Last year at the 2007 IDEA awards we began to see the influence of the sustainable design movement within the design elite. Sponsored by BusinessWeek and the Industrial Designers Society of America (now international) the IDEA’s have become probably the most prestigious and thought after awards, especially in the industrial design field.
It’s no secret that with the recent rise of green design�, that includes everything from a London skip hire company that is eco friendly to fair trade clothes, environmental impact has become more relevant in the design industry, but it wasn’t until 2006, just two years ago that the society finally decided to include an eco-design category in their annual conference and award event. This might have been influenced by the strong wake up call from the keynote speaker at the 2005 IDSA conference, William McDonough.
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Because of its recognized “sustainable” characteristics, bamboo has become very popular in recent years as the material of choice for the eco-product and high end furniture and flooring industries. The fact is that in the west, we are just beginning to uncover the world of possibilities that this almost miraculous plant has to offer. Bamboo is a highly renewable resource and when combined with innovative technologies and processes, it’s one of the most useful, versatile and probably the most sustainable building material available today. To top it all out, it’s beautifully!
In certain applications, bamboo provides structural characteristics that outperform even the most technologically advanced industrial building materials, it has greater compressive strength than concrete and about the same strength-to-weight ratio of steel in tension.
It takes an acre of trees to build the average American home but because of its dense and rapid growth, only the square footage of that same house to build it out of bamboo. It can be harvested every year after only 5-7 years of growth compared to 20-50 years for other woods. Bamboo’s rapid regeneration allows it to be cut without killing the plant. Read the rest of this entry »
As the global warming phenomenon pours attention on the booming carbon trading market (over $30 billion in allowances last year), water has fallen to the curb. Clean water is by far the most basic requirement for sustaining human life and can actually be considered a prerequisite for peace especially in developing countries.
We are all aware of the giant business that is bottled water but how much is a pure source of natural water worth today in the open market? How much will it be worth fifty years from now, more than gold? The soon to begin construction Pascua Lama project at the foothills of the majestic Andean Mountains is evidence that when compared to gold, the value of water even an almost eternal source of the purest in the world is almost negligible.
The Pascua Lama project by the Barrick Corporation consists of literally moving glaciers around to get to the gold and silver underneath and then supposedly putting them back. I say supposedly because it has never been done before and it’s a daunting undertaking to say the least. These glaciers make up the Cuenca Hidrografica de Huasco, a source of pure glacial water in the northern border of Chile (my beloved country of origin) and Argentina which feeds more than 20 rivers that lead to the agricultural region below.
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