Green Things

I enjoyed Steve Glenn's presentation on the design and creative aspects involved with being more ecologically responsible this morning. At heart I’m really a design guy; I love when things work well and look nice. I believe that there doesn’t need to be a tradeoff between performance, functionality, aesthetics, and the environment. As we saw with LivingHomes, these aspects can come together to create beautiful products.

As I was checking the news tonight, I came across a nice piece in Business Week about some popular green products. What really got me to the site was that the Macbook Air was the first product mentioned. When the Air was announced back at Macworld, a lot of emphasis was put on its design and how it is less intensive on the environment. Some examples include: LED backlighting (no fluorescents or mercury in the display) and 50% less packaging (Apple packaging is an art in itself).

There are other nice products listed in the piece (Umbra compostable trash can, I’m looking at you) and a smart power meter for your home. We’ll learn a lot about DSM next week, but a substantial savings in energy (and money) can be achieved by knowing when electricity is more expensive to generate. These are just a few products and examples. Check it out!