Photo: courtesy Richard Byrd

Got three million and change? Get in line. The hottest eco-friendly home on the market is a $3.5 million, LEED Platinum, 1920s Spanish stunner recently renovated by Adrian Grenier’s go-to green expert Richard Byrd of “Alter Eco” fame. The guy may be brand new in the eco-development department, but in this, his first sustainable home, he hits all the marks. Think reclaimed materials like 300-year-old Spanish roof tile, CFL bulbs, solar trees, low-flow sinks and toilets, and a carpet made entirely from post-consumer waste recycled plastic water bottles. (Check out more pics after the jump!) And that's not all...

I wasn't sure if we’d covered Earth Weave’s wool and hemp carpets, but I was wrong. Years ago, Kara had mentioned them in a nice little primer on Finding Solutions to Toxic Carpeting. What makes Earth Weave noteworthy is that they claim their Bio-Floor to be different to any other North American produced carpet.

Mostly because they are 100% biodegradable, meaning they are derived only of natural materials. The face fibre is naturally pigmented or coloured wool (no added dyes, fixatives or mordants), without any additional moth-proof or stain-guard treatments applied. The wool is tufted onto a backing crafted from hemp and cotton. This, in turn, is bound to the final backing sheet (jute) with a natural rubber adhesive.

Image credit: Getty Images.

The Los Angeles Times reported Friday that several communities around Los Angeles actually ban artificial lawns, meaning that residents are not eligible for the $300 rebate from the Orange County Municipal Water District. In an area that is very drought prone, and with advances in the “look” of artificial lawns, city officials are taking a new look at the legislation.

The regulations were initially put into place when the aesthetics of fake lawns were not as pleasing as they are today. Also there was concern over the lead content in many of these, which the US Consumer Product Safety Commission reported that children are “not at risk from exposure to lead in newer artificial turf fields.”

Interface sells carpet to the tune of $1,100,000,000 each year. That is just one reason why the business world listens up when Ray Anderson speaks. Ray describes his ecological awakening as “a spear in the chest,” a wound he has used to both his company’s advantage, and the planet’s. Giving rebirth to 133 million pounds of carpet is just the beginning. Anderson and his design teams are hard at work studying nature’s delicate technologies—like the sticky feet of geckos—to make products better, cleaner, and more beautiful. Here, the founder of Interface shares his insights on biomimicry, right-brain thinking, cradle-to-cradle design, and our innate “biophilia.” ::TreeHugger Radio

Listen to the podcast of this interview via iTunes, or just click here to listen, right-click to download.

Special thanks go to CraigMichaels, the organizer of the Sustainable Operations Summit, for arranging this interview.

Also, check out part one of our Ray Anderson interview. (Full text after the jump)

Ray Anderson started his company, Interface, back in the 1970s to make carpet. Like any business man, he wanted to shake up the market and make a healthy profit, which he’s done, and Interface now has 17 manufacturing locations on four continents. But this is not business as usual. Not anymore. Since having a sustainability epiphany, as he calls it, Ray has starting steering Interface toward one hell of a goal: zero negative effects on the planetary ecosystem by the year 2020, a goal he admits no corporation has yet reached. TreeHugger has long found inspiration in Interface’s elegant design solutions—products like modular carpet and FLOR—and in Anderson’s own sagely words. ::TreeHugger Radio

Listen to the podcast of this interview via iTunes, or just click here to listen, right-click to download. For Part Two of this interview, click here.

Special thanks go to CraigMichaels, the organizer of the Sustainable Operations Summit, for arranging this interview.

(Full text after the jump)

File this one in the 'how to do it right' category: earlier this week, Interface Inc., the world's largest manufacturer of modular carpet tiles, released their 2007 "ecometrics," measuring the impact of their operations on the planet. Among the impressive numbers: greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are down 82 percent from the 1996 baseline, while total energy intensity (use per unit of output) is down 45 percent from 1996. In a nutshell, these numbers mean that they've learned how to make more carpet with less energy, emissions and pollution.

In addition to typical financial metrics like profit and loss, Interface began tracking their ecometrics in 1996, measuring energy and water intake, waste streams, greenhouse gas emissions, and raw materials streams, to evaluate its progress towards the goal of sustainability and doing business in ways that minimize the impact on the environment.

Awhile back, when TreeHugger Lloyd asked if bamboo flooring was really TreeHugger green, he noted that the lack of chain of custody certification made it tough to tell whether or not the bamboo came from sustainable sources. There's no arguing that bamboo is quickly renewable, but its green benefits can be canceled out if growing and harvesting it result in deforestation and habitat and biodiversity loss. Thankfully, some of the guesswork has been taken out of this process with today's announcement that Smith & Fong has secured Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification for its bamboo flooring and plywood.

This certification enables the company to produce "the world's first range of FSC-certified bamboo plywood and flooring," according to their press release. Combined with Smith & Fong's use of glues with negligible levels of formaldehyde, a pretty nasty carcinogen and contributor to indoor air pollution, the certification makes the company's bamboo products a pretty green choice.

A new technique for construction caught our eye at Barcelona’s material library Mater (more about that below): Drysystem. Drysystem is a new tile laying system, developed by the Spanish ceramic company TAU, that doesn’t require getting your hands dirty. This new way of putting tiles doesn’t require any kind of adhesive; the pieces simply slot into each other. 45x90 cm tiles can be slotted seamlessly into a polymer base.

Recent Comment by how to lay ceramic tile : "Yes, it is unlikely that they'd be reused. How solid can a floor be without adhes..." [read]