unMonastery :: unMonastery LEED Know we're back! We know. "In The Know" took a several week long — unannounced — hiatus. Maggie and I apologize, but we have been working on a number of international efforts that have kept us occupied! U.S. Washington, D.C. — (April 10, 2014) — The U.S. 3 billion square feet — but who's counting? At USGBC, we've had no shortage of notable milestones of late. LEED committee self-nominations close on April 10 A reminder for those interested in working with volunteer experts in the development and maintenance of the LEED rating system: The current LEED Committee Call for Volunteers is scheduled to close on Thursday, April 10th at 5:00 pm PST. Resource-efficient Europe Brussels, 26 January 2011 Resource-efficient Europe A. More resource efficiency helps European businesses Increased resource efficiency can offer competitive benefits to industry. Reduced dependency on raw materials and lower CO2 emissions In the cement industry, significant costs arise from high levels of costed CO2 emissions (60% of which result from the decomposition of raw material and limestone) and high energy costs. Fast pay back The 'Money Back through the Window' project in Hungary examined 262 environmentally beneficial measures from 56 different companies. Cutting input costs Potential input savings to UK firms from unexploited resource efficiency savings with a pay-back period of less than one year were estimated at 6.4 billion euro per year in 2006, with further research indicating that savings from investment with a longer pay back period would be four times greater from, amongst others, actions improving industrial processes and light-weighting. R&D costs B. C. Japan China
Cradle-to-Cradle Design and the Principles of Green Design One of the most influential recent books on design and environmentalism.” —Alice Rawsthorn, The New York Times [McDonough] point[s] to a path out of the seemingly un-winnable trench war between conservation and commerce.” —James Surowiecki, The New Yorker A rare example of the ‘inspirational’ book that actually is.” —Steven Poole, The Guardian [McDonough and Braungart’s] ideas are bold, imaginative, and deserving of serious attention.” —Ben Ehrenreich, Mother Jones [A] clear, accessible manifesto . . . —Publishers Weekly A readable, provocative treatise that ‘gets outside the box’ in ahuge way. —Kirkus Reviews For those of us who have a hunger to know what the next great idea will be, this highly readable book captures and challenges the imagination.” —Sarah D. With this book, McDonough and Braungart open our eyes to the way to genuine sustainability by the study of nature and mimicking her ways. —Dr.
Cyberhippietotalism CYBERHIPPIETOTALISM is a theoretical & practical counter-culture platform, committed to establish & promote hackbases: hacker live-in labs-residences, and so enable a full-time hacker lifestyle, focused group work (hackathons), or a temp retreat. (Quitting yr job & cancelling your rent to live as a Nomad Hacker is optional.) What? This is the CHT#1 Lanzarote Hackbase, Canary Islands. 2013/2014[edit] CHT#1.3 is the third, busiest & best season so far. Established in 2011, the place has since become what you might expect from a hackerspace (has a collection of electrojunk & a complex network topology), and has hosted over 100 people so far. Why? We thought it would be a good idea to spend a full winter hacking in a 20°C+, year-long ocean swimming climate. Coming here for an open residency[edit] See THE MANUAL for complete details on CHT#1 Hackbase living code. Support the space[edit] If you think this is a good idea Future spaces[edit] NEW Feb 2014: House in London SW9 with space to crash. Links[edit]
Waste = Food Man is the only creature that produces landfills. Natural resources are being depleted on a rapid scale while production and consumption are rising in nations like China and India. The waste production world wide is enormous and if we do not do anything we will soon have turned all our resources into one big messy landfill. But there is hope. A design and production concept that they call Cradle to Cradle. Large companies like Ford and Nike are working with McDonough and Braungart to change their production facilities and their products. Watch the full documentary now - British Data Centers Get a Green Tax Break -Green Data Center News This week, British data centers got an exemption from carbon taxes. If that sounds like a backwards step in the drive for more efficiency, you need to get the full picture. It’s about balancing business and the environment, and it’s likely to boost the public cloud and colocation industry in the UK. Data centers in Britain are liable to pay two carbon taxes. These are “sin taxes” (aka Pigovian taxes), designed to curb harmful activity by putting up the price - in this case the cost of greenhouse gas emissions. All British businesses pay the Climate Change Levy (CCL), which adds around 0.5p (8c) to the price of each kiloWatt hour (kWh) of electricity. That amounts to 1.5p per kWh, easily ten percent added to electricity costs for a large user. Data center businesses in the UK say these taxes make Britain less attractive for building data centers, which could otherwise help the economy. The government has already accepted this argument in other sectors. Then came the hard part.
William McDonough Open Source Ecology