GreenDigs Blog

A cool new product I saw featured this past week is BP Glass Garage Doors, which is made from 100% recycled aluminum, glass, and steel, and can even be recycled at its end of life (similar to a cradle-to-cradle product).  They make commercial or residential grade garage, barn, gates, or swinging doors for various applications. (Check out their photo gallery for some great design ideas and past projects they’ve completed.) These have numerous applications, one of which could be a live/work space, to open up to fresh air and close as needed (and look really cool when illuminated at night).  Visit BP Glass Garage door’s website more more information.

This past month, Armstrong introduced a new acoustical ceiling tile  – Tierra – which is composed of 45% of rapidly renewable jute fiber and has Cradle to Cradle (C2C) Silver Certification.  (Cradle to Cradle measures how environmentally sound or “green” product is by levels of certification – platinum, gold, silver, or basic.)

Armstrong markets Tierra as the “greenest” ceiling tile system available in the marketplace, and the visual appearance of the tile is virtually identical to a fine textured acoustical ceiling tile.  The performance acoustics aren’t bad either – it has a NRC of .85 and LR of .88.  The only downside is that because of the jute composition (i.e. soft fibers that cannot form edge profiles), it only has square edge profiles available in 2′x2′ or 2′x4′ sizes. No information on cost yet, but it would be an easy way to help target LEED Materials & Resources credit 6 for rapidly renewable products. Check it out on their Website.

Until recently, tile could be considered a moderately green product.  Products available with recycled content (an average of up to 40% pre-consumer for porcelain and 100% for glass tiles) had limited color and style choices. With its long lifespan, tile has favorable life-cycle costs, but what happens when the tile is cracked or needing to be updated in color? 

Crossville Inc recently announced they have a proprietary method of recycling a consumer’s old tile.  The process crushes the old tile into powder form, which will be introduced into producing new tiles with certifiable recycled content. Crossville estimates that more than 4 million pounds of tile could be diverted from landfills, just from their facility alone!  Keep a look out for the new products from this cradle-to-cradle process.

(Spotted on Interior Design Magazine)