Product Ecology
Green Your Appliances Your Appliances! Washers and Dryers
At Inhabitat: We’ve enjoyed covering the surging interest in eco-fashion at Inhabitat – particularly new designers experimenting with bio-based materials and organic sources, produced with green and socially conscious methods. But the next time you covet the latest NaturevsFuture corn-based dress or Linda Loudermilk bamboo and silk trousers, consider this: the majority of a garment’s ecological impact occurs during the washing phase. So with that in mind, this week’s installment of our Green Your Appliances series focuses on your washer and dryer. Read More
Green Your Appliances! Refrigerators
Inhabitat: experimenting with conversational media in this series for Bosch. This summer with our new special series we’ll be investigating four different home appliances to learn about efficient energy use, green design, and eco-friendly choices. First stop on our green appliances tour: the refrigerator. Read more: GREEN YOUR APPLIANCES! Refrigerators | Inhabitat – Sustainable Design Innovation, Eco Architecture, Green Building
Read MoreThe New Greener Apple iMAC
At Inhabitat: Apple just launched their newest line of desktop iMacs – slim, graceful, and made from glass and aluminum. “Aluminum is durable and lightweight; recyclers love it,” said Steve Jobs. “Glass is elegant, very scratch resistant and very recyclable.” These are likely the first Apple products designed with ecology and environmental issues in mind, and while the eyecandy iMac may still be a long ways off from serious ecological sustainability, we appreciate Read More
A Debate over ‘Greenwashing’
My debate on Greenwashing the Swiffer picked up on BusinessWeek.com Design and Innovation: Gianfranco’s Zaccai’s column praising the Swiffer as ecofriendly sparked outrage in the blogosphere. Here, he answers questions from one skeptic on “profitable sustainability” “Our voracious and seemingly endless appetite for more, better, bigger, and easier is leaving our planet overrun, and creating an environment that may not be able to sustain human life. As designers, are we Read More
Swiffer Sustainability: The Swiffer Designer Speaks Up
Posted at Inhabitat: Our story “Greenwash Your Floors with the Swiffer” launched an interesting debate on our site about greenwashing and eco design . A commenter named Kim called on us to move beyond criticism and contact the designers directly… If we can educate the product producers about holistic sustainable design systems and principles and give them better solutions, we can effect much more change on a larger scale than we could by simply Read More
A Greener Apple: Steve Jobs Steps Up
In a reversal of Apple’s long-held lipped and secretive stance, yesterday Steve Jobs announced the company’s environmental policies. Responding to the Greenpeace campaign for a greener Apple, Jobs acknowledged a failure to communicate that – actually – Apple is doing quite well on the environmental front. It turns out that Apple had phased out CRTs mid-2006, met RoHS restrictions years before the EU regulations went into effect, and had significantly increased the amount of Read More
Green my Apple, Green my Future
Take a poll on any city street, and you’ll be hard pressed to find anyone who doesn’t admire Apple’s clean, innovative product design. In the past 5 years, with the success of the iPod and power PCs, Mac has come to dominate the high-end consumer electronic space, with their clean, minimalist aesthetic. With such a prestigious design-driven brand, one would think that Apple would be leading the way in the green design revolution. Read More
Walmart Launches Sustainable Design Competition
Walmart knows its own power. Following the release of a packaging sustainability scorecard last year, Walmart has followed up with a call to the consumer electronics industry – go green and prove it. In partnership with The Green Electronics Council’s EPEAT program (which we’ve mentioned before), Walmart will co-develop a standards scorecard that will evaluate products for energy efficiency, durability, upgradability, end-of-life, packaging, and use of innovative (less toxic) materials. Big business saves the world? Read More
Ask Inhabitat: Which Gadgets are Greenest?
Q: Which computer manufacturer is most green? I’m going to be looking to purchasing another desktop in the next month or so, as well as a laptop sometime this quarter, and I’m not sure if Apple is the way I want to go, due to their low rating by Greenpeace. — Read more: ASK INHABITAT: Which gadgets are the greenest? | Inhabitat – Sustainable Design Innovation, Eco Architecture, Green Building
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