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Volunteer networks are springing up around the country to help seniors navigate the aging process.
Green Building Materials
By Virginia Prescott on Monday, December 1, 2008.
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About 40 percent of our nation’s energy goes into running buildings, and another 12 percent to building them. To help developers achieve LEED certification, a new crop of green building materials has sprung up.
As part of our "next green thing" series, we asked Michael Kanellos to fill us in on some of them. He’s a senior policy analyst at GreenTech Media.
CalStar Cement’s founder, Mark Porat, says he’s developed "the biggest technological changes in bricks since the Canaanites." Instead of burning clay, CalStar will take fly ash, the particulate matter that ordinarily leaves smokestacks to enter the atmosphere, add some extra chemicals and make bricks. Rather than requiring high temperature cooking, the chemicals congeal into a solid, hard mass.
Serious Materials is doing the same thing with drywall. Instead of cooking gypsum at a high temperature to make drywall, Serious has a chemical compound that, when mixed with other chemicals, congeals into drywall at low temperatures. We also look at Integrity Block, a company in Palo Alto that's come up with a building block made out of mashed earth. It takes far less energy to make these than a regular cement block.
(Photo of Integrity Block CEO Trevor Stout courtesy of Integrity Block)
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Word of Mouth is all about what's new. Online and on-air, the show looks at our fascinating and ever-changing world, and puts the latest ideas under a microscope. Word of Mouth investigates everything from science and technology, to health and the environment, to new trends in popular culture. The show airs Monday through Thursday at noon and is hosted by Virginia Prescott.
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The Serious Block link has an extra "h" as in hhttp://w...
It's fixed now. Thanks for catching this Peter!
Sorry to be so blunt, but what does one need to be a "senior policy analyst"? Following your link to GreenTech Media, I discovered an "article" (linked below) by claimed senior policy analyst Michael Kanellos. According to GreenTech's website he is "Editor in Chief".
Why so blunt? Well this article about Dean Kamen caught my eye right away as I know Kamen mostly through FIRST Robotics. The title was. "Annoying Inventor Dean Kamen Goes Nuts for LEDs". Hmmm? Take a look; IMHO Mr. Kanellos' apparent editorial standards hardly live up to NPR standards. What's the point of an article like this: http://greenlight.greentechmedia.com/2008/12/02/annoying-inventor-dean-k...
BTW: I'm the Founder, President, CEO and Head Gopher of a major construction firm; actually I'm the only "employee" so I'm also our chief policy analyst. But if I can be on your show, I can be whatever you need me to be. ;-)