Inhabitat

Read the rest of Recycled Greenhouse Pavilion Pops Up in the Dutch Countryside

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Post tags: "sustainable architecture", eco design, elmo vermijs, green architecture, Green Building, green design, greenhouse pavilion, landart 2011, pavilion, Recycled Materials, reused materials, studio elmo vermijs, Sustainable Building, sustainable design, temporary pavilion, temporary structure, the netherlands

Saving water is one of the most important things we can do to ensure environmental and social sustainability for generations to come – but while many of try to be conscious of our water use, we flush thousands of gallons of water down the drain each year due to inefficient toilets and sinks. To help cut down on this inefficient use of a vital resource, we’ve teamed up with Sloan Valve Company to give away FIVE AQUS water reclamation systems (Worth $189 each)! This awesome system is a simple DIY setup that takes your bathroom’s sink water and recycles it for flushing in your toilet – and it could save you up to 6,000 gallons of water each year. It’s easy to enter – just follow the steps below and tell us your top tip for conserving water!

TO ENTER THIS GIVEAWAY:

1. SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTER HERE > We’ll be announcing the winners in our weekly newsletter, so if you want to find out who won, you’ll need to receive it!

2. BECOME A FAN OF INHABITAT ON FACEBOOK Just visit our page and click on the “Like” button at the top.

3. LEAVE A COMMENT BELOW and tell us your top tip for conserving water. The deadline for this fabulous giveaway is Wednesday, September 28th. We’ll pick the 5 comments we like best and announce the winners in our September 29th newsletter, so make sure you’re signed up!

Read the rest of GIVEAWAY: Enter to Win a Sloan AQUS Grey Water Toilet System That Recycles Your Sink Water (Worth $189)!

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Post tags: AQUS by Sloan, AQUS grey water, clean water, eco watre, environmental water technology, free stuff, giveaways, green water, grey water for toilet, Grey water reclimation, grey water system, grey water use, home grey water, how to use grey water, illegel grey water, legal grey water, reclaiming domestic water, Sloan Valve Company Aqus, Sloan water saving, water bill, water reclamation for the home, water reclimation for the home, water reuse, water saving device, win this

Read the rest of Tidewater Virginia’s Unit 6 Unplugged Solar Decathlon House Embraces History and Tradition

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Post tags: "energy efficiency", "solar energy", "sustainable architecture", 2011 solar decathlon, Architecture, Eco Architecture, eco building, eco design, energy efficient, green architecture, Green Building, green design, Hampton University, Old Dominion University, Recycled Materials, renewable energy, self sufficiency, self-sufficient, self-sustaining, Solar Decathlon, Solar Power, sustainable design, Sustainable Materials, Team Tidewater Virginia, Team Virginia, tidewater virginia

Read the rest of Renovated ‘Ship in a Bottle’ Home Springs Up in San Francisco’s Noe Valley

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Post tags: aia, aia home tours, american institute of architects, architecture and the city, cedar planks, Daylighting, disappearing window, eco furniture, eco house, glass walls, green architecture, green design, green living, green renovation, Kennerly Architecture and Planning, modern, natural light, noe valley, noe vista, Recycled Materials, red cedar, rope, san francisco living home, sauna, skylights, sustainable design, yacht

San Francisco’s EcoCenter is the first commercial building in the city to be 100 percent off the grid, and Inhabitat recently toured it as part of this year’s Architecture and the City Festival. Even in the city with more LEED-certified buildings per capita than any other, converting a polluted swath of landfill near the naval shipyard superfund site into a passive, off-grid, über-green environmental justice education center wasn’t easy: In fact, it took 10 years to get it done.

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Post tags: brownfields, ecocenter, heron's head park, landfill, LEJ, Literacy for Environmental Justice, Living Classroom, Toby Long, toby long design

Read the rest of Diller Scofidio + Renfro Unveil Plans for the Day Lit Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archives

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Post tags: "leed", art museum, BAM/PFA, berkeley, berkeley art museum, California, Daylighting, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, film archives, leed silver, pacific film archives

We often ignore water fountains, passing them up for sweet bottled beverages packed into vending machines. So to give an old design some much needed love and attention, Poletic Studio has created the Tropism Well, a public drinking fountain that gently fills your glass or bottle with life giving H2O. Watch a video of it in action after the jump!

Read the rest of Generous Water Fountain Gently Fills Your Bottle to the Brim

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Post tags: art installation, Creative Review, Drinking Fountain, Poietic Studio, public art, public space, Tropism Well, Water Fountain, water issues

We are eagerly awaiting the 2011 A Better World by Design conference coming up this weekend, Sept. 30 – Oct. 2, on the campuses of the Rhode Island School of Design and Brown University. We have covered this energetic, exclusively student-run conference on socially conscious design in the past, and will be attending once again to bring you the highlights. If you’re as excited as we are, tickets are still available with an 80% student discount!

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Post tags: "energy efficiency", "sustainable architecture", a better world by design, abwxd, better world by design, better world challenge, brown university, cannon design, common, continuum, design for america, Disaster Relief, eco design, elizabeth johansen, emergency shelter, green architecture, Green Building, green design, john fetterman, Kate Stohr, makeshift magazine, peter haas, quadror shelter, reboot, rhode island school of design, risd, rob schuham, shelter, steven bingler, Sustainable Building, sustainable design, trung le, wolfgang feist

One of the oddest quirks in our homes is that we flush toilets with water good enough for drinking — and toilets consume on average 40% of a household’s water use. To address this issue Sloan Valve Company has been hard at work perfecting the AQUS water reclamation system, which takes your bathroom’s sink water and recycles it for flushing in your toilet. As a do-it-yourself project the kit takes about 1 hour to install and promises to save up to 6,000 gallons each year. Other than perhaps saving water in a bucket, the Aqus provides the simplest and most effective solution to reducing our water footprint — and it has garnered a lot of attention for its innovative design.

Read the rest of Sloan’s Innovative AQUS Grey Water Toilet System Recycles Your Sink Water

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Post tags: AQUS by Sloan, AQUS grey water, clean water, eco watre, environmental water technology, green water, grey water for toilet, Grey water reclimation, grey water system, grey water use, home grey water, how to use grey water, illegel grey water, legal grey water, reclaiming domestic water, Sloan Valve Company Aqus, Sloan water saving, water bill, water reclimation for the home, water reuse, water saving device

Trying to fix a bike can be a daunting task. After dealing with bolts, tubes, screws, tires, and wrenches it’s not unlikely that your attempt to change a chain has left you with 50 piled up parts. For those you who find yourselves as broken down as your bike when it comes to seemingly simple repairs, Jose Rivera‘s “Ice Cream Bike” offers a simplified construction that leaves repair roadblocks in the dust.

Read the rest of Jose Rivera’s Ice Cream Bike Turns Recycled Parts Into a Delectable Ride

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Post tags: easy bike repair bike, eco friendly bikes, green bikes, ice cream bike, jose rivera, recycled bikes, recycled steel, recycled steel bike

Read the rest of OS+A’s Campus International School is Topped With a Honeycomb Green Roof

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Post tags: Campus International School, Cleveland State University, eco design, green design, honeycomb design, Organic SCapes and Architecture, OS+A, sustainable design

The Census Bureau just released a report on the commuting behavior of Americans in 2009. The commuting report is part of the American Community Survey, and it details the average commute time for Americans along with their mode of transportation. Although seven-tenths of Americans living in metro areas reside within 3/4 of a mile of public transit, only 4.9 percent of workers regularly took mass transit to work in 2009. Nine of the ten cities on this list have less than 15% of the population commuting on mass transit. If those are our highest statistics, perhaps Americans need a bit of a mass transit education along with additional infrastructure support.

Read the rest of US Census Reveals the Top 10 US Cities for Mass Transit Commuting

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Post tags: best mass transit cities, best public transport, best public transportation, boston, chicago, Honolulu, infrastructure, mass transit, most efficient mass transit, most efficient public transportation, New York., philadelphia, public transportation, San Francisco, Seattle, Washington DC

Commissioned for Bloomberg Philanthropy by art and design agency Arts Co, ‘Waste Not, Want It’ is a series of specially commissioned art and design projects made almost entirely out of Bloomberg’s waste and presented as part of the 2011 London Design Festival. Design studio Loop.pH’s ‘Faraday Curtain’ is made from hundreds of meters of discarded electrical cable, stripped of its inner core and conductive shielding and re-threaded into an intricately laced textile mesh. The resultant ephemeral textile enclosure has a soft and sheer surface that shields the interior space from electromagnetic fields.

+ Loop.pH

The article above was submitted to us by an Inhabitat reader. Want to see your story on Inhabitat? Send us a tip by following this link. Remember to follow our instructions carefully to boost your chances of being chosen for publishing!

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Post tags: arts co, bloomberg philanthropy, bloomberg waste, eco-art, environmental art, faraday curtain, green design, lacemaking, LOOP.PH, recycled electrical cables, Recycled Materials, sustainable design, waste not want not

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Post tags: eco design, Fuseproject, green transportation, Local Bike, reen design, sustainable design, Yves Béhar

Read the rest of The Vertical Zoo: A Wild Greenery Wrapped Tower That Provides Refuge for Animalia

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Post tags: "sustainable architecture", animal sanctuary, buba arquitectos, eco design, eco zoo, green architecture, Green Building, green design, Sustainable Building, sustainable design, vertical farm, vertical garden, vertical zoo, zoo

‘Church Forest’ is a new documentary project featuring the work of legendary scientist Meg Lowman, and the unseen world of tree canopies set within the endangered treetops of Ethiopia. To date, 95% of Ethiopia’s forest have been eradicated because of deforestation, but remarkably tiny pockets of untouched forests remain and at their centers lie churches. These vestiges of forest have been preserved due in part to church parishioners who have placed symbolic and religious significance on the land. It is in these remaining oases that the ‘Church Forest’ documentary team will climb to the treetops and capture Lowman and her researchers studying the trees and the sacred cultural and environmental practices to go on within. Lowman, known as the mother of canopy research, is the leading treetop canopy scientist. Through decades of work, she has managed to design radical new ways of exploring and sustaining treetops – including hot-air balloons and walkways. Filming for this project is set to begin Janurary 2012, but they still need your help to get produced! To support their efforts and to learn more about this stellar project, visit their Kickstarter page here.

+ Church Forest

The article above was submitted to us by an Inhabitat reader. Want to see your story on Inhabitat? Send us a tip by following this link. Remember to follow our instructions carefully to boost your chances of being chosen for publishing!

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Post tags: canopy research, Church Forest, deforestation, ethiopia tree canopies, kickstarter, Meg Lowman, tree architecture, Tree Bridges, tree canopies, tree churches, tree living, treehouse, treetop architecture, treetop churches, treetop communities, treetop villages

Read the rest of Mecanoo Architecten Tops Out Its Green-Roofed Amsterdam University College

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Post tags: "sustainable architecture", Amsterdam, amsterdam university college, college, Daylighting, eco college, eco design, green architecture, Green Building, green design, green roof, mecanoo, Mecanoo Architecten, sedum, sedum roof, Sustainable Building, sustainable design

Yesterday, the world said goodbye to one of its most fearless environmental voices – Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai. Decades ahead of her time, the brilliant Kenyan author and environmental activist founded the Green Belt Movement that has since planted millions of trees. She stood up for the environment long before it was fashionable to do so, and steadfastly challenged her own corrupt government when there was no one to protect her from dangerous consequences. In 2004, Wangari Maathai was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts to promote “a holistic approach to sustainable development” that focused on the interrelatedness of social injustice and environmental degradation. She was the first African woman to receive that prize, a source of enormous pride for women everywhere.

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Post tags: cancer, corruption, eco design, Environmental activist, green design, kenya, new york times, Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Plant trees, Social Justice, sustainable design, The Green Belt Movement, Wangari Maathai

Monumental news this morning – the Environmental Defense Fund’s 2011 Climate Corps fellows have identified a whopping $650 million in energy savings for companies like McDonald’s, Target and others across the US. The Corps matches specially-trained MBA and MPA students with organizations, universities and cities to help them identify ways to cut energy use and save money. This summer 96 fellows and organizations were a part of the program and the savings were huge: 600 million kilowatt hours of electricity and 27 million therms of natural gas annually. These reductions will be directly responsible for removing 440,000 metric tons of annual CO2 emissions from the atmosphere — the same reduction as taking 87,000 vehicles off the road.

Read the rest of Students Help McDonald’s, Target, Dunkin’ Donuts, Others Save $650 Million on Energy Costs

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Post tags: climate corps, corporate energy savings, dunkin donuts, edf climate corps, edf corporate partnership, Energy Savings, Environmental Defense Fund, huge energy savings, mcdonalds, Target

Read the rest of Bliss House: 6 Men Build 2 Prefab Houses in Just 6 Days in North London!

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Post tags: bliss, bliss house, bliss spaces, eco design, eco friendly wood, eco-friendly materials, engineered wood, green architecture, Green Building, green design, kebony, London, london house, precision built, Prefab, prefab house, Sustainable Building, sustainable design