Green Underfoot

This post is dedicated to our old friend, the carpet. Carpet is the number-one floor covering in the United States for several reasons: comfort, ease of purchase, affordability. Unfortunately, it's also pretty nasty, environmentally speaking.

Carpets are either woven or tufted, in which case they are tied and glued to a backing. With the exception of those made of wool, almost all carpets are made of petroleum-based fabric. Dalton, Georgia, the carpet capital of the U.S., produces millions of gallons of wastewater annually from the chemical-intensive processes of manufacturing and dyeing petroleum-based carpet fabric. In addition, the adhesives used to glue the fibers together contain benzene and toluene, toxic VOCs that outgas into the environment, especially when the carpet is new.

In order to avoid some of these environmental pitfalls, consider purchasing wool carpet, which uses far fewer chemicals in the manufacturing process. The Carpet and Rug Institute's "Green Label Plus" standards can help you find a carpet with low-VOC adhesives, thus avoiding chemical offgasing. Some carpet pads are made of wool or recycled materials that don't require adhesives, so look around before buying.

Other carpet drawbacks include the collection of mold, mites, and environmental toxins. Large area rugs made from natural fibers can be shaken and vacuumed on both sides, which helps eliminate some of the trapped particles.

Fortunately, there are a number of sources of enviro-friendly carpets. Classic Rug Collection offers hemp rugs dyed with vegetable dye. Zaki Oriental Rugs specializes in hand-spun, vegetable-dyed, wool rugs. The water used in the dyeing process for Tufenkian's rugs passes through a purification plant and is reused.

Of course, buying an antique rug falls under the category of reuse, which is always a good option for the environment. Apadana, Metropolitan Carpet, and Markarian are three good local sources for antique rugs.

Black Balloons Energy Saving Campaign

This is one of the most compelling messages for decreasing energy use in the home that I've seen. Hope you like it.

Insulate with Paint

I wanted to share a product that, with all the talk here about improving the energy efficiency of your home through better insulation, I figured some of you might be interested in. This product, produced by Hy-Tech and endorsed by NASA, can be added to any paint to give it insulating properties: it's a fine, white powder blend of high-strength ceramic microspheres, each sphere around the size of a grain of flour. The spheres are hollow and the gas has been removed from the space inside, resulting in a vacuum. The result, in effect, is a miniature thermos bottle: a microscopic hollow vacuum sphere that resists thermal conductivity and reduces the transfer of sound. The resulting layer of paint has both is both a heat and sound insulator. Pretty cool!

Some fringe benefits, as listed on the product website, include:

Hard ceramics provide longer lasting durability which means you paint less often.

Exceptional stain and scrub resistance

Ceramics are non-toxic and fire resistant.

Can be used on interior or exterior surfaces


The hard, smooth surface resists corrosion, abrasion, mold and mildew

Photovoltaics: Getting Cheaper

If you thought photovoltaic (PV) panels were too expensive, start making room on your roof, because according to latest news from the Worldwatch and Prometheus Institutes, things are about to change.

Global production of solar PV cells, which turn sunlight into electricity, has risen sixfold since 2000 and grew 41 percent in 2006 alone. Although grid-connected solar capacity still provides less than 1 percent of the world’s electricity, it increased nearly 50 percent in 2006, to 5,000 megawatts, propelled by booming markets in Germany and Japan.

This dramatic growth has actually been constrained by a shortage of manufacturing capacity for purified polysilicon, but that situation will soon be reversed as more than a dozen companies in Europe, China, Japan, and the United States bring on unprecedented new levels of production capacity. In 2006, for the first time, more than half the world’s polysilicon was used to produce solar PV cells. Combined with technology advances, the increase in polysilicon supply is projected to bring costs down by more than 40 percent in the next three years.

The biggest surprise in 2006 was the dramatic growth in PV production in China. Last year, China passed the United States, which first developed modern solar cell technology at Bell Labs in New Jersey in the 1950s, to become the world’s third largest producer of the cells behind Germany and Japan.

China’s leading PV manufacturer, Suntech Power, climbed from the world’s eighth largest producer in 2005 to fourth in 2006. Experts believe that China, with its growing need for energy, large work force, and strong industrial base, could drive dramatic reductions in PV prices in the next few years, helping to make solar competitive with conventional power even without subsidies.

“To say that Chinese PV producers plan to expand production rapidly in the year ahead would be an understatement,” says Travis Bradford, president of the Prometheus Institute. “They have raised billions from international IPOs to build capacity and increase scale with the goal of driving down costs.”

Exciting news! The future's looking brighter for solar power!