The Sustainable Living Roadshow (SLR) “Be the Change” Tour! Check out their promo video by clicking this link: http://matthewgamlen.com/projects/slr/SLR_07.mov. SLR is a national coalition of educators and entertainers who tour the country in a fleet of renewable fuel vehicles to empower communities and individuals to utilize sustainable living strategies for a healthier planet. Visiting k-12 schools, university campuses and community festivals across the United States, the caravan sets up off-the-grid eco-festivals with experiential learning villages, featuring workshops, speakers and entertainment. This summer, August 26th -27th, they will be hosting a two day eco-carnival at Hirshorn Park during the Denver National Convention - and are looking to share this experience with some of Boulder’s designers, businesses, organizations, speakers, workshop leaders and those professionals in the green industries. After speaking with SLR organizers, they are looking for groups to table, teach workshops on sustainability issues, speak about the movement, showcase products and technologies, and perform on site demonstrations. (more…)

The birth of this business began in 2003 with founder Anthony Catalano Ph.D, his wife, a patio that lacked electricity and an incandescent lantern that would not last more than one hour per battery replacement. After several lantern replacements, Catalano saw the opportunity to retrofit incandescent flashlights and decided to take matters into his own hands, as he designed an electrical circuit to act as an intermediary between the batteries and the LED. Through this concept, he quickly recognized that this idea had commercial possibilities and zeroed on LED Retrofit kits and portable lighting as the logical target in their LED efforts. (more…)

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Electronic Media Art
Electronic Textiles

The future will require houses that don’t burn fossil fuels at all. After all, there will come a time when the grid will be entirely green, in Boulder probably sooner rather than later, (more…)

Boulder is known for it’s “green” friendliness in building and open space, but did you ever think our eco-conscious fashion? From belts to bags, hard-core vegetarian designer Heather English has developed a product using only cruelty-free and vegan materials in conjunction with crafty ingenuity. English Retreads uses recycled materials and turns them into savvy fashion creating hand bags and accessories made from reclaimed truck inner-tubes. Interested in learning more about the company, I had asked the English Retreads team to answer a few questions about their product: (more…)

Regulatory and societal pressures are instigating higher performance and greater energy efficient buildings throughout the world. We are learning to build greener through LEED Certification, HERS Rating Systems, E-star, using more environmentally safe and sustainable products and through energy-saving technologies. As many of our users are aware, modern building design can be a very demanding and complex process, especially when trying to incorporate this growing list of eco-efficent products, concepts, and technologies. I myself am not a builder or architect in the design industry, however, of what I do know is that conceptual stages of building are the most important, and in this stage you have the greatest impact on a building’s carbon footprint. That said, I am interested to hear feedback from those that have used Ecotect and/or Demeter, tools that provide energy analysis from the conceptual stages of design and development. (more…)

As we explore elements of design from around the world this week, our next stop brings us to the High Line project in NYC. Diller Scofidio + Renfro, a NYC firm that specializes in interdisciplinary design, has taken this unique project under their wing. The High Line story captures creative insight to preservation, architecture and design by using forward-thinking models and concepts. Through public outreach and education, here is a live example where ‘out-of-the-box’ ideas contributed to creating an extraordinary urban design that links the past and future. (more…)

Westfalia VERDIER

The original Westfalia was the symbol of the hippy culture, while the newest model is a symbol of today’s green technology. This Verdier Solar Power won the Special Prize from the jury at the Caravaning Design Award Innovation for new mobility (more…)