It's finally happened. The green building movement now has a retailer to call its own, Treehouse.
Treehouse opened last week in Austin, TX and is the country's first home improvement center that will sell only sustainable and healthy-living products.
TreeHouse will carry a wide range of carefully selected merchandise including paint, floor and wall coverings, kitchen and bathroom fixtures, cleaning supplies,storage and organization options, solar power products plus a wide range of smart-home technology solutions that will allow customers to run their houses or businesses more efficiently.
We haven't used a phone book in years but obviously some people still do as we receive them on our doorstep every six months or so. It's one of the largest wastes of paper if you don't recycle them which hopefully your community offers recycling. You can also call your local phone company and have them remove you from their list of people to receive the phone book.
But if you've got a creative itch, the phone book has enough paper to help you scratch it.
Our friends at DIY Life have compiled some unique projects that simply reuse the parts of a phone book in creative ways which proves that recycling can be fun.
Recycle phonebooks by... Decoupaging a lamp shade.
This DIYer gave her lampshade a unique, vintage look in only a few hours. We love how the light filters through the used-to-be-part-of-a-phonebook shade. Think you could take on this project?
We recently returned from a few days in Japan visiting Tokyo, Kyoto and few towns in between. As steeped in tradition Japan is, they are also very progressive on some fronts and one of them is recycling.
There must be a national recycling program and law that states all materials be disposed of according to their type. As a small country with limited resources and landfill space, its apparent they are making the most of their trash as you will not see a typical open mouth garbage can anywhere.
Here's a brief photo gallery of some recycling bins we saw everywhere in Japan which are typically sorted by combustibles (paper products), non-combustibles (plastic) and glass. These are well identified with imagery as well as English and Japanese.
During our time in Chicago for the Craftsman Experience Holiday Extravaganza, we had the pleasure to stay at the Hotel Felix in downtown Chicago. The Hotel Felix is Chicago's first hotel designed to meet Silver LEED certification. During construction they focused on using organic materials and renewable resources.
Location Location Location
The boutique hotel is conveniently located at State and Clark which is in walking distance of all the attractions and shopping that the Loop and River North neighborhood provide. A big plus for us is the Whole Foods located a block away.
As an eco-friendly hotel that boldly states it's LEED qualifications, we took a skeptic stance considering how trendy it's become to claim LEED certification. But the Hotel Felix easily changed our mind. Without shoving it in your face, we were aware at every turn that the Hotel Felix was focused on saving energy and creating a sustainable environment.
