I’ve decided that I really enjoy reading about innovative, affordable, sustainable housing designs. I have a friend doing a Masters of Design program at Carleton University right now who’s all over these kinds of projects. The real push for this sort of design-for-sustainability seems relatively new, too — even Carleton University has only just started up this MA program this year. Hopefully it will become popular as it’s got so many benefits!

Take this one, for example — it’s made from recycled matierals, fits in a small space, yet is large enough to fit 3 people, a kitchen, a reading room, a living room, bathroom, and hydroponia area! And it kinda looks like the Deathstar. I mean, maybe that’s not a sell for you, but I’m certainly all ears.

These prefab pod homes can be built quite fast and adding an affordable price tag to that, it makes it an option for any socio-economic level and a viable solution for emergency housing, too.

This particular pod was designed by Broisson Architects of Naucalpan, Mexico.

“The shelter could become another option for developing low cost housing with very short building time and could improve the quality of the life for people without access to decent housing,” say the architects.

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Recently I was reading an article in my favourite magazine — Scientific American — about how endangered species are sold on the black market.

Apparently poachers often use official lists of endangered species as a sort of shopping list — clamoring for these extra rare animals for illegal pet collectors and zoos.

A perfect example is of the Javan hawk eagle found in Indonesia on the island of Java in its increasingly scarce forests. These birds went almost entirely unnoticed before they were put on the endangered species list in 1993. Since then they’ve become quite a popular bird — zoos want them, collectors want them, and more than 30 have been spotted in Indonesian markets, illegally, since.

Ironically, by listing animals as endangered and rare we’re making them a target; pets, meals, or worse yet — hunting trophies. It’s everywhere, too. Just this year, in fact, NY State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) got involved in a four-year covert operation to catch poachers and collections red handed in a project called “Operation Shellshock” where they were specifically looking out for illegal trading of lizards, turtles, frogs, and snakes. It was successful in finding more than 400 animals including poisonous snakes and endangered turtles — 26 people were arrested.

So what do we do? Stop listing which animals are endangered?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the matter — leave me a comment!

Yummy sustainability

We know by now that Brad Pitt is crazy about sustainable living and being green friendly, with his deep involvement in rebuilding New Orleans’ lower 9th Ward with his Make It Right foundation and his work on the green hotel project in Dubai.

Well now the hunky actor is involved in a green project in Aviles, Spain that’s looking to boost environmental sustainability. Brad Pitt apparently went to visit the site recently and is excited to support the project.

“Brad is interested in supporting the project, both in cultural and architectural aspects” said the mayor of Avilés, Pilar Varela. “He is interested in building with innovation, novelty, and especially sustainability.”

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The Nature Conservancy has just published a kind of calculator that crunches numbers and calculates percentages to figure out exactly how global warming will affect you.

The ClimateWizard is the first of its kind, giving people access to statistics and information that while having been readily available for a long time, is hard to read and understand. The ClimateWizard looks to facilitate that.

“The state-by-state, country-by-country temperature projections are part of a new tool called Climate Wizard that allows people to use an interactive map to explore past and projected climate change data on their computers,” The Nature Conservancy states in its press release. “With Climate Wizard, users can zoom in on any location to quickly see how temperatures and precipitation may change by month, season or year under different emission scenarios.”

Read more here

Okay, now that I’ve got your attention, I promise not to disappoint. Unless, of course, you were hoping for real monsters. Sorry about that.

This, of course, is an art project. The artist? Joshua Allen Harris. He’s done something incredibly inventive with the air generated by New York city subway vent exhaust — you guessed it — plastic bag monsters!

Want more footage? Click right here!

I stumbled on to pictures of cob houses on TreeHugger this morning and now I can’t stop reading up on them!

I’ve decided now that someday I will have one of these. Imagine that — from not-so-green to wanting to live in a cob house in no time at all. Now that’s progress.

Cob houses, for those who don’t know, have nothing to do with corn. Sure, you might have known that, but when I first started reading about them I figured there had to be some corn cobs in there somewhere. Where else have you heard the word cob? Cob is actually a building material made from clay, sand, straw, water, and earth — very similar to adobe. It’s fireproof, resistant to seismic activity and – best of all – quite inexpensive. This one here, for example (see photo) was build for under $3000!

The houses I’ve found online are absolutely beautiful! (Check out my favourites here, here, and here.)

I’m definitely becoming a fan of sustainable, natural development. Not just because it looks beautiful, but because I really admire the hard work, time, and enthusiasm one needs to use the environment around them to build something so worthwhile!

Apparently former Prime Minister Joe Clark is a self-proclaimed “treehugger”!

He’s heavily involved, these days, in a controversial project in Ghana that’s working to reclaim dead trees from Lake Volta including ebony, teak, mahogany and other beautiful, tropical hardwood where they’ve been preserved by the lack of oxygen in the water. The trees are estimated at being worth $1500 and $2500 each!

So where does the controversy come in? According to the Globe & Mail, the project might be negatively affecting fishing in that area.

Fishermen in the area are worried that the fish will go away if the trees are cut down and taken away. Some fishermen use the trees in their water to hold their traps. But some fishermen say the trees damage their boats.

So, who benefits? That’s the real question. What do you think?

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I love looking at design blogs. Not house design or fashion, but more innovative, conceptual design — architecture, technology, gadgets, that sort of thing.

Today I happened across “The Source Project” by Oliver Craig.

Oliver has come up with a really innovative concept that aims at getting the public to give up commercial bottled water in favour of tap water. How does he plan on doing that? (Hey, even I don’t like tap water.) By offering people tap water… with cool, futuristic and esthetically pleasing style.

The way Oliver Craig envisions doing this is with reusable (and neato futurisicly designed) water bottles that you could purchase and then top up for free at water dispensers around the city. And what’s better? Each time you fill up you earn credits/points that are redeemable at participating stores. Cool concept, right? It looks so sci-fi to me, like something right out of Tank Girl (one of my all-time favourite movies, of course).

Kudos, Oliver!

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In case you haven’t been following the news, there is significant worry behind declines in the bee population, which spawned other problems like bee theft.

Now, as if that weren’t scary enough, we have to worry about new reports from Reuters that huge colonies of bee-eating Asian Hornets are spreading like wildfire through southwestern France!

These hornets are said to be able to wipe out an entire beehive in 48 hours — eep! And since the bee population is already under significant stress right now, that’s a much greater threat.

Let’s get together, folks. There are plenty of calls to action in the Twittersphere and we all know that social networking can be great for working together to get things done. Häagen-Dazs has been working to save bees for a long time now as they recognize that a whopping 1/3 of the world’s food supply is dependant on bees.

They currently have a 7-Day Go Natural Challenge going on that is not only delicious, but extremely helpful — and you could win a year supply of Häagen-Dazs! (I don’t think they know what they’re getting into, I can eat a lot of HD in a YEAR, heh).

Spread the word!

For those who may be fans of Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers… whhhhy? All joking aside — she’s teamed up with Selena Gomez, Demi Lovato and… *squeeeee* the Jonas Brothers (like, OMGZ!!1!) to record Send It On an eco-pop song that’s part of Disney’s new Friends for Change: Project Green.

All of the proceeds from the iTunes sales of this track go to the Worldwide Conservation Fund. Groovy.

While I’m certainly not a big fan of Disney pop stars, I can appreciate the effort to get involved. Assuming they really are getting involved. What do you think — is this green to save the planet or green to bulk the funding?

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