Being Green – Certifications

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Hi Folks:

Friday once again. Having for the last two weeks lamented the swift passage of time, I’m loathe to do so again! In a previous blog post I wrote about the many differing and sometimes conflicting standards and certifications there are out there when it comes to green building – LEED, BuiltGreen, Green-E, FSC, Cerflor, SCS, BREEAM, Energy Star, BOMA BESt, Cradle to Cradle, Living Building Challenge, GreenGuard, IICRC, Environments for Living, Green Seal, EOCP (BC), NARI CGP, NAHB CGP, GreenPlumbers, ASHRAE, Cal IAQ – and that’s far from a complete list. Some are national, some are by province or state or other jurisdiction. Some relate to entire buildings, some to components, materials or systems. I must admit I find it baffling, and I doubt anyone can accurately say they understand them all. I haven’t included certification for green real estate agents, certifications for green lodging and travel companies, organic certifications, etc. They do all have one thing in common, which is that they all seek to make our stay on this planet a little better. Their various merits, strengths and weaknesses I leave to others to debate, although one article I came across today is, “Need for re-look at Green Building Rating Systems“.

The reason I mention this here is largely because of an article I read this week on Cradle to Cradle (CtoC) certification. I don’t mean to isolate them, but I, like possibly many others, was curious when it was announced that Dow had achieved CtoC certification for five of their insulation products, two at the Silver level and the other three at the Basic level. I was under the (mistaken) impression that CtoC was only bestowed on those products that contained no hazardous or toxic materials. That’s not the case. As outlined in the article “Fixing the Perception Problem with Cradle to Cradle Certification“, the CtoC Basic and Silver certifications do not mean that the product is free of toxic materials. They do require and provide an avenue for the company involved to work with MBDC and related groups to find new, more sustainable solutions, and are an expression of commitment toward this goal. Therein lies the perception problem. From the article:

“Here’s the problem: for designers—even those at the leading edge of green building—any level of Cradle to Cradle Certification creates a perception that the certified product is green. We call on MBDC to fix this problem, and we offer the following suggestion for doing so: at the Gold and Platinum levels, continue to refer to Cradle to Cradle Certification as a product certification. At these levels, a product must pass muster with a robust set of filters ensuring that it is safe for humans and imparts minimal damage to the environment; designers can be fairly confident that such products are indeed green…”

Of course, such problems occur on other levels as well. In a two-part series by James D. Qualk, LEED AP in Environmental Design + Construction magazine, he asked the question, “Does LEED Have a Problem?” The articles may be read here: Part I, Part II. The articles focus on two main areas. One is a perception that buildings certified by programs such as LEED are performing no better than their non-certified counterparts.  An article by James Qualk is: “Buildings Shall Be Capable Of…“, which suggests that a part of the problem with LEED-certified building performance is making the building’s occupants aware of best practices.  There’s no point in building a super-efficient building if one leaves the door open.

The other issue is that there have been a few cases where such failures have lead to lawsuits. One article, also on ED+C magazine’s site, written by Kamy Molavi is “Avoiding Potential Green Building Liability”.  Another article by Barbara Quinn is “Green Connections: Keeping Green Claims Accurate“.  On the mlive.com site there’s an article entitled, “Lawyers anticipate LEED-liability suits“.  On Green Building Law Update there’s an article titled “GSA’s Green Building Role in the Federal Government“.  Finally, on the Build2Sustain.com podcast site there’s an interview on on “Managing Client Expectations and the Green Lease“. Not specifically related but also on the Build2Sustain.com podcast site is another interview on “LEED, the Living Building Challenge and the Future of Green Building“.

You’d think a species as intelligent as us would be capable of achieving a simpler way of reaching the same goal. Just saying, is all.

Okay, the links for this week include:

That’s it for this week.  See you next Friday, and if you have anything to add, please leave us a comment!

Mike.

P.S.  The 2010 Geneva Auto Show is currently under way, and there have been a number of new ‘green’ introductions, including some completely electric vehicles.  Hyundai has announced a diesel-electric hybrid sports car, the i-Flow, and even Ferrari announced a new hybrid vehicle.  The car that I find most intriguing is the new Porsche 218 Spyder plug-in hybrid.  It’s a prototype, but Porsche suggest a fuel consumption of 3 litres/ 100 km, which works out (assuming I can still do math), to nearly 94 miles/(Imperial) gallon, and lower CO2 emissions than a Toyota Prius.  There’s an interesting article here on hybrid cars as well.

And finally, speaking of motors, the Sturman Industries site is worth checking out.  There’s also an interesting .pdf available, called “An Alternative to Alternative Cars“.

Poetry Corner – Science as Poetry

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Hello Dear Ones!

Mike and I are very much into innovation and inspiration. Anything fun, informative and uplifting nurtures us. As a result we find ourselves watching TED and other web videos rather than the television these days. When I saw the following YouTube video – attached here for your viewing pleasure – I had to use it for my Poetry Corner this week. Once you’ve seen it, you’ll understand why!

As a preamble first, though, if you are like me you would not likely have thought you’d ever see the words ‘science’ and ‘poetry’ in the same paragraph, let alone paired together. But it will become clear and logical once you’ve viewed the video. Enjoy!

The Poetry of Science

The Poetry of Science

In Light and Laughter,

Marcia

Playing With Clarity in Lightroom

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Hi Folks:

This is just a quick idea I came up with last month as I was playing around inside Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. The Clarity Slider is part of the Basic panel in the Develop module, and normally it’s used to increase mid-tone contrast in an image. In Lightroom 2.0 Adobe provided the option to use ‘negative’ clarity as well, which can be used to give all or part of the image a dream-like effect. I used negative clarity in my image titled ‘Do Bicycles Dream?’

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3160/2716654561_26b3e657d7_o.jpg

It’s a tool, and like any tool, it can be used or abused. Anyway, this is my first spring here in in the city of flowers, and being a true Canadian I was both surprised and delighted to see crocuses and snowdrops peeking their heads out of the ground at the beginning of February. Up north February is synonymous with ‘mid-winter’. Not too far from where we’re living right now, one of our neighbours had their entire lawn erupt in crocuses and other flowers:

Crocus Panorama

Now, to extend the dyamic range of my hdr images I tend to use Timothy Armes’ LR/Enfuse plugin to combine the images I’ve made at different exposures. Thinking about how it works though, got me thinking about combining other sorts of images. I took a close-up image of my neighbour’s crocuses and processed as I would normally in Lightroom’s Develop module, then created a Virtual Copy of that image and turned the Clarity slider all the way down to -100. I then used the LR/Enfuse plugin to combine both images together. The result is below.

Blended Crocuses

At first glance it appears as though the image has simply had negative clarity applied to it, but there’s detail in it as well, especially if you zoom in on it. It would be possible to create something similar in Photoshop using layers and Gaussian Blur, but not exactly. Anyway, it’s just something to play with.

Have a great day,
Mike.

P.S. You can find more of our posts on photography and Lightroom tutorials here, and you can find links to over 200 other sites that have Lightroom tips, tutorials and videos here.

Marcia’s Meanderings – Proud Momma!

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Hello Dear Ones!

No major topic seemed forthcoming for today’s post till moments before noon (PST) when my daughter-in-law called. This lovely woman doesn’t pick up the phone just to chat. So I knew something was up. Thinking at first that she was going to tell me she was now in labour (baby #2 is due any day), I was happily curious. No, the soon-to-be newest addition is still comfy with his (yes, a boy!) current living arrangements.

We had a few moments of catch up when the reason for the call came spilling out – giggles of excitement bubbling forth with the news. Her husband – my eldest son – has been nominated for Best Cinematography in the Web Series: Riese. Best Cinematographer! Only five are nominated in this category.

The Streamy Awards honour the best in Web Television. Riese the Series, originating in Canada, has been nominated for the Best Foreign Web Series. Should you care to look, you’ll find my son’s name – Christopher Charles Kempinski – listed under the Craft Awards section for Best Cinematography. You’ll notice Riese has been nominated for two additional awards as well: Best Sound Design & Best Art Direction.

Congratulations, my Chris, on this fabulous honour! Your inspired, imaginative and keen eye, smart work, dedication and commitment to excellence are being recognized by the best of the best in your field. Kudos to you!

Any chance there will be room at the awards ceremony in Los Angeles for a proud Momma?

In Light and Laughter,

Marcia

He Says, She Says…

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Greetings, Dear Reader!

Well, with the end of the month falling on a Sunday, we’ve all of a sudden discovered that we had one post to do yesterday, two today and one tomorrow!  We might have to take a break in there somewhere just to allow the keyboards a bit of a rest!

If we look at time as the linear passing of one moment to the next, then it could be said that we have both been walking a ‘spiritual path’ for a very long time.  In some circles that might be cause for veneration, but we both agree that the only question really worth asking from all of this is, “Have we found joy in our discoveries?’  Yes, for the most part we have.  We get better at is as we go, or maybe it’s just that we’re getting better at discovering that it always exists within us.

Of the many books that were written by Seth, Jane Roberts and Robert Butts, the first Seth book we each read was ‘Seth Speaks‘.  In that book ‘he’ wrote:

”Using the inner senses, we become conscious creators, cocreators.” ~ Seth Speaks, session 515.

The very basis of Seth’s teachings, and the teachings of many others can be formed along the lines of: ‘You form your own reality’.  So, taking that in hand we thought that this week we’d turn our minds and our keyboarding fingers toward ‘Conscious Co-Creation‘.

Hugs,
M&M

Follow these links to read what He Says/She Says: Marcia’s View / Mike’s View.

Photo of the Month – Making Small Creative Edits in Lightroom

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Hi Folks: I usually dedicate the last day of the month to my favourite image made that month, but this month I’m going to do something a little different and dedicate it to an idea. I use Adobe Photoshop Lightroom (I currently have both LR 2.6 and 3 Beta installed) to do all of my file management, tagging, and pretty much all of my editing, etc. One of the biggest changes between LR 2 and LR1 before it was the ability to make selective rather than global changes to an image; I have no doubt that this will be expanded upon in LR 3 when it comes out, but we’ll have to wait and see. Now Photoshop is THE pixel editing program, and there is so much that can be done in Photoshop that can’t be done in Lightroom, so we’ll get that argument out of the way right up front. However, rather than be stymied by limitations, I always like to know how far I can take something – in this case Lightroom’s selective edit commands: the brush tool and the gradiant tool. I find mostly what I use them for is making very small adjustments. By small adjustments I’m talking generally ½ a stop or less. Still I think small corrections can make a big difference. I’m no Lightroom guru, but in all of the various Lightroom tips, tutorials and videos I’ve seen I’ve yet to see anyone cover this so I thought I’d give it a shot. Further creative effects may be achieved by changing the saturation, clarity, brush colour, etc. but this tutorial focuses solely on exposure adjustments. Continue Reading →

Eating Our Way Through Victoria!

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Greetings Gourmands!

Before I delve into the tantalizingly sweet and savoury tidbits of this month’s subject, let me guide you first with a wee bit of geography and history to lay the groundwork for today’s tasty treat of a food review.

Welcome to Victoria! Victoria is the capital city of the province of British Columbia in Canada. Located on the southernmost tip of Vancouver Island, it is a mere 1 1/2 hour ferry ride through the Gulf Islands taking you to the mainland and the city of Vancouver where the final days of the 2010 Winter Olympics are winding to a close. Go Canada! Check out the location here. (Click on the photos on this map and you’ll see some of our more famous buildings!)

The Empress Hotel – now the Fairmont Empress – is a world-renowned resort hotel. Often referred to as the ‘Grand Lady’ – a castle in her own right – she rules over our Inner Harbour and is a must see attraction for visitors from all parts of the globe. You can’t come to Victoria and not wander her halls, peruse her galleries, stop for a rest and take an appreciative look and deep breath or two in her incredible rose gardens.

The Empress Hotel is the journey we take today as we eat our way through Victoria. Of the many restaurant options The Empress has to offer, it is the Bengal Lounge that shall capture and satisfy our epicurean nature. Continue Reading →

Being Green – Good News!

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Hi Folks!  Friday again… where does the week go?  Wait a minute – didn’t I ask that same question last week?  Oh well…  This is going to be short, I’m afraid, but I didn’t want to let a Friday go by without doing a ‘Being Green‘ post.  I’ll add my usual weekly links at the bottom, but I wanted to mention a few ‘good news’ items I’ve come across recently.  While I don’t like to show favouritism and highlight specific companies, there are many that are making a conscious effort to go greener in different ways.  I’ll let you decide whether or not their products are right for you.  One is Method, a company that makes environmentally friendly cleaning products.  They’ve just announced a new non-toxic, plant-based laundry detergent, super-concentrated, but the best part is that it’s “the world’s first Cradle to CradleCM certified laundry detergent, thanks to its comprehensive green design. And like other method products, it’s recognized by the US EPA’s DfE program for its safer chemistry.“  They even show their ingredient list on the site. Continue Reading →

Poetry Corner – Potential

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Hello Dear Ones!

Years ago I bought myself a small spiral notebook and pen to keep in my purse. (BTW: Today, the notebook in my purse is about the 25th such writing journal.) On the very back page of this notebook I began jotting down different topics as they came to me randomly – for use as poems, short stories, or as simple paragraphs that might, someday, find their way into a story. It’s a mere list that looks somewhat like this:

Grandmother
Thunderstorm
Mashed bananas
The scent of a baby
Fresh ground/fresh brewed coffee
Candles
Riding a bicycle
Driving a car
The first pickle in the jar
A hug

My list now has about 350 entries of topics I still might write about – someday. Many have already inspired me to write. Some I have written about and yet I have kept the topic on the list as there are so many ways to express the different facets of that same topic – such as thunderstorms! Each and every storm is unique and pulls emotions from within as varied as the storms themselves!

How do I use this Potential Writings list? Continue Reading →

Celebrate What’s Right with the World!

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Hi Folks:

This is a very quick post, but I wanted to point you in the direction of the following website.  Photographer Dewitt Jones has created a site called ‘Celebrate What’s Right with the World!‘ that will be updated weekly… Each week he’ll post a new image, with the underlying theme of celebrating what’s right!  Each image is beautiful on its own, and in taking a moment or two to appreciate it, give yourself permission to appreciate that moment and to give thanks for all that’s right in your world!  Practice senseless acts of beauty and random acts of kindness on a daily basis.

Hugs,
Mike.

P.S.  Our friend Samantha Standish has two blogs that also focus on this idea of beauty: Zuli Love and The Power to Flower.

P.S. II (the sequel)  If you’re interested you can click here to see some of my ideas of beauty in the world.