Dutch Master super-duper-limited edition bike. The goal is to celebrate New York bike culture, and an heritage of local manufacturing. Only 25 Dutch Master bikes have been made, all hand built by in Brooklyn by ...

The New York Times tells us about 100abandonedhouses.com, a website with stunning photographs of abandoned houses in Detroit, shot with an old Hasselblad.... ...

Here is something that is 100% recycled, but doesn’t look it. ECOALF is the new fabric developed by the Spanish company fun&basics, made from recycled PET bottles. It is a high quality textile: flexible, tension resistant, long lasting, waterproof and lightweight. The first bags made from ECOALF are a toilet bag, a small bag, a cabin trolley...