Climate Change and Politics

I think most people have seen the movie 'The Day After Tomorrow'.  If you haven't it's a movie about climate change which depicts global warming causing the Earth to undergo a major climate shift.  How realistic the movie actually is I hope we never find out.  I'm referring to it because I think it shows the complicated nature of fighting climate change and politics.   The political parties in our country seem to be on the opposite sides of climate change belief and counteraction.  Making things even more complicated is one of the leading Republican candidates probably has bigger carbon footprint than some 3rd world nations.  So many things have to change in order for us to begin to be effective in this battle against climate change.  If the U.S. political parties are in a winded debate about this topic, I fear it will take decades before effective change can be implemented.  My opinion is that small business innovation and good old capitalism will be the jump start in effectively battling climate change.  But we're going to need more politicians along for the ride...

Repurposed Remodel Ideas

Repurposed isn't just for furniture   Given the right circumstances a home remodel can be loaded with repurposed features and recycled content from the previous design.  We fortunately live in a time when saving things is pretty cool, stylish, and completely custom and unique.  Trends have aligned in the Earth's favor and we hope this blog gives you some ideas during  your next remodel.  Not only is fashionable but it can also save you some serious money by eliminating cost of new goods.  And of course, using repurposed items during a remodel is great for our planet!

So, how can you incorporate repurposed items into your remodel?  Well obviously a lot depends on on the home you are intending to remodel.  The age, style of home, and general construction will depict how much you can repurpose or will want to repurpose.  One of the most stylish items in a home you can repurpose is definitely wood.   Any solid  wood removed from the home (especially beams) could be repurposed into the new design or even used in repurposed furniture for the home.   The reclaimed wood can also be used for custom built ins, closets, and general shelving. Also, you can look for ways to recycle or repurpose any lighting or glass that you take out of the home.   Finally, the cabinetry and vanities in the home can also be repurposed of refurbished making them more modern with alterations and color changes.

I hope these repurposed ideas help you with your next green friendly remodel!

From Dreary to Dreamy: A Small Kitchen Makeover

Small, dark, galley kitchen…these all sound like dirty words when it comes to most people’s “dream” kitchens. Yet just because you started out with a dark, narrow, or small space, does not mean you need to give up. There are multiple ways in which a kitchen can be taken from drab to green and fabulous! 

Through the use of eco-friendly building materials like bamboo your kitchen can be redesigned to be beautiful, inviting, and non-toxic. Custom, earth friendly bamboo cabinets can be custom built for narrow spaces, creating elongated and clean storage for any kitchen. By extending kitchen cabinets to the ceiling is a design that encourages the observer's eye to travel upward, giving the entire space a larger and airy feel. Complete a cabinet redesign by adding simple, modern hardware to bring any kitchen into the 21st century. Incorporating a custom color pallet in light, inviting colors further aids in giving any kitchen space a more open feel. However, if installing new cabinetry is not an option, simply changing the color from dark wood tones to cool, lighter tones allows the entire space to quickly seem more open, as this will allow the cabinets to receded into the similar cool tones of the walls. By further complimenting a single pallet kitchen with bold accent pieces, such as colorful kitchen island cabinetry, a strategic "pop" of interest can be added to a room used as one of the most general convening areas in any home.

When possible, incorporating solar tubes into a kitchen lighting design can not only save energy but add a sleek, beautiful, and environmentally friendly twist to any room. Solar lighting is a brilliant way to and natural illumination to a room where lighting is not only an accent, but also critical to functionality. Additional recessed lighting or single, large focal point lighting can also be added to compliment any contemporary redesign. 

Finally, adding beautiful, non-toxic, environmentally friendly flooring like bamboo, reclaimed wood, or marmoleum in a lengthwise pattern will complete making the space look and feel larger and more inviting.

Economy Friendly Eco-friendly

Economy Friendly Eco-friendly, what?  No, you read it right.  Economy Friendly Eco-friendly is my almost catchy label for one of the biggest factors impeding our fight against climate change.  See, there are some politicians and economists alike that are concerned with economic consequences that would result by eliminating heavy green house gas polluting industries and processes.  While our scientists around the world are conversely contemplating what will happen if we do nothing.  The complexity of our environmental problem could never be overstated.  First, it's clear we have to come up with new manufacturing processes or products that don't produce mass amounts of greenhouse gas pollution.   We've already developed some of these solutions but we have a long way to go before we can eliminate the greenhouse gas pollution created from manufacturing things like steel or concrete, or consuming fossil fuels like oil and coal.  Assuming huge strides are made and we come up with replacements for all these heavy polluters, we then need to make sure the roll out of these new processes or products doesn't hurt the U.S. or world economies in a significant way.   A lot of things need to happen in order for us to begin to begin reversing climate change.  Things like wind and solar power, electric motors, green friendly building materials, repurposed furniture, and other green ideas will have to be most prominent if we have any chance to undo what we've done.  Thanks for reading!

The Road to a Non-toxic Home

Sixty years ago the world went through what some people refer to as the chemical age.  Toxic chemicals emerged on the scene being used for almost everything including things like pesticides, household & industrial cleaners, and even in our food.  Over time we learned much about the affects of these chemicals to our health and to the well being of our environment.  Many chemicals have been eliminated all together because they created so much harm.  We’ve discovered things like VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds) are pretty harmful to our health.  You probably heard about formaldehyde in recent news, the latest toxic chemical to be scrutinized.  We once thought that chemicals like formaldehyde were ok if they were hidden under a layer of plywood or particleboard.  We’ve realized that even though these toxins are with in a sealed surface, they can still omit into the air because of things like off gassing.  Changes in the temperature and humidity can actually draw toxins into your home’s air.  Many air quality experts say that a home’s indoor air quality can actually be three times worse than the air quality outside.  Asthma and other breathing issues have been dramatically rising over the last few decades.  Air Purification systems have been developed all over the world to help combat this problem.  Medical experts have continuously connected indoor air quality to breathing problems like asthma and COPD.  Creating a non-toxic home is the only way to completely ensure you are getting the best air quality possible.  How? Non-toxic kitchen cabinets and bathroom vanities are very important because they are in areas of higher humidity susceptible to off gassing.  Non-toxic paint is also a great way to ensure toxins aren’t seeping into your home’s air from the walls.  Non-toxic flooring is also available in all types and make sure any wall coverings or reclaimed wood is non-toxic.  Believe it or not but there is non-toxic furniture on the market, considering the proximity to us and our kids a non-toxic couch sounds pretty important.  We could be headed toward a non-toxic world, I hope it can help reverse asthma and COPD statistics.  Thanks for reading!

Clean Power Plan - The Third View

I'm going to start this out by telling you that I nor the Paper Blog have any political affiliation or do we care to share our political philosophy.  It is the environment we're focused on and we feel we have a pretty good way of combating climate change in our specialty, green building materials and eco-friendly remodeling.  With that being said, I'm going to share my thoughts about the current Clean Power Plan.  Now, I only know the basics of the plan that include carbon emissions reduction guidelines for U.S. coal power plants.  Simple enough, a plan that forces power plants to reduce their carbon emissions or I guess they'll be breaking a law.  Newsflash everybody, large corporations in this country break U.S. laws everyday, ok not sure where I was going with that.  Back to the Clean Power Plan, the opposition to this bill is up in arms stating that the plan will raise electricity costs, hurt our economy, etc etc.  I think we can all understand both sides of this argument.  Yes, we would love to reduce emissions from heavy polluting coal power plants.   No, we don't want consumer's electrical costs to go up or our fragile economy to be impacted.  This old song and dance, how about we sing a different tune.   In my mind we need to be more focused on finding actual solutions to the problems.  Problems like how can we effectively create and distribute electricity without causing emissions or other environmental consequences?  How can we manufacture our most prominent goods, building materials and other products without causing emissions, deforestation, or land destruction from mining?  How can we eliminate landfills and nuclear waste?  We have a lot more questions than answers when it comes to solving our environmental problems.  I vote for a plan that sets deadlines to finding solutions to these problems and  I commend those eco-pioneers in green building materials for doing their part!  Thanks for reading.

Furniture’s impact on Earth, we can do better!

If you want to know how much impact our furniture has on the environment just do a quick web search.  There are tons of opinions out there on the topic but to be honest a lot of the information I read didn’t really tell me much.  As a result, we figured we’d chime in on the topic here at Paper Blog as our world’s furniture consumption is enormous and significantly impacts our planet.  In the U.S. alone, retail sales for furniture is in excess of $100 billion a year with over 30,000 retail sales outlets and a few thousand manufacturers who mostly import product from Asia.  This doesn’t factor in all of the used furniture outlets like craigslist, salvation army, consignment stores, garage sales, newspaper listings, office furniture, etc.   Our homes and businesses are loaded with different furniture pieces of all kinds.  The reality is that we manufacture a lot of new furniture on planet Earth when we have a ton of furniture already available to us.  So, what harm does new furniture have on our environment?  There are obvious things like deforestation as the core of any furniture is typically made with wood.  Some lower cost furniture is made with alternative products like MDF or particle board.  These materials are even more harmful to our environment because of the significant emissions from the toxic glues and chemicals used in the construction.  Furniture waste would also have to be considered, a lot of furniture ends up in U.S. landfills letting toxic paints, glues, and chemicals seep into the Earth.  All in all, it’s easy to see furniture consumption has significant environmental consequences much like our current building materials.  It’s also easy to see we have simple solutions like recycling to create repurposed furniture (upcycled furniture).  Repurposed (upcycled) furniture is currently just a tiny fraction of overall furniture sales so big changes would need to take place in order for the environment to benefit.  I hope the popularity of repurposed furniture (upcycled furniture) continues to grow in the world as it provides considerable environmental benefits as it eliminates both the manufacturing of a new item and the addition of waste to a landfill.  It would be great to see a day when a repurposed (upcycled) piece of furniture is more valuable and stylish then new furniture. That would be a good day for the planet, thanks for reading!

Sheeps just keep giving, Eco-friendly carpet!

In a past blog we’ve talked about how sheep’s wool is used as an eco-friendly building material in the form of home insulation.  Well, the sheeps in New Zealand want you to know that wool isn’t just for textiles and insulation, it also makes for a non-toxic eco-friendly carpet.  Standard carpet is typically made from polypropylene, nylon or polyester or some combination of those materials also combined with wool.  Polypropylene, nylon and polyester are petroleum based products that carry environmental consequences.  Now, that’s not to say a sheep doesn’t have environmental consequences as livestock in the world are major producers of greenhouse gas pollution.  As a result, there are experts that would probably challenge wool as a cut and dry eco-friendly carpet or building material input.  Whatever the case, wool is certainly natural and non-toxic which is also very important when it comes to carpet.   Possibly an even more eco-friendly carpet would be one made from recycled content like recycled plastic bottles.  U.S. manufacturer Mohawk makes a product called Everstrand with a patented process that takes premium PET from the highest-grade polymer, strengthens the fiber, and removes dirt-attracting residue with a multi-step purification system.   I think it’s pretty to safe to say the world of carpet has multiple eco-friendly options, I hope the options continue to develop.  Thanks for reading!

Holy Green Page

We’re full of confusing titles here at Paper Blog, let me explain this one. Holy as in Holy Moly and Green Page as in almost every company now a days has a Green Page or other Eco-Friendly related web page.  See, about a year ago I spent 4 months researching today's building materials and other home improvement related products including furniture, etc.  After scouring thousands and thousands of related company websites I came to realize a couple things about the 'eco-friendly shout out' corporate green page.  First, almost every company website (maybe 95%) in the building materials or home improvement world has a web page dedicated to their eco-friendly efforts.  An eco-friendly responsibility page has almost become a requirement in the building materials industry.  It's to the point where if you don't have a dedicated eco-friendly page, you'll probably get called out on it by some customer someday. Second, less than half of the Green Pages actually had anything to do with being eco-friendly.  I’m not trying to be critical, but as I read these pages the typical content seemed to be a challenged marketing writer's attempt at making a business that has no eco-friendly aspects, seem eco-friendly.  Now don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of companies out there that are actually doing things with in or outside of their business that helps our environment.  Even if their business has no eco-friendly aspects, companies have found ways to help our  planet through special programs and green efforts  Many thanks to those marking a difference and thanks for reading!

The Eco-friendly Modern Kitchen coming soon!

What does an eco-friendly kitchen look like?  Well, they come in different sizes and shapes but they’re always beautiful and of course, almost harmless to our planet.  In today’s blog we’re going to discuss the things that can make remodeling your modern kitchen eco-friendly in design and building materials.  These eco-friendly building material ideas will work for any kitchen, including small & galley or open and spacious kitchens.  Let’s kick off this eco-friendly kitchen remodeling discussion with cabinets.  If you’ve ever purchased kitchen cabinets before you probably know the choices and supplier types are endless.  Now a days, modern kitchen cabinets come in all different styles, quality levels, toxicity levels, and manufacturing locations.   You can affordably buy pre-made cabinets that were made overseas with toxic glues that contain loads of formaldehyde.  If you have a little more room in your budget you can have custom cabinets made on a local level.  But watch out because custom cabinets can also be loaded with formaldehyde.  When it comes to eco-friendly kitchen cabinets it all starts with them being non-toxic.  Today, the most eco-friendly non-toxic materials being used for cabinetry are bamboo and wheatboard.  Bamboo is a rapidly renewable material while wheatboard is made from recycled bio waste content, both can be made non-toxic.  Modern kitchen cabinets can also be made from non-toxic plywoods like oak, pine, and maple.  Whether or not wood cabinets can be considered eco-friendly is dependent upon what type of forest in which the wood came as well as your personal interpretation of wood as eco-friendly.  Many experts believe forest conservation would be an important step in combating global warming.  Now don’t forget, eco-friendly can also mean salvaging the cabinets you already have.  Some non-toxic paint or natural stains could help save your old cabinets by making them more modern.  Any time you extend the life of cabinetry that’s eco-friendly in our book.

Onto kitchen countertops, and you probably know what we’re going to say.  Yes, we love recycled paper countertops, it’s out there now!  We love them all over the house but our favorite in the kitchen is EcoTop.   EcoTop is a product that combines both recycled content in the form of recycled paper fibers and rapidly renewable content in the form of bamboo fibers to create a beautiful countertop material that has tons of character and will last for decades.  Another eco-friendly countertop option for the modern kitchen is recycled glass countertops.  Recycled glass countertops are really sharp but be careful in regards the recycled glass countertops that contain cement or concrete.   By many standards recycled glass countertops that are made using cement would not be considered eco-friendly.  Reclaimed wood pieces can make for an affordable eco-friendly countertop. With proper sealants old doors or other wood panels with character could become kitchen countertops.  Creating an eco-friendly backsplash might be the easiest thing to DIY in your modern eco-friendly kitchen.  If you can find an old pallet with nice patina you can create a reclaimed wood backsplash that’s unmatched.  Or if you’re the artistic type can try creating a backsplash out of recycled glass pieces and resin.  If you have some room in the budget for a kitchen backplash, you could consider eco-friendly panels made from recycled plastic or handmade tiles created from recycled porecelain tile.  Let’s not forget the floor!  Bamboo, cork, or reclaimed wood can make for beautiful eco-friendly kitchen floors.  Always check to see what’s under your current floor before you buy any materials, there could be an old wood floor underneath that can be brought back to life with some sanding and finish.  Another eco-friendly option in modern kitchen flooring would be marmoleum which is a non-toxic eco-friendly lineoleum made from bio waste and other recycled materials. Oh, and don’t forget some modern LED lighting, that always brightens up a modern eco-friendly kitchen.  Whatever your eco-friendly tastes we’re sure your eco-friendly kitchen will look great!  And the planet will thank you for it, thanks for reading!