According to a report by nonprofit Organic Exchange, global retail sales of organic cotton apparel and home textile products grew 63 percent from its 2007 number of $1.9 billion. In 2008, the report says, it reached $3.2 billion.

Organic cotton

The top ten brands that use and sell organic cotton might surprise  you.  They are Wal-Mart, C&A (out of Belgium), Nike, H&M (out of the UK), Zara (out of Spain), Anvil, Coop Switzerland, Pottery Barn, Greensource and Hess Naur (out of Germany). 

A press release says the report says the brands plan to expand their use of organic cotton to result in an estimated $4 billion market in 2009 and a $5.3 billion market in 2010. To learn more, visit Organic Exchange’s Web site. But beware, it looks like they want to charge you (and me) $400 for the full report!

This week, I covered the giant new Thornton Place develoment next to Northgate in the DJC here.

The nine-building project is 109 condos, 278 apartments, 50,000-square-feet of retail and restaurant space and a 14-screen movie theatre with two IMAX theatres. There’s a 143-unit senior living center on the site called Aljoya, developed by Era Living, and a large portion of Thornton Creek that has been daylighted by Seattle Public Utilities.

It’s targeting LEED silver certification under LEED for Neighborhood Development. Its buildings are also shooting for separate LEED NC silver certification. Green features include easy access to transit, project walkability, water efficient and energy efficicient features, and extensive daylighting. For more info, see its Web site here.

The story got a lot of press - in the DJC, the Stranger, and the Seattle Condo Blog, for example - so if you want more info on it, you can read about it there. I’ll get straight to the photos.

A view of the piazza. Developers say they need to do something with this roof, though they aren\'t sure what!

An inside view of a condo unit.

The area where Thornton Creek will flow.

View of the park-and-ride from inside an apartment unit.

Era Living\'s Aljoya project

An inner pathway.

Being a reporter, I get hundreds of e-mails a week. A good chunk of them are about eco-friendly products that are new, nifty and will “save the worrrllllldddd!” A couple of them are kind of nifty. But the majority of them aren’t… and are obviously motivated by business interests and the desire to make more green.

So when I received an e-mail this week about two entrepreneurs who founded an

Is greed good?

educational campaign promoting tap water, and then just happened to sell over 400,000 BPA-free, reusable water bottles from their Web site, it piqued my interest, precisely because it was addressing the money issue.

These two people - Eric Yaverbaum and Mark DiMassimo - are asking the public in a poll whether they are “greedy entrepreneurs,” “selfless environmentalists,” or both.

Now, both of these guys work in advertising or marketing, so this survey could very well be - and likely is - a marketing ploy. But even so, it’s interesting because it touches on the nebulous and often contentious connection between money and the environment.

The environmental movement isn’t completely comfortable with the notion that people make money off of things that are eco-friendly, especially because not everything that says it’s green really is (this is called ”greenwashing”). But really, the only way to get practices accepted on a large scale will be if someone, somewhere turns a profit in some way.

These two guys are making money but in the process they’re also getting their message - that buying bottled water is bad - out there to a broader audience. So is greed ok if it has a point?

What do you think - are they greedy or selfless? To answer the poll or to see results, click here.

The Seattlepi.com is reporting that Michael McGinn, creator of the Seattle Great City Initiative, is running for mayor against incumbent Greg Nickels.

Michael McGinn

McGinn, a visible voice in Seattle’s environmental scene, champions parks, open space, transit and making Seattle as livable as possible. Seattlepi.com says he would concentrate on schools, improving the technology infrastructure by buildng fiber optic networking to every home and business and local transportation issues.

To read the story, click here. The Seattle Times also has it here.

P.S. The Stranger’s Dan Savage also says he is running for mayor, but that he would resign if elected in order to allow the Seattle City Council to elect someone else.

On Thursday, Seattle-based Rushing hosted an open house for its new workspace. The mechanical and electrical engineering, and sustainability consulting firm, has moved to the third floor of 1725 Westlake Ave N., and is currently awaiting a LEED platinum certification for commercial interiors. In case you missed it, I’ve got some photos of the space - and the event - for you below.

Inside view of the space

Rae Anne Rushing in her new office

The ceiling

A wall of the different LEED points the space has targeted

Rushing also made handy little booklets that outline all the credits Rushing (again hopefully) achieved for LEED platinum. Each page in the booklet explains what Rushing did for each credit. For example, under Energy Use Measurement and Payment Accountability, the boooklet says Rushing installed submetering equipment to measure and recod gas and electricity use in the space. It also says a lease was negotiated where energy costs are paid by Rushing, and not paid in base rent.

Close up view of a couple LEED points

The food you missed!

Recently, I received a book in the mail called, ‘True Green Home - 100 inspirational ideas for creating a green environment at home.’ The book, by Kim McKay and Jenny Bonnin, was released by National Geographic this month.

The book is a handy little thing that does exactly what its title says in outlining

This is the book

inspirational ideas than range from Number 1 - choose an eco-friendly location for your house - to number 100 - dry your clothes by sun.

Being an environmental reporter, most of the ideas in this book don’t surprise me. I already knew building orientation mattered, as does placement and type of windows, building material and design. But I was surprised by a few things I didn’t know. For example, Number 30 advises me to invest in a bag-less vacuum cleaner. Call me crazy, but I had no idea such a thing even existed! Number 76, regarding natural cleaning of kitchens and utensils, advises me to clean copper with equal parts ketchup and Worchestershire sauce. Really?! I almost want to go burnish my mom’s copper pots and pans just to test it out.

Every idea comes with glossy, pretty pictures. Case studies from William McDonough + Partners, Whole Foods, the USGBC and others also punctuate the pages.

For those people who live, breathe and eat green, this book will be old news. But for those who are just looking to learn about green building or are considering a home remodel, this could be a helpful source of information.

The book is available online. For more information, visit National Geographic here.

Yesterday, I was visiting members of architecture firm Weber Thompson in their headquarters when I decided to pull out my camera and snap some pics for those of you who have never been.

The nearly year-old building is LEED gold core and shell and is eagerly awaiting a LEED platinum certification for its interior. We’ve written about this building numerous times in the past year so I’m going to skip the description and go straight to the photos. For more on the building, read Shawna Gamache’s story on it here, read the building’s blog here, or click tag Weber Thompson below.

Here they are:

View of the inner staircase

View of the staircase through an opposing inner glass wall

Interior view of office space

View of the courtyard inside the building

Outside view of the building

vertical view of building sunshades

This morning, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. keynoted the BuiltGreen Conference 2009 at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center. It was not your typical green conference keynote.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Most talks focus on one topic and explore it. At green events, that talk is usually centered around a project, a theory or a problem that we need to fix. This talk was mostly political and discussed everything from the benefits of “true free market capitalism” (many), to how the Bush administration tore down environmental rules and tenets (disastrously), to who was who in Washington, D.C. politics (lobbyists), to how much mercury human beings have in their bodies (a lot), to how the press has covered these issues (very poorly).

Honestly, he spoke about so many different things I don’t really know what to tell you, dear reader. So I’ll start with energy.

Kennedy spoke a lot about the energy grid. The largest technical problem in weaning ourselves off oil, he said, is that we don’t have a grid that can handle new sources of energy like wind or solar. Developing a system that would reach every American home would cost $1 million per mile, he said, or $150 billion. It’s a one-time expenditure, he said, and would benefit national security. He said we’ve done it before with computers and the Internet; all we have to do is make the commitment.

He also said we need to change the way the energy business works. Utilities today, he said, benefit by creating and selling more energy. We need to redevelop it to focus on conservation. “We have to change that incentivized system,” he said, “So that they can make the same money by getting people to conserve, not consume.”

He also spoke a lot about a business he is a part of called Better Place. Better Place is a venture-backed company that seeks to build an electric car network based on today’s technology. Kennedy said the company is beginning with Israel, where it hopes to transform the market over the next three years. The company will give electric cars away for free - made by Renault and Nissan - to anyone who signs a contract with the company. Under the contract, the person owns the car while Better Place owns the car battery (which costs $20,000). The company pays itself back by charging a premium on the power the car needs to run, outlined in the contract. He said the company has similar contracts with Denmark, Australia, Hawaii and north California, and would love for all of North America to follow suit.

“The electric car is the way this country is going to go,” he said.

Kennedy also took a hit at the mainstream media, calling it “negligent” in reporting important stories over the past decade. Instead, he said the media has become entertainment rather than information, which appeals to the prurient interests in the reptilian parts of our brains. Ouch.

Were you there? If so, what did you think was the most interesting thing he said and how would you rate his speech?

P.S. The information Kennedy shared about his personal levels of mercury (if he were a woman, he said a doctor told him his children would have cognitive impairment) was pretty frightening. If you want to test your mercury levels, visit the Waterkeeper Alliance, another organization Kennedy is affiliated with, here.

A proposed living building in Portland is moving along. This week, the Portland Development Commission announced its plans to award the project’s feasibility study to Gerding Edlen Development.

A living building is a building that meets the Living Building Challenge. The challenge

In 2007, this was Mithun\'s award-winning concept of a living building

goes beyond LEED platinum. A living building is self-sustaining, and aims to produce and reuse all its resources like energy and water. Since the concept was introduced by Jason McLennan of the Cascadia Green Building Council in December 2006, a number of projects have taken the challenge on. Most of them are on the smaller side, or are residences.

What makes the Portland project unique is its size. The building would be around 220,000-square-feet.

The project, called the Sustainability Center of Excellence, is on a super fast track. It received proposals two weeks ago and held a public meeting last week. Yesterday, the PDC announced it intends to award the project to Gerding Edlen, along with SERA Architects and GBD Architects. The three main partners in the project are the PDC, the Oregon University System and the Living Building Initiative, a consortium of organizations focused on sustainability.

Gerding Edlen and its team will investigate whether the project is feasible. If it is, it will have the option to move ahead with project development.

The goal of the building will be to attract other sustainably-minded businesses to Portland and to Oregon. Do you think this is a good way to attract business? Should Seattle be following in Portland’s footsteps, or are we too different to compare?

Locally, the Phinney Neighborhood Association hopes to turn the Phinney Neighborhood Center (everyone’s favorite giant blue building) into a living building. The Bullitt Foundation has also purchased a property and is just in the beginning stages of considering whether to do a living building or not. Am I missing any local living building projects? If so let me know.

For more information or some interesting local opinions on this project, visit Portland Architecture here, the Burnside Blog here, or read this article in the Portland Tribune. Enjoy!

About a month ago (Jan. 20) I wrote a story in the DJC on the green roof at the Gates Foundation’s garage. At 60,000 square feet or about 1.4 acres, it is the largest green roof in Seattle by a landslide.

The garage is a crosswalk away from Seattle Center on the east side of Fifth Avenue North. It is located next to the future Gates Foundation headquarters and is kitty-corner from EMP. The garage is technically a public-private partnership between the Gates Foundation and the city of Seattle. NBBJ was the architect. Sellen Construction was general contractor. Gustafson Guthrie Nichol was landscape architect.

The roof itself is visible from the Space Needle, a consideration in its design. The roof has five inches of soil over a layer of synthetic drainage. 

Here are photos:

A worker weeds the green roof

The green roof is clearly visible from the Space Needle's deck and vice-versa

A side view photo only begins to show how massive the roof really is

View from the street

Aerial view, courtesy Sky-Pix