Our common perception of a graffiti artist is a vandalistic rebel who works through a free venue to spread his message. Although there are many incredible artists who sprinkle our streets and alleyways with colorful, astonishing work, they don’t expect much respect from the common passerby for the work they do- until recently. The public environment, as it always has been, is a venue for artists and people to speak out. Recently artists have used graffiti (or the notion of graffiti) to stimulate thoughtful movement through our public space by addressing topics such as climate change, pollution, and consumerism.

The UK’s Paul Curtis, also known as the "Moose," and Brazil’s Alexandre Orion are taking a new approach to graffiti to convey a sense of "clean," and to inspire pedestrians to keep it that way. Their cue comes from the "Wash Me" message commonly wiped away from the back of dirty semi trucks. They call this reverse graffiti, and they create their work by removing soot, sludge, carbon from exhaust, etc., from the wall to reveal a message.

Moose generated a message in a transport tunnel that reads "Go Gently" to remind drivers of the impact their cars have on the planet. "Once you do this, you make people confront whether or not they like people cleaning walls or if they really have a problem with personal expression."

Orion created a work in a Sao Paolo transport tunnel; his is a series of skulls that also depicts the impact drivers’ emissions have on the planet. As a result of this project, the transit authority washed the wall to remove the public expression. In reaction, Orion created the same artwork on the other side of the tunnel. This resulted in the transit authority cleaning the entire tunnel on both sides. They then continued to resist the public work by cleaning every transport tunnel in the city. Not such a bad idea on all accounts.

Another artist, Edina Tokodi, recently created a work of green graffiti in Brooklyn, New York. Edina saw the idea of graffiti as an opportunity to stimulate positive green thoughts and encourage city dwellers to resurface their connection to nature. She decided to maintain the venue while changing the medium. Her work consists of moss installations adhered to the wall where spray paint might commonly be seen. Using this much less harmful medium, she creates images such as prancing animals, and uses existing imagery to create trees and objects found in nature. The beauty of this medium is that it can continue to grow. As moss receives water from the air, condensation, and rain, it continues to grow as the artwork remains fixed to its site.

Last night, Thursday, October 18th, at the National Design Awards Gala in New York City was the announcement of the Peoples Design Awards. As part of National Design Week, Copper-Hewitt supports an annual competition where people nominate great design.

Voting has been open to the public online since mid September. As it is too late to cast your vote, it isn’t too late to congratulate the winner and find out what people consider excellence in design. The most exciting part of this year’s ballot is that many of the nominees were for projects geared towards sustainable progress. Social sustainability is one of the most important attributes for the public to consider, our responsibility towards sustainability and global issues shows promise.

Last year the public chose the Katrina Cottage by designer Marianne Cusato. Designed with similar dimensions and attributes to the FEMA homes, this project is the alternative. The 308 square foot cottage is constructed with fiber reinforced cement siding and a metal roof to withstand hurricane force winds. Since the launch of the project it has grown to attract habitants for multiple purposes. The cottage itself isn’t necessarily a sustainable edifice, but as it will live through intense natural forces and sustain its structure over time.

Also, similar to this year’s nomination for the LifeStraw (a $2 straw that purifies water while drinking for those who don’t have access to safe drinking water), the Katrina Cottage highlights the need for alternatives regarding current issues. When these alternatives are designed with sustainability, necessity, and in this case affordability in mind, we get closer to practical solutions and functional design for a sustainable, safe and healthy future.

This year’s winner is TOMS shoes. TOMS shoes is a simple project- with every pair of shoes bought, a pair is donated to a child who doesn’t have any. TOMS mission is to simply make life more comfortable. Currently TOMS is running a pledge to get 50,000 pair of shoes to take over to South Africa on November 1. These shoes will be divvied out to children in need. The shoes are not necessarily constructed with sustainable (recycled, reusable) materials, but the project does indeed socially sustain communities by enabling a more comfortable, and healthy lifestyle.

Other nominees on the ballot this year geared towards social sustainability and massive change were Good Magazine, Design Can Change, and Global Green Efforts in New Orleans. Good Magazine is a new San Francisco based publication highlighting projects geared towards social activism and sustainability. Design Can Change is a global campaign put together by SmashLAB geared towards bringing designers together to fight climate change.

Finally, Global Green was nominated for their work in New Orleans geared towards using the opportunity to rebuild in a way that is more beneficial to the environment and the community. Based on these nominations we can say with confidence that there are a lot of design efforts taking place to improve the condition of our health, safety, relationships and environment. Now it is your turn to participate.

Designer Scott Amron has created a catalogue of conceptual products designed to persuade people to use less energy, or at least think about how many things are plugged into sockets in their homes. The experiment is called "Die Electric," named after the insulating properties of a dielectric material. A dielectric is a substance that is highly resistant to the flow of an electric current. The experiment is about powering down, and rethinking the function of electrical components for purposes other than jacking up the monthly electric bill.

The first set of experiments transforms messy power cords into functional household items: "Shelf" (image above) and "ToothHold." Depending on where the outlets are in your home (usually at a functional reaching level), you now can use this cord to have reachable necessities throughout the home. Whether you are reaching for a toothbrush or a book, your outlets are put to greater use. Thinking beyond common functionality, maybe you can even use this shelf as a seat…

The second set of experiments are nothing but aesthetic wall dressings. Their titles insinuate the additional meaning: "Grow Plug" and "Single Vase AC." These houseplant retrofits cover up tacky wall outlets while adding an element of fresh-cut or freshly-growing nature to the room.

The third, and my personal favorite, is simply titled "Off." This is a light switch hook designed so that the it only functions as a hanger when switched to the "off" position. The switch is still fully functional, but the added bonus encourages you to think about your actual lighting needs.

Designer and experimenter Scott Amron has performed and exhibited a large portfolio of functionality experiments incorporating basic principles of engineering and physics while challenging their common conceptions. One outstanding project among these is called "Brush and Rinse," which won a Best of Category award in this year’s I.D. Annual Design Review, a highly acclaimed annual design competition. Scott has a B.E. in Electrical Engineering, and is a declared freelance electrical engineer, designer, conceptual artist, inventor, and founding principal of Amron Exptl.

Check it out. His products don’t cost you your shiniest penny, and they will provide your houseguests with a challenging surprise.

This summer the US Postal Service announced a new "Cradle to Cradle" certified shipping model and package for their postal service. This is the first US mailing service to receive such a designation. Awarded by the MBDC (McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry), the "Cradle to Cradle" Silver rating considers everything from water stewardship to renewable energy, toxicity to recyclability. The package has all-around good environmental health.

According to the press release, "Postal Service mailing and shipping supplies already had exceeded governmental requirements, including recycled content standards from the U.S. EPA. Going beyond existing federal and state agency requirements was a goal in seeking certification."

The MBDC Cradle to Cradle certification process reviews all the environmental attributes of material inputs for each product. Based on 39 criteria for human and environmental health, the rigorous process does not miss a single flaw. It doesn’t just look at the physical content of each material, but at every step the material travels before it gets into the package. "MBDC examined 60 packaging items, breaking those items down to 250 component materials and then further analyzing 1,400 individual ingredients in those component materials before awarding the certification." Due to the improvement in the 500 million + Express Mail and Priority Mail packages and envelopes provided by the Postal Service annually, 15,000 metric tons of carbon emissions will be prevented. That means that these tons of carbon won’t just be offset: they won’t even be used in the first place.

"To get some perspective on that number, consider that the gigantic South By Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas generates only 250 metric tons of carbon emissions each year — and that’s from power sources, travel and transportation from around the world and wastes generated by printing, promotion and festival-related goods combined,” states Lucinda Michele Knapp of Conscious Choice Magazine.

Going further, "the Postal Service also worked with MBDC to gain certification for an additional 200 million pieces of mailing supplies used each year (decals, labels, packing tape), examining inks, tapes and adhesives." Additionally, the Postal Service redesigned all the Flat-Rate boxes and envelopes as well; as a result, customers can use the same packaging for domestic and international mailing. This eliminates the need for separate packages (andseparate materials), and reduces the amount of source materials requires for use and recycling.

After Wal-Mart, the US is the post office is the second largest employer in the nation. These developments not only effects and educates customers about sustainable business but it will effect the entire postal service staff as well. In addition to Cradle to Cradle packaging materials the USPS has made moves towards using alternative fuel fleets, offsetting carbon emissions in plants, and now, designing more environmentally responsible packaging. With the proper incentives in sight, the postal service has an eco-effective mutually beneficial system!

A Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement under the Clean Water Act was written in 1972 to set a cap on the amount of crud that could be dumped into Lake Michigan annually. The law set a limit on how much pollution companies could legally dump into the lake. The law also prevented any company that was dumping under the limit from increasing their dumped pollution.

Well, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently made an exception to this law for the $3.8 billion expansion of British Petroleum’s (BP’s) Whiting, Indiana plant. In exchange, the expansion is said to provide 80 more permanent jobs and 2,000 temporary construction jobs. The trade-off for this socio-economical exchange is 35% more sludge (a total of 4,925 pounds), and 54% more ammonia (a total of 1,584 pounds) pumped into Lake Michigan daily. Even though this increase in pollution is still below the federal and state limits, it is the first decision in years that allows a company to dump more toxic waste into Lake Michigan.
For a company that considers themselves "Beyond Petroleum" by supporting alternative energy development and environmental protection, they certainly are not displaying much attention beyond their own petroleum processing?

This Whiting, Indiana plant (currently the nation’s 4th largest refinery) was originally built in 1889 by John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Co. We are happy that they are using the same facility, but due to the extra crude oil coming from Canada, BP can’t process the expanded volume in the same "small" plant. Therefore, the expansion became the obvious solution. The state excused this severe hike in pollution by saying the project will provide more jobs and security of oil suppliers to the Midwestern United States.

This is what the trade-off actually is: this "toxic sludge" is a cocktail of concentrated heavy metals and suspended solids that does not-so-nicely mix with our fresh-water swimming lakes. The ammonia becomes a problem when it provides a habitat for healthy algae bloom, thus killing the native fish, and altering the aquaculture of the fresh water.

Since the public announcement of the EPA permit grant in mid-June, people are also unhappy with the way these events rolled out. An environmental group, the Alliance for the Great Lakes, filed a petition asking Indiana’s Office of Environmental Adjudication to suspend the permit and reopen the appeal process due to inadequate public scrutiny. When the permit draft was made available for review, many organizations submitted comments on it. Yet, when the final permit was made available, these organizations were not informed on the proper date, nor were they informed of the appeal process. Now the Indiana Department of Environmental Management claims that the appeal process is closed because it is 15 days past the post date of the final permit. Over 70,000 people across the Great Lakes and the nation have signed this petition.

Additionally, Great Lakes supporters spread out over BP stations all over the Midwest region handing out flyers explaining the situation and requesting that customers fill up elsewhere. As this momentum builds, awareness speads, and hopefully BP will either change their ways or admit that they are beyond caring about the Great Lakes. We prefer the former to the later.

To sign the petition yourself go to:
Environment Michigan

As an extension of last weeks post, Vote on Sustainable Design for the Future, there are simply too many design competitions out there: we must alert you to more. Many of these design competitions are open to people of all disciplines with good ideas. So maybe you should take a pen and paper and enter a keen green idea of your own if you want to see the world change.

Here is my deeper perception on additional “call for entries” situations:

What I have found is that when a corporate product manufacturing company has a call for entries, they are seeking new ideas. Sometimes ideas perpetuate in a work situation, and it becomes difficult to think as far out of the box as some younger creatives do. Electrolux is an international home appliances and equipment company. Each year their Design lab runs a competition for industrial design students working towards their undergraduate or graduate degrees (so this one isn’t for everyone but its still interesting). While “innovative ideas for household appliances of the future” is the mainstay, sustainability is this year’s theme. Students are asked to create eco-friendly, sustainable household appliances and solutions for 2020. If you are a student, check it out. The deadline is July 31. For the rest of you, finalists will be announced October 1.

When a foundation posts a call-for-entries, it is often based on a desire to generate the inspiration of the organization’s namesake in a new generation, and to allow the his/her spirit to live on. Each year, the distinguished jury of the Buckminster Fuller Challenge awards a large sum to “support the development and implementation of a solution that has significant potential to solve humanity’s most pressing problems in the shortest possible time while enhancing the Earth’s ecological integrity.” This year’s competition honors Fuller’s a"nticipatory design science method": the idea of doing more with less. The Challenge seeks “design science solutions within a broad range of human endeavor that exemplify the trim tab principle. Trim tabs demonstrate how small amounts of energy and resources precisely applied at the right time and place can produce maximum advantageous change.” The entry period is September 4 – October 30, so you have a little time to think about this one. On the other hand, a sustainable solution cannot be left until the last moment to be completed. So get to work.

My third example is similar to one of last week, but this one is still open for entries. RE:VISION is a complete competition network that seeks to highlight great ideas about to explode, but that don’t yet have a venue to do so. Stacey Frost, founder of RE:VISION, wanted to create a place where these “ideas are put into action, supported and encouraged by a diverse group of people dedicated to making WHAT IF, WHAT IS.” Stacey believes that with each individual’s unique perspective combined with ideas, energy, and resources we can really generate change.

The current competition RE:ROUTE is a call for new urban transportation systems thinking. “We need to enhance and revitalize our areas, changing them from a bunch of buildings into a community. How can we move people cars, services, or goods through a neighborhood.” The competition seeks to generate new and creative ideas for urban transportation that start 4 steps back from the base and stop for a breath of fresh air 100 steps ahead of where we are in 2007. The competitions closes August 15 but the requirements are minimal. If you have an idea, get on the “wagon” and redesign it.

For more information these are the sites I consult for new competition posts:
Core77

American Society of Interior Designers

In the design world, often times young architecture/design firms and even individual designers will apply to competitions during the young part of their career to get public recognition, build credentials, and experience the social circuits around design.

As a young aspiring designer myself, I have made a keen observation of the design industry this year. Many of the call-for-entries and competitions this year have been for solutions related to sustainable development, energy, climate, biodiversity, environmental degradation, etc. Naturally we would expect these type of call-for-entries to come through the EPA grant programs, the NRDC, and other governmental organizations for the environment. Instead the call for action is coming from design firms, architecture magazines and other NGOs alike.

Allow me to take this opportunity to highlight some of the forthcoming competitions and competitions past that have sparked interest in publications of all sorts. The entries to these competitions not only alert us to solutions most of us have never thought of, but through the venue of these competitions many will have the opportunity to be realized! The following are just a few examples of the aforementioned. Look out world, great solutions are coming!!!

Design 21: the Social Design Network, is a mainly internet based collaborative project between the global design and merchandise company- Felissimo; and the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (known as UNESCO). They seek to inspire social activism through design- design for the greater good. “We connect people who want to explore ways design can positively impact our many worlds, and who want to create change here, now.” Design 21 has been hosting international competitions since 1995 mostly based around social themes.

This year, one competition called Heated Issue, was a call for an environmental campaign; another was for an educational “Childs Play” toy that encourages children to cultivate their own imagination; and the third, Shelter Me, is for a new design of a natural disaster temporary relief shelter. The competition award recipients were voted on by the public, and the winners were just announced! So go ahead, view the future!

Metropolis Magazine: an architecture, design, interiors magazine has strongly directed its focus towards sustainable development in design over the last few years. Annually, they host a design competition called the Next Generation Design Competition that awards $10,000 to the winner and they choose a list of runner-up proposals that get published as well. This year the competition focused on solutions for ENERGY reduction, consumption, efficiencies and alternatives. The award recipients this year designed a city streetlight that conserves urban energy based on the lunar cycle. Check it out. Metropolis also just announced next year’s theme: WATER.

Droog Design: an international design collective based in Amsterdam, seeks to “create innovative concepts that change perspectives." This past month they had a call for entries for concepts based on Climate Change. As a result of picking a winner, they hope to develop a product that pushes boundaries, changes perspectives of environmental issues, and invent new experiences, interactions, and participations… How exciting. Droog will select the top 10 designs, and the public will be able vote online to pick the winner. Public voting begins in September, so look it up and get your vote on.

Aside from the competitions calling specifically for sustainability conscious and socially responsible entries, many award recipients of internationally acclaimed annual design competitions are being recognized for their environmental awareness. Competitions such as the ID Annual Review, the Red Dot Design Award and the Spark Awards. This interesting progression is to be noted among the design circuits as a landmark in sustainable development. Lets hope that this is not the trend of the year but an annual progression towards more socially and sustainability conscious design and cradle-to-cradle conscious products.

Rain Shout: high volume = high pressure

We curse the sky when there is drought. Then we rejoice, and bathe, and blow kisses to our plants upon the rainfall. Now that we think about it, doesn’t it seem logical to be able to reap the benefits of that oh-so-delightful rainfall for weeks following? Since I’m not here to preach doom and fear, I’m going to tell you that you can lengthen that rainfall benefit, and also why you simply can’t pass up the opportunity to do so. As a result, the environment, your plants, the gutters, and those pipes down at the water treatment plant will thank you!

Maintaining the “perfect” vanity lawn can place a high demand on our environment, our health, and our municipal utility grid. Residential communities tend to guzzle 40% of their water consumption on irrigation in a given municipality. When cities like Chicago processes 1 billion gallons of water every day for general consumption, we wonder how much we could ease this demand if we had an alternative water source for our grass and plants.

All you need to do is divert your gutter to spill into anything that will hold a large volume of liquid over time. The most common way of collecting rainwater is in a rain barrel, which is commonly made from a 50-gallon food drums. The average roof and gutter system has the capacity to fill a 50 gallon drum with only ¼ inch of rainfall.

A good formula to remember: 1 inch of rain on a 1000 sq ft roof yields 623 gallons of water. Calculate the yield of your roof by multiplying the square footage of your roof by 623 and divide by 1000.

For those of you in a city, collecting rainwater on the roof to water your household plants is a great option. I send you forth with the confidence that you will be able to convince your landlord that it is a practical and cost-effective option. It also means that his/her and your water bill is cheaper monthly. The rainwater collection will encourage rooftop gardens, and as a result cool the roof and make cooling your building easier and cheaper. The benefits are never-ending.

For those of you out in the country who might have a few more plants and acres of maintained land, this is a very cost effective option for you as well. It takes lots of water to keep those plants and that lawn healthy. Why not collect it for free and feed them the clean, untreated juice they love and deserve! You might even have the option to install multiple rain barrels on a few corners of your house or estate.

Whether you like it or not (but I think you will like it) collecting rainwater doesn’t just save you money and provide you with good plant drinking water. Rainwater collection eases our demand and impact on the municipal water grid, meanwhile keeping the environment cleaner. Rain commonly travels across our land picking up harmful chemicals from fertilizers and pesticides. After traveling across the land it dissipates to the water table and erodes our rivers, and lakes with water unfit for drinking and often times swimming. Agricultural herbicides are found in 99% of all urban streams sampled. When you think about the fact that 2.1 billion gallons of water move from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico daily, we are reminded of how much water is constantly traveling through our watershed. Since pollution from city streets, suburban lawns, and factories are of the largest of contributors to water pollution, let’s use our tools to reduce the odds of that not-so-green option.

Additionally, rainwater commonly travels down the street collecting harmful petrol-chemicals from oil and gasoline. When and if this water travels through our sewer system to the water treatment plant, it has to be treated with chlorine, lime, or calcium to restore safety. Not only do we not want to drink these solvents, but these dissolved salts, sediments, and chemicals are not palatable to our lawns and plants. When we intercept water during rainfall, we reduce the impact of all the aforementioned steps. Brilliant!

Phillip kindly wrote you a Do-It-Yourself tutorial today on how to obtain the materials and build one for your use! Check it out and get yourself leaps closer to cheaper bills, happy plants, and relaxed water treatment plants.

Editor's note: Please welcome Green Options' newest writer, Elizabeth Redmond. Elizabeth is a sustainable designer working in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Her past experiences include working with her sister Sara Snow on a Discovery Health TV series called Get Fresh with Sara Snow, where she researched sustainability and built environment content.

I asked Elizabeth to give me an "elevator pitch" of her focus here at Green Options. Her response:

Today's green products and services seem to be an eclectic collection of "lighter tread". I propose that we begin to design and interact with products and systems that encourage heavy treading, where a heavy active footprint is one step in the right direction without a half step in the other. My objective is to tell you how things work, and enable you with the information to make responsible, and conscious decisions about society, lifestyle, health, and sustainability.

More than tornadoes, hurricanes, snow, or cold weather itself, heat is the number one weather related cause of death in the United States. So urban dwellers (that means half of us in this world) beware! Much of our urban heat is due to a phenomena called the Urban Heat Island effect. An Urban Heat Island is a metropolitan zone that is warmer than the surrounding, less developed area. The EPA reports that "On hot summer days, urban air can be 2-10°F [2-6°C] hotter than the surrounding countryside”. What does this mean? It’s going to be a hot summer, but luckily we can do a couple of things to help cool your stroll down the sidewalk.

First, how does this phenomena work? It is all about the energy transfer of solar radiation to our built environment. Lets go back to high school physics and review. All you need to know is that heat from the sun (radiation) gets stored in our constructed impervious and dark surfaces such as concrete and pavement (insulators). During the day these surfaces of high heat capacity collectively act as a massive heat energy reservoir. (I.e.: concrete can retain nearly 2000 times the heat as an equivalent volume of air). Next, the heat on the surface of these materials mixes with the already hot air and you experience a hot gust that feels dense enough to chew on (convection).

About 5 hours after sunset is when we experience the greatest heat discrepancy. The stored heat seeps out of the concrete to be relieved by the cool air (conduction) and dissipates into the environment to raise our nightly air temperature. As you can tell, these thermally insulating materials that dominate city surface construction make it really darn hot for us.

What are the consequences?

1. We pump up the air conditioner and demand more electricity from the grid.
2. We sweat more and have to cool off, so we take more showers increasing our demand on the municipal water supply.
3. We opt for quick and comfortable transit- our car or a cab instead of the subway
4. We drink more ice- demanding more energy to cool that freezer down enough.

You can see where this is going. More heat equals more energy consumed for the comfort of our urban habitat. The Urban Heat Island Group estimates that the Los Angeles Heat Island costs the city $100 million in energy annually. According to the UN, close to half of the worlds population is living in urban areas today. So for that half of us living in cities, here are a couple of things we can do to control the city heat and why!

1. Plant More Plants: living plants inhale CO2, use it in photosynthesis to make sugars aka "fuel", and exhale O2 into the air. They are nature’s fuel cell and luckily they like our exhaust (but this is no excuse to emit more). Plants also intercept solar radiation and cool the air through evaporitization.
2. Raise the Green Roof: Green roofs benefit our environment as the aforementioned plants do; and, since they are so high up they intercept the heat before it can even reach our sidewalks. Encourage green roof development in your city, or just go do some guerrilla plant parenting on the roof of your building. Plus, what could better accompany your rooftop BBQ than some friends, beverages, and plants.
3. Say no to Freon: Turn your thermostat 2°F. I do live in Michigan so I feel you, Houston: just try adjusting your thermostat by 1°F and help the city out. You will actively be reducing the risk of another black out or severe heat wave.
4. Install a Rain Barrel (in your back yard or on the rooftop): It gives you free water from nature! You will conserve energy by not demanding it from the city municipal supply, and mitigate the erosion of harmful pesticides and fertilizers into the water table.
5. Plant a Bioswale or Rain Garden: These are essentially green roofs on the ground. They filter rainwater and help to return clean water to the water table. In return our lakes, rivers, and oceans are cleaner, creating a cleaner evaporitization cycle, and thus cleaner air.
6. Lay Pervious Pavement: This pavement allows the ground to breathe! It also filters rainwater as the aforementioned rain gardens. This might not be something you install on your own but it can certainly be encouraged at your office, or in your city.
7. Take Public Transportation, or even better, Ride a Bike: Every bit of carbon dioxide we can keep out of the air this summer will make a big difference.

With these eco-effective tools to cool and clean the air this summer, you are on your way to an enjoyable commute to work, walk in the park, and rooftop BBQ.