neoli

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The Great FSC SFI Debate: A Primer (PART TWO)

On and off, too, SFI has variously dealt in greenwashing (ad campaigns here, letter of appeals there, more PR’s over there). And because apparently mere peaceable wooing wasn’t enough, SFI has resorted to launching smear attacks on FSC. And the…

neoli31 August 2012

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The Great FSC SFI Debate: A Primer

So the war in the woods rages on. For the average folk, this war in the woods might conjure images of those anthropomorphic trees in the Lord of the Rings trilogy—the Ents—the ones that got so enraged because of all…

neoli29 August 2012

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Eco-friendly Paint: Why You Should Paint Green

We’ve had it with toxic paints. Ever since lead got banned from household paints in 1978, we’ve always thought that it’d be a whole lot safer to breathe the air in our homes from then on. Then we caught whiff…

neoli23 August 2012

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China Smart Grid Wises Up On Energy Use

For the next four years, all eyes are on China as it embarks on its most ambitious project to date: the construction of a massive infrastructure meant to wire up the entire country in a smart grid. This radical switch…

neoli19 August 2012

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Notes about Dongtan Eco-city

I first read about Dongtan in Wired magazine back in 2007. The article, Pop-Up Cities, detailed the ambitious plans for the world’s first eco-city eco-city to be built from scratch on the marshy island of Chongming somewhere in China. It all…

neoli12 August 2012

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Eco-Wrapping: Sustainable, Green Packaging

There are very real reasons why we haven’t totally eliminated packaging from products. Even if we aim for zero packaging or green packaging and declare less is more, there are some products that just need to be wrapped up in one…

neoli9 August 2012

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LEED Milestones: A Timeline

USGBC’s press release dated July 26, 2012 proudly declares that “the total footprint of commercial projects certified under its LEED green building program surpassed two billion square feet.” No doubt that’s a lot of green, clean space, and so we…

neoli31 July 2012

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What You’ve Always Wanted to Know About Indoor Air Quality But Were Afraid to Ask Your LEED Contractor

You’ve probably heard of the EPA warning that indoor air is worse than outdoors—sometimes as much as (exhale slowly) five times more toxic. They’re not kidding. Outdoors, the air is free to circulate, oxygen abounds, pollutants disperse, and nature generally takes it…

neoli25 July 2012

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And Now… The Green Parking Lot

When we think of parking lots, we think of drab, boring, even ugly spaces permanently set in cement. The fate of parking lots is to act as an intermediary: a place where we temporarily leave our cars so we can…

neoli23 July 2012

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Merging Superstition and Science in Hong Kong’s Urban Planning

Hong Kong certainly didn’t become one of the world’s greats if not for its forward-thinking policies, especially when it comes to embracing new technologies in urban planning. Sure, once in a while the traditionally ingrained practice of feng shui still…

neoli16 July 2012