Green Building Elements

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Relaxation!
Fashion!
Celebrity!
Botox!
Booze!
Interiors!
Green!

Yes, most of this list refers to the Brit series Ab Fab but if Eddy and Patsy turned in their smokes and cocktails for organic and sustainable munchies then they too would be excited for the opening of the Epi Center MedSpa, the first LEED certified MedSpa in the country. (Another LEED spa exists in D.C. but it isn’t a MedSpa). So, because fictional characters from a long ago Brit TV series couldn’t check out this just opened San Fran based spa, I decided that I had to do it. Read the rest of this entry »

As I walked around last year’s Kitchen and Bath Industry Show in Las Vegas, I asked where I could find the green products. I was encouraged to put on my walking shoes and make the trek to a minor hall where I found about twenty square feet devoted to five or six products that left little impression on me. Much has changed, it seems, in only one year. Green is the buzzword at this year’s show, helped in no small part by the host city, Chicago, showing off its green-ness through LEED building projects going up within sight of the convention center. Just about every booth displayed information on how green their products were. “Green building has become the spark that has added some life to this industry,” a representative from MasterBrand Cabinets told me.

Water saving innovators Kohler and TOTO made green the focus of their booths, proudly displaying the Watersense stickers on their high efficiency toilets. TOTO, who recycles 100% of their china, has developed a universal toilet bowl whose tank can be interchanged from a 1.6 gallon per flush to a 1.28 gpf e-tank. Read the rest of this entry »

If you attended the Greenbuild conference in Chicago last November, you would have been hard pressed to find a green cabinet manufacturer among the exhibitors - but you couldn’t turn around without bumping into a new type of green countertop. They nearly outnumbered the waterless urinals. Over the past couple of decades, countertops have evolved from tried-and-true laminate to bold new materials and colors of every taste and budget. It’s not surprising to see the creativity of new countertops go hand-in-hand with the emergence of green products. Below are several types of green countertops, from least expensive to most. Feel free to give any feedback you have on any of these products.

Laminate - Easily the least expensive green countertop, laminate countertops made with recycled wood particle board (like SkyBlend) and non-VOC (Volatile Organic Compound) adhesives are ideal for building projects that are seeking green certification at the lowest cost. It may take a while to track down a local fabricator offering green laminate countertops, but they shouldn’t cost more than a few dollars more a square foot than regular laminate tops.
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So you’re building or remodeling green, and you’re trying to decide what to do about the cabinets.

Scanning the requirements for various green building programs, you seem to have two choices. First, you can try to find cabinets made with Forest Stewardship Council certified wood from companies like Neil Kelly Cabinets. But if the company is not local, the packaging and shipping of these products may cut into their green-ness. Or you could try out agrifiber based cabinets, like Humabuilt Wheatcore Cabinets, which have arisen due to the demand for green cabinets.

Unfortunately, when faced with these choices, many before you have given up on the idea of green cabinets and gone for possibly cheaper, more convenient plain old wood cabinets from their nearby kitchen and bath dealer. If you find yourself in the same boat, chances are there’s a lesser known green option waiting for you there. Many large cabinet manufacturers across the country are certified as members of an extensive green program called KCMA-ESP. Read the rest of this entry »