And when you are finished reading Green Modern Kits' new casa ti blog , peruse over to Myspace and check out the Green Building Modern Design group that Copeland has also set up there - -you may recognize a few people.
Also, we (well, only me really so far) are finally starting to get our Myspace page going-- we are buildinggreentv -- so come say hi! I promise to change the color sometime soon....
From mkd's newsletter:
Time to break out those gumdrops and some icing glue because ‘tis the season for gingerbread houses! This year, however, why not put a green twist on this great holiday tradition? We’ve created a recipe for creating your very own gingerbread Lotus or, as we like to call it, gingerLotus. Aside from being a fun and delicious holiday activity, we think this project is an excellent way to start acquainting children with the ideas of sustainability and green living. It’s never too early to begin teaching your kids to be concerned for our environment and training them how to respect and protect it through everyday actions. This time of year is such a fun and exciting one for children; what better way to engage them in greening then by integrating it into your family’s holiday traditions. We hope you’ll find the results yummy in every way!
I received this from a friend and it originated at Andropogon Associates, a landscape architecture firm in Philly. It is only a concept house for now but could have huge implications if embraced by bakers in scale.
Water Harvesting: Roof leaders and cisterns are employed to collect and store water for non-potable water needs such as frosting and gingerbread hydration
Reduced Resource Consumption and Waste: Locally made gummy trees and shrubs reduce negative environmental impacts caused by shipping
Sustainable Materials: Baked in hybrid solar oven, all gingerbread is made of organic ingredients. Contains no artificial flavorings, preservatives, or hydrogenated oils
Recycled Materials: Walkway paved with salvaged frosting from roof
Stormwater Management: A bioretention pond collects excess water and recycles wastewater by filtering out all artificial flavorings, preservatives, and transfats
A bit overdue, but I want to take the opportunity to thank everyone who has contributed to our show, our website and shared their thoughts, comments, and encouragement. They are not always favorable (yes we know- Kevin's house is too big!), but most of them are very encouraging and are a big part of what has kept us going here. Seeing a new post or even some new sign-ups in the Share section of our site is the highlight of my day, and hearing that someone has watched our show, wants to learn more about sustainability, and is thinking about changing their businesses or homes as a result is music to our ears and confirms the potential that media can have in changing the way we live our lives and build our communities-- which is why we all got into this in the first place.
We've made some great friends along the way, have seen some amazing innovation and desire to change the world, and have realized just how small this planet is. And for this, I am very thankful.
Well, Green Build flew right by -- it's like it ended before it even started. There was so much going on and so many things to see, I feel like I barely scratched the surface of all that was happening. Enough has been written about the crowds and disorganization -- mostly true-- there were so many people that even McCormick Place, the largest building in the world apparently with 4.2M square feet, couldn't handle it. Official numbers were over 20K (vs 14K last year), and at times it seemed that everyone was trying to do the same thing at the same time. I wish I had taken more photos (and that I'd had a real camera with me), but here are just a few highlights:
Bill Clinton kicked things off with a call for a carbon standard- a true way of measuring our progress, as well as a successor to the Kyoto Protocol that would hold countries accountable -- "It would be a terrible thing if we got three years down the road and they said ‘you didn’t keep score.’” He also argued that a green economy would create enough jobs and growth to offset any losses from fossil fuel industries such as coal mining and oil refining. In Paul Hawken style, he spoke of "the biggest economic opportunity that our country has had to mobilize and democratize economic opportunity since World War II." He also announced that the William J Clinton Foundation has entered into a partnership with GE Real Estate to "green" all of the company's properties and operations which includes $72B of assets globally. Thanks BDC for taking good notes (they have more good coverage, including a joint finding announced at the show from Autodesk and the AIA that it's consumers / clients who are driving green building, not architects or builders.)
Speaking of Paul Hawken, here's a shot of the monitor at Thursday's (packed) plenary which actually wasn't such a highlight. Kevin and I sat through an hour of "speeches" from Green Build sponsors waiting to hear Paul Hawken, and it 
turned out that it was a talk we'd both already heard, based on his new book "Blessed Unrest." It's actually a great talk about the millions of people who are having great/positive and similar conversations around the world in various fragmented groups (and the possibility of coming together), and Hawken is a great speaker. But since we had already heard it and time was precious, we left to check out more of the trade show floor (which was huge-- I only covered a fraction of it).
Here's one of the entrance to the trade show, and another of American Clay's booth -- their products, and Carol (the owner), are always lots of fun.
Here's May Chiu and one of her work pals from Global Green (great smiles aren't they?). She's holding a card that I gave her from green products comparison shopping engine Green2Green which just launched and which we wrote about earlier in the week. It was 
great meeting Whit (who runs green2green) as well as lots of others whom I've previously only met by phone. One of the crazier moments was talking on the phone with friend and advisor Shyam Kannan from RCLCO and trying to find a meeting place. We discovered, I kid you not, that he was sitting down literally 3 feet behind me in the Networking Garden, with another friend of ours Maura McCarthy from Ironwood Equity.
Here are our lunch companions on Wednesday-- Paul Mcrandle from The Green Guide, and Paul Mankiewicz from The Gaia Institute - more great smiles. We had a good time with both of them and were particularly intrigued by some stats and hypotheticals (?) that Paul Mankiewicz had. Get this: if 10% of the 26 square miles of roof tops in NYC used green/living roofs, it could lower temperatures in the city by 2-3 degrees. Here's another: If we used 50% of the waste water in NYC as grey water and evaporated it, it would turn NYC into a tropical rainforest.
Though I don't have any photos of it, Thursday night was a rager at Chicago's Merchandise Mart-- the building itself is quite incredible (the largest LEED building in the world), and there were parties on numerous floors. We went to a nice party that Metropolis Magazine was hosting to kick off this year's NextGen awards and visited our friend and advisor Susan Szenasy and her crew there. Then we met a woman named Geraldina who owns Casa Concept in Houston. What a ball of energy she was-- she must have walked a couple of miles in that building to get stamps from all of the showrooms where there were parties, for a chance to win a free hotel room at next year's Green Build. For her, I think it was just for the challenge and accomplishment.
Next week I'll be in Boston, the site of next year's Green Build, which I can only imagine will be even bigger. I'm not sure where they'll put everyone, but this trend isn't going away any time soon.
Though this post is not about green building per se, think of it in the general category of irrigation. I think you will thank me if it compels you to see the new movie "Sharkwater." Not only is this an extremely important topic, but it's an amazing story and a beautiful movie. Of course I am biased, because our own Tippy Bushkin and Jeremy Stuart were key members of the production team, working closely with director Rob Stewart to tell the story of his international journey to save and demystify sharks.
A series of trailers on the website will give you glimpse.
And if you live in the SF Bay Area, below you will also see an invitation to the San Francisco premier for Tuesday Oct 30-- it is a private screening, but I've been given permission to extend the invitation to you.
And in the meantime, I hope you are enjoying water week at Building Green TV!
SHARKWATER MOVIE PREMIERES IN SAN FRANCISCO
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: sharkwatersf@yahoo.com
Since premiering to great acclaim at the Toronto International Film Festival, SHARKWATER (www.sharkwater.com) has gone on to win 21 awards at film festivals all over the world.
We would like to invite you to attend a private screening and be one of the first to see the film on the west coast and meet director Rob Stewart who will be on-hand for a Q & A session after the screening.
Private Screening
Roxie Theatre, San Francisco
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
VIP @ 6 pm
Screening @ 7:30 pm
For tickets and more information visit:
www.roxie.com
About SHARKWATER:
SHARKWATER takes you into the most shark rich waters of the world, exposing the exploitation and corruption surrounding the world’s shark populations.
In an effort to protect sharks, director Rob Stewart teams up with renegade conservationist Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. Their unbelievable adventure together results in pirate boat rammings, gunboat chases, mafia espionage, corrupt court systems and attempted murder charges, forcing them to flee for their lives.
Through it all, Stewart discovers these magnificent creatures have gone from predator to prey, and how if something is not done to protect them, they could easily be wiped out within a few years due to human greed and the barbaric practice of shark finning.
Here are some facts to consider:
~Shark finning refers to the removal and retention of shark fins and the discard at sea of the carcass. The shark is most often still alive when it is tossed back into the water. Unable to swim, and bleeding to death, the shark suffers a slow death where 95% of the animal is wasted.
~Shark specialists estimate that 100 million sharks are killed for their fins, annually.
~The shark population is down 90% over the last 30 years and experts estimate that within a decade, most species of sharks will be lost because of finning.
SHARKWATER opens nationally on November 2, 2007. Please visit www.sharkwater.com for more information and to sign the petition to save sharks. Most importantly, help support the cause by forwarding this email to all your friends.
Thank you,
Sharkwater staff
In this video, Chronicle energy reporter David R. Baker demonstrates a new online game called "Energyville'' developed for San Ramon oil giant Chevron Corp.
I thought this was a pretty brilliant initiative from Chevron-- sort of a spin on Sim City. The petrol providers are obviously key participants in our evolution, but it's interesting to see them having a dialog with consumers and addressing some of the issues they're facing and how demand ties in.
While letting the BBQ warm up just now, I came across this first post in a weekly series from Sustainable Design Update. It's from a great source, so I'll be watching with anticipation.
10 Tips For Building a Sustainable Home
Tip #1 in the weekly series - Design a Passive Solar Home
Every site on the planet has sunlight. Even if your site is overcast a lot of the time, you should design around where the sun is, where it rises and where it sets.
When I realized several days ago that I hadn't been spending enough time on one of my favorite green trend blogs, Keetsa, I returned to see rumblings about a Keetsa-developed and retailed eco-friendly mattress, made out of "Green Tea Memory Foam!"
Check it out, here's what they say about the mattresses in their Store Preview:
" These are great mattresses. They all come with “Green Tea Memory Foam”, which has Green Tea extracts to keep the mattress smelling fresh and you can benefit from Green Tea extracts. There’s also “NanoSilver” technology which kills bacteria. The best feature is that all the mattresses have cedar oil which keep spiders, moths, and other bugs away.
How are our mattresses eco-friendly?
First, we use 100% recycled steel for the springs and more than 75% of all the mattresses are made from recycled or recycle-able materials. Cool huh?
Another way we plan to cut the carbon footprint is by having all these mattressed compressed into a box. We invented a new way of compressing the spring coils at the factory so it fits in a box.
So we can ship directly from our central warehouses in LA and Chicago instead of having the traditional mattress stores ship to their retail stores first then ships it to the customer via an inefficient mattress truck.
Well, we haven’t officially opened yet, but we have been selling 5 to 11 mattresses a day!
Come by our store and hang out if you need a mattress or want to chat with us about eco-friendly products."
They have several lines, and assuming they are comfortable, prices seem quite reasonable -- one of the lines' queens was $499. Their initial store is South of Market in San Francisco (happens to be just a couple of blocks from my office). I couldn't find an exact opening date, but based on how far along they look in this video it looks imminent. Congrats Keetsa!
If you're reading this you've probably seen or are planning to see this movie anyway, but I wanted to do my part to help spread the word. I was able to see a preview a few weeks ago and I plan to see it again when it opens in San Francisco tomorrow-- I think it will take a couple of viewings for it to really sink in. It's a pretty heavy movie-- no surprise given the subject matter. It begins with a lot of macro-perspective, then gets depressing, then ends with messages of hope. I thought it was very well done. I liked how they layered the different speakers together to follow this progression. The movie features 50+ notable figures in the environmental movement, many of whom are members of the Bioneers group (which seems to have partnered with Dicaprio and the Connors sisters). Here's the trailer-- please check it out and pass it along:
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