Our Favorite Things Volume 16

by Maggie Flickinger

Cradle to Cradle certified, ECOR’s sustainable building panels and “kit of parts” panel components including Honeycor & Wavecor  are lightweight, and easily assembled. They’re made from agricultural waste – cellulose fiber – with a closed loop water system in manufacturing leading to 99.5% reutilization.  Coming to us from a veteran sustainable materials inventor – Robert Noble – ECOR exemplifies the ethos of making waste great. As an alternative to particleboard, their no-VOC composition with no binders ensures healthy air quality. We can’t wait to get our hands on some samples and see how they could be used for creative interior applications! Currently available in 2’x8′ sheets, 4’x8′ coming soon.

Growing awareness of food & agriculture’s impact on our environment has spawned a new breed of food activists. On the forefront of spreading “all the news that’s fit to eat” is Civil Eats, a daily news feed & editorial venue.  And they have some serious cred in the biz: they were recently named Publication of the Year by the venerated James Beard Foundation.  On this forum for promoting change, you can get inspiration from Oregon Counties voting to ban GE crops (take that, Monsanto!), educate yourself on topics like the impact of buying veggie starts from big boxes, get all riled up about our schools’ food system – and get tools to impact your personal and your community food footprint. Here’s to empowered eating!

The woman owned Portugese architecture studio, blaanc, are concerned with empowerment and sustainability, and wanted to use their design skills to bring about change in disdvantaged communities around the world.  In 2011, they co-founded Adobe for Women, a non-profit that endeavors to teach women to build their own homes using native materials.  But how to interest the polished Western design world in this dusty but honorable intention?  The women decided to tap into the growing market of product for non-profit, creating the Orikomi Lamp.  Precise but bespoke, each lamp is handcrafted by the owners of blaanc and sold via Etsy, benefitting the Adobe for Women’s initial effort to build 20 homes for 20 women in Oaxaca.  $63 – $98, customizable color combinations & sizes available

The canned craft beer craze has finally met it’s environmental match.  The Ecooler, from Denmark, is a 4′ cylindrical cooler that uses the constant cool temperature of the earth to provide you with a refreshing cool brewski.  Remember your grandparents’ root cellar?  The Ecooler models this and other time-tested tools for earth-cooling food, such as the Persian Yakhchal, but adds a hand crank for easy access.  While we certainly wouldn’t recommend digging a hole at your campsite for this (that’s what dunking your beers in the creek is for!), permanently integrating the ECooler into your patio or yard would free up some fridge space for more local vedge.  Plus, at just $350, this ground-source beer cooler gives you a smidge of eco-cred without the high price of it’s big brother, the ground-source heat pump. $350 through June 30th, works best in cooler climates