GRI said the Sustainability Disclosure Database includes data on the sustainability and environmental, social and governance ESG transparency of over three thousand companies. This information was previously hard to find, but GRI said the new database will make the data easily accessible for companies and investors alike.

Any organization can upload a sustainability report and profile information to the database, which will help them engage with stakeholders and get feedback, GRI said. A global team of 22 GRI “data partners” will also collect information from companies in their regions, to populate the database.

via Database Will Benchmark Thousands of Reports, GRI Says · Environmental Management & Energy News · Environmental Leader.

I started thinking about how I could re-purpose the keyboard of the dismantled piano I keep in the garden, so I thought to build a new instrument by combining it with some other parts I had laying around. I ended up with this mechanical hybrid thing I thought to call “Bassoforte” (bass + pianoforte).

The neck is from a broken electric bass, as a bridge I used a cabinet handle, the pickups are from a guitar, and the part at the top where the strings are attached is a chimney cap, which works as resonator as well as percussive sound.

Open Source Ecology is developing and testing the Global Village Construction Set, a set of tools to build replicable, open source, modern, off-grid resilient communities. By weaving open source permacultural and technological cycles together, we intend to provide basic human needs while being good stewards of the land, using resources sustainably, and pursuing right livelihood.

With the gift of openly shared information, we can produce industrial products locally using open source design and digital fabrication. This frees us from the need to participate in the wasteful resource flows of the larger economy by letting us produce our own materials and components for the technologies we use. We see small, independent, land-based economies as means to transform societies, address pressing world issues, and evolve to freedom.

via Open Source Ecology – Open Source Ecology.

Homemade acoustic panels. Why pay more?

I really like this idea for managing the acoustics in the the combined music-project room KJ and I are scheming on.

Acoustic treatments are often used to help improve the acoustics of a room by taming “flutter echoes,” “room modes,” and other problems which arise from a room’s dimensions and construction.

Although a variety of treatments are available for commercial use, they tend to be quite expensive. After some research both online and in print, we came across several sources for DIY acoustic treatments using rigid fiberglass panels and simple frames. These are often referred to as “bass traps,” although the ones that we’re focusing on have a fairly wide rage of absorption. While commercial versions are available for almost $100, we were able to make these panels for about $24 each.

For more information, check out the good folks in the acoustics forum at recording.org

via Make acoustic panels for your recording studio or home theater.

“As with most building materials today, it’s not easy to determine the relative merits of copper and PEX for domestic water supply,” writes Robert Riversong. “There are significant benefits and liabilities, including deleterious health impacts of both.”

via How Safe is PEX tubing? | GreenBuildingAdvisor.com.

used Scotch tape to pull thin layers of carbon off a block of pencil lead.

That was the start of something big. Atom for atom, graphene turned out to be 100 times stronger than steel — in large part because the single-layered atoms are tightly bonded together in a honeycomb lattice.

Graphene is the future of touch screens, big-panel TVs, body scanners and light, strong composites.

An atomically resolved image of a chiral nanotube as observed in STM experiments. Source: Wikipedia.

Green building has been a status symbol among the wealthy. But a transformation is taking place up and down the quiet corridors of the 70-unit affordable housing project that has risen on a grubby stretch of Atlantic Avenue near the Compton border.

The $31-million Casa Dominguez project, built by the Los Angeles-based affordable housing developer Abode Communities, is aiming to be the first multifamily affordable housing project in Los Angeles County to win the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design platinum certification, the U.S. Green Building Council's highest LEED rating.

The building was constructed with a prefabricated framing system that reduced waste. An on-site healthcare clinic and a child-care center lessen residents' need to drive. The playground surface is made from recycled tires, and drought-tolerant landscaping is irrigated with gray water from the washing machines.

via Living clean and simple: Affordable housing goes green – Brand X.

Designers, builders, contractors and remodelers will now have access to a wide range of information about how products from almost 3000 SCS-certified manufacturers meet LEED and other ratings systems’ requirements. ecoScorecard users simply plug products into their online project tracker and the tool provides meaningful information about credits for green building rating systems.

SCS certifies the broadest array of green building products of any certifier, making this partnership a boon to ecoScorecard users. SCS certified products are found in most green building projects, earning LEED and other credits through Forest Stewardship Council, environmentally preferable products, indoor air quality, recycled content, and level™ furniture sustainability certification.

“Specifiers who choose SCS certified products will soon have ecoScorecard enabled data that supports their documentation needs,” explained Martin Flaherty, president of ecoScorecard.

“This collaboration enhances the value of SCS certification for our clients and shares the outstanding performance of their products with building designers and other specifiers looking for green building components,” explained Michael Wolfe, Director of Business Development, SCS. “ecoScorecard is an excellent platform to deliver SCS certification data to those users.”

Introduced in 2007, ecoScorecard provides product specifiers with the ability to search and evaluate products based on environmental characteristics. The program does the calculations necessary for rating systems such as LEED, GGHC Labs 21, CHPS, and the NAHB Green Home Building Guidelines. The tool also produces the product documentation necessary for inclusion in the submission process.

Sustainable Fellwood, a new mixed-use, mixed income development in Savannah, Georgia, won a National Homebuilders Assn. 2010 Energy Value Housing Award for energy efficiency. (Photo courtesy Sustainable Fellwood)

Energy-efficiency measures in the southern United States could save consumers $41 billion on their energy bills, open 380,000 new jobs, and save 8.6 billion gallons of water over the next 10 years, finds research from Duke University and the Georgia Institute of Technology released today.

On average, each dollar invested in energy efficiency over the next 20 years will reap $2.25 in benefits, concludes the study, which also shows that the construction of dozens of new power plants could be avoided.

New appliance standards, incentives for retrofitting and weatherization, upgrades to utility plants and process improvements were among the policies researchers considered.

“We looked at how these policies might interact, not just single programs,” said researcher Etan Gumerman at Duke’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.

“The interplay between policies compounds the savings. And it’s all cost-effective,” he said.

The average residential electricity bill would decline by $26 per month in 2020 and $50 per month in 2030, the study projects.

In total, the study concludes that investing $200 billion in energy efficiency programs over the next 20 years could return $448 billion in savings.

If the measures studied were implemented, it would reduce the need for new power plants, the study concludes. Almost 25 gigawatts of older power plants could be retired and the construction of new power plants generating up to 50 gigawatts of power could be avoided.

Thirty-six percent of Americans live in the study region. With its low electricity rates, which encourage consumption, the South consumes an super-sized portion of American energy, 44 percent, and supplies 48 percent of the nation’s power.

Yet energy-efficient products have a lower market penetration in this region than elsewhere in the country, and these states spend less per capita on efficiency programs than the national average.

To achieve their results, the researchers modeled how implementation of nine policies across the residential, commercial and industrial sectors might play out over 20 years in the District of Columbia and 16 southern states.

They generated a business as usual scenario, without any policies, and compared it with scenarios that included specific sets of energy-efficiency investments, to capture the cost savings.

The region’s economy is anticipated to grow by $1.23 billion in 2020 and $2.12 billion in 2030. Yet the study found that the reduction in power plant capacity would save southern regions of the North American Electrical Reliability Corporation 8.6 billion gallons of fresh water in 2020 and 20.1 billion gallons in 2030.

“An aggressive commitment to energy efficiency could be an economic windfall for the South,” said researcher Dr. Marilyn Brown of the Georgia Institute of Technology. “Such a shift would lower energy bills for cash-strapped consumers and businesses and create more new jobs for Southern workers.”

The utility Georgia Power says it is already promoting energy efficiency to help customers save money and to reduce the need for power plants. In total, the company plans to invest almost $500 million over the next 10 years on demand-side programs such as free in-home energy audits that show residential customers how energy efficient their home is and ways to save energy.

The company is providing some funding to help low-income customers make home improvements for increased energy efficiency and has a recycling program for older refrigerators and freezers.

Funded with support from the Energy Foundation, the Kresge Foundation and the Turner Foundation, the study, “Energy Efficiency in the South” is available on the Southeast Energy Efficiency Alliance website: www.seealliance.org/programs/research.php.

State profiles are also available through the Alliance, a nonprofit organization that promotes energy efficiency in the Southeast.

via The South Could Save Billions With Energy Efficiency.

Do household cleaners contain ingredients linked to asthma, nerve damage and other health effects? Manufacturers aren’t telling, but Earthjustice attorney Keri Powell may have uncovered the key to their pursed lips.

While investigating a potential legal strategy, Keri found buried in the pages of a book of New York State statutes a long-forgotten law authorizing the Commissioner of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation to require household cleaning product manufacturers to disclose their chemical ingredients and information about the health risks they pose. In other words, pay dirt.

State regulations issued in 1976 made these disclosures mandatory. Such laws are practically nonexistent in the United States, and the New York law has been altogether overlooked.

via Getting the Dirt on Household Cleaners | unEARTHED, the Earthjustice blog.

Just based on the fact that the Earthjustice attorney uncovered the law, some manufacturers have come clean and ponied up info about what’s in their products. But

Procter & Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive, Church and Dwight, and Reckitt-Bensicker stonewalled, and thus found themselves a few weeks ago across from Keri and her colleagues in a Manhattan courtroom as defendants in this first-of-its-kind lawsuit. They made it clear that their lips are sealed until authorities pry them open. As Health Campaigner Kathleen Sutcliffe wryly remarked last week, Mr. Clean went to court and pled the fifth.

What we need is a database of chemicals in products associated with health concerns, much like the open source database of chemicals in building materials published recently by Perkins + Will.

It’s amazing that professional cleaning services haven’t been clamoring for this information. I suspect the reason why not may have to do with issues of race and class: employees of such companies are hired on a piece-work basis and are poorly paid.