Rainwater Tanks

Rainwater is a valuable natural resource that can be collected for use around the home. With water restrictions in place in many areas, more homeowners are using rainwater to keep their gardens green, wash the car and for other uses around the house. Did you know?A rainwater tank can save up to 100,000 litres of … Read more

PATH – Concept Home Principles

The PATH Concept Home uses innovative building technologies to enhance a home’s flexibility and make it more efficient to build and maintain. Six principles create the foundation for incorporating innovative systems into the Concept Home. PATH has prepared a series of reports which explore technologies and systems that support each principle. Principle #1: Flexible Floor … Read more

Incorporating Green Design Elements

Sustainable affordable housing is also playing a strong role in breathing new life into economically challenged neighborhoods. William Stein, AIA, LEED, principal of New York-based Dattner Architects, presented an affordable housing development located in the East New York neighborhood of Brooklyn, N.Y., that his firm designed. The benefits that the Atlantic Avenue Apartments (pictured below) … Read more

Yuppie Chow?

Organic food, taken over by big business, has become an assembly-line product marketed as yuppie chow for the privileged, a Canadian researcher says.Multinational food-processing giants such as ConAgra Foods, Cargill, Kraft Foods, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo now own most organic brands, Irena Knezevic of Toronto’s York University said in advance of a presentation she will make … Read more

A Good Thing?

In developed nations, factory farms have expanded rapidly since their origins in the early 20th Century. So much so that in the U.S. only 3% of farms now generate an astonishing 62% of that nation’s agricultural output! In fact, they have so consolidated the agricultural sector that only five food retailers (Kroger, Albertson’s, Wal-Mart, Safeway … Read more

Starvation In Malawi

The imposed compulsion to spend the attractive food aid packages on American produce is ensuring handsome rewards for farmers in Iowa and Wyoming with an additional boon for American shipping: it has begun to spell doom for indigenous African farmers. In addition there is evidence that some of the ‘in kind’ donation being sent to … Read more