recycle-bins / Green Building & Sustainable Home Renovation Information & Advice

Curbside pickup of garbage, compost and recycling: To facilitate recycling and waste management, first determine just what services are available in your municipality so you can sort your waste properly. Not all collection and disposal services are the same in all regions - recycling, compost collection, toxic waste de...

The cost of every item we purchase is determined in part by the price of oil. This includes products that are in no way petroleum based, since material extraction, manufacturing and transportation will in one way or another, rely at least in part on oil. As the price of oil continues to rise, the money saved by employi...

All materials will have a history, the pros and cons of which will need to be weighed. Unfortunately there isn’t always an obvious right or wrong answer as to whether or not something is a sustainable material. The design of your home, where you live and your lifestyle are all factors that determine what the most ecolo...

They might be parked a little more precisely than an auto wrecking yard, but that doesn’t mean they will ever fly again. Decommissioned aircraft have been declared so, because they have reached the end of their safe flying days. While most of us might be fine riding in rusty old cars, few of us would climb into a rusty...

b sq. Design Studio Inc. is a Toronto based landscape design and build firm that endeavours to create elegant and modern landscapes with a focus on sustainability and longevity for their work. “Plug and Play – the Pallet Garden” is their 5th feature garden installation for the annual Canada Blooms Garden Festival. ...

Spending more time at home in the last few months since Covid-19 redefined our reality has presented many with an opportunity to clean, rearrange furniture and make lifestyle modifications. One thing we noticed at home was that some of the items that found their way into our recycle bin, or worse, the trash bin, really...

After recently posting a story sharing the brilliance that is the Swedish Orbsys water and heat recycling shower, it was brought to our attention that there is a homegrown Canadian variety as well. The EcoVéa shower by Reveeco is made in Quebec, Canada, and works based on the same principles as the Orbys we recently wr...

Though we all diligently cart our plastic to the curb for recycling, the sad reality is that only about 7% of it is commercially viable for recycling, the rest ends up as landfill. Plastic is a petroleum product that until now has been very inconsistent and unstable when returned to an oil form. Recently a North Americ...

How to Choose Eco-Friendly Drywall: There is a lot more to choosing drywall than one might think, and as it finds its way into pretty much every building made, a lot of resources are used in the process and noses irritated. In the LEED Platinum certified Edelweiss House, we used CGC Sheetrock® Brand Ultralight gypsum ...

Gas stoves - playing with fire? Fossil gas stoves and gas cooktops, greenwashed as using 'natural' gas, are even more of a problem than most people realize - especially if concerned about the keeping everyone in the family in good health! The Asthma Society of Canada says that the number of asthma cases being diagnosed...

The first house designed under our Passive Solar Index (PSI) program won "Most Resilient House" in the 2013 Green Builder® Home of the Year Awards. The Kenogami House is a living laboratory of high performance design and technology, called "The Most Resilient House in North America" by Alex Wilson, founder of the Resil...