Green Design Series Issue 1

You can join the Green revolution! How, and How can we help? By stimulating converstions between designers while facilitating the flow of information back and forth. To start, we must ask the quesiton, "what is Green Design?" The answer is one of being thoughtful and raising more questions. The answer is a change of mindset and toolset. Through this series of articles we hope to illuminate the mindset and stimulate discussions and thoughts about how to leave a smaller footprint on this earth. We at the same time want to help develope a new toolset that designers and suppliers can use to carry out fanstically beautiful as well as highly functional green designs. The mindset will be one that encourages new questions and new answers, the toolset will include resources for learning about green design, it will include material sources and where to find materials, it will include resources on how to dispose of old materials so that they complete their useful lifecycle. For those of you hardcore designers that are ready to jump right in, there is a Green + Design Conference and Expo on October 1 and 2nd in Atlanta, Georgia at the Hyatt. You can click the link for more information.For the rest of us who want to explore this great project a little at a time, please join me for this and future article and discussionsThrough this series of articles we will include resources that you can use today to talk to your client about Green Design and where to find answers when they ask questions, and they will ask some tough questions. Most of the basic questions are well, basic and that is a great place to start. Most people have heard the phrase, "Reduce, reuse, and recycle." After that, the questions becomes, "well, how does that apply to design?" In our case it is even more specific, how does this apply to kitchen design? Lets take a closer look at reduce. It can mean a lot of things. The first that comes to mind is packaging. (Probably because I hate purchasing veggetables in the grocery store packed in plastic. We take one of natures most beautifully naturally packaged foods and wrap it in something that is made from crude oil.) So, do our cabinets come packaged in plastic and cardboard that ends up in the landfill? Or do they come blanket wrapped? Another question would be do they come from a local source who builds with local materials or are tehy produced in China or Mexico with lumber that is harvested in rainforests and shipped across oceans using tons of oil to get there only to be worked on in factories that use a ton of energy, and then shipped back across the ocean to a dock and across the country in a semi. You get the idea. Buy locally, or as locally as you can to reduce transportation costs. Speak to your supplier about packaging materials so they are easy to unpackage and be sure the packaging can be reused. ( how about asking them to pick up the cardboard boxes to reuse. It can save them money and reduce your landed costs. Before we get off the topic of reuse, there is one more consideration I think is worthy of thinking about, product design. Some of us design the actual products ( as opposed to designing the kitchen, we design the cabinet construction. ) Here too we need to think about the idea of not over designing. We can design very high quality products using less material. Re-Use. This one is easy in our market ( Connecticut and New York.) we have wonderful charity companies that will come to a clients home and remove the old cabinetry, appliances and countertops. They sell them for re-use in other projects or use them for Habitat homes, etc, and the best part is that our clients get a prety nice tax deduction for their donation. This system also saves demolition cost too. Two of the companies in our area are Restore ( a Habitat for Humanity program) and Green Demolition.Recycle- It is better to recycle than to throw items in our landfills. One obvious reason is as global warming increases and carbon in our atmoshere increases, we are using more and more trees to produce paper. Recycling paper is so easy to do there is little reason not to. Another great resource for finding recycling places for all kinds of materials is the Northeast Recycling Council.Today we took a look at some very basic ideas on the design and implementation side of executing a design. The same principals apply to the way our clients will use their new kitchens. We are called as appostles to talk to them about these ideas as well as suggesting that they too may want to buy food with less packaging and to plan for recycling ( I am amazed in out area how many people pay 5 cents per soda can, bottle and beer can and still just dump them on the side of the road or in the garbage.) To plan to install a water filter instead of buying bottled water ( it probably comes from a better water source anyway.) I have to admit, I have purchased a LOT of Poland Springs bottles - When I really think about having that water pumped to a truck, driven to a bottling plant, shipped to the warehouse then the store, then driven to my home and placed in the refrigerator...WOW that is a lot of energy. Yes, it is convient, no? Is it really easier than taking a glass out of my cabinet and filling it from my Water filter? As the popularity of the Green design has taken flight, the profitability has also risen. A win/win for everyone including designer, producers, installers, clients and most importantly, our children and the future of our planet.Please stay come back often for even more ideas or better yet, subscribe to the RSS feed, or ATOM feed and these ideas will be delivered right to you're desktop.Richard Allan Marti Jr.