Tag:

zero waste

Redefining an Old Commercial Building – 435 Indio

Take one outdated commercial building in Sunnyvale, California, one crack engineering and architecture team, some top Silicon Valley technologies, and one audacious design challenge. The result? 435 Indio. A building transformed from nondescript 70s tilt up to sleek, modern, drool-worthy work space for any Bay Area startup.

Custom designed skylights bring in an abundance of natural light, complimented by Lunera LED lights and Enlighted lighting sensors. View glass automatically adjusts to heat and glare. Indoor air quality is optimized though operable windows and Big Ass fans.

John Picard, President & CEO, John Picard and Associates: “What’s amazing is the technologies all came from this area, are the drivers for the design, and the engineering drivers that are bringing the potential for the productivity.”

Interface carpets made from reclaimed fishing nets, zero waste bathrooms from Dyson, a fabric ceiling for acoustics and polished concrete floors for natural insulation. Last but not least, the net zero energy building is 100% powered by solar.

Gary Dillabough, Managing Partner at the Westly Group: “We designed this to have an exceptional tenant who can do something extraordinary in the world and this becomes the place they do that in.”

09/15/2014 0 comment

Recycling & Waste Mgmt.Renewable Energy

Solar Panel Recycling: Let’s Close The Loop

written by Matt Ryder-Smith

At this year’s West Coast Green conference in San Francisco, Bill McDonough gave a rousing call–to-action keynote speech in which he proclaimed that we do not have an energy problem, but what we do have is a materials problem. He went on to say that the carbon in the environment is in the wrong place. Instead of leaving it in the ground, we have mined

10/08/2010 3 comments

Renewable Energy

Wal-Mart Goes Green: The World’s First Quintuple Play

written by CleanTechies.com Contributor

Watching baseball’s first quadruple play was strange. Seeing Wal-Mart go green is stranger still.

First the baseball: The scene was a game of T-Ball, where everyone bats every inning, regardless of the number of outs.

The bases were loaded when a line drive ended up in the glove of the pitcher. While he wondered how it got there, all the runners took off without tagging up. The pitcher ran to third, then second, then first.

We kept counting the number of outs and they did not add up. First in our heads: That doesn’t make sense. Then on our hand: That’s crazy. Then our other hand: It kept adding up to four outs.

It took us a while to believe what we saw right in front of us.

And now Wal-Mart, the original Black Hat, is going green. Or better said, sustainable. Let that sink in because it is true. Big time.

So much so that Treehugger.com says It “could end up being one of the biggest motivators to make truly ‘green’ products ever.”

As in history of the world.

Wal-Mart has made believers out of not just the biggest environmental organizations in the world — like the Environmental Defense Fund and the World Wildlife Federation — but also Wal-Mart’s suppliers.

06/14/2010 6 comments