The Lazy Environmentalist Works Hard at Making Green Look Easy

The Green+Design conference, hosted by K+BB’s parent company Nielsen, really helped clarify my perspective on sustainable design. The programs were jam-packed with useful information, which I promised I would share with everyone. So here goes. I’d like to begin with the keynote Josh Dorfman, who hosts a radio talk show, The Lazy Environmentalist, wrote a book of the same name and founded a company named Vivavi that sells contemporary sustainable furniture.

Josh connected well with the audience and is obviously an innovative voice in the green movement. But don’t be fooled. While Lazy Environmentalist may sound like a funny title, Josh offered a more practical take on becoming green that’s more doable for the general public, but also applicable to designers.

And that is: When we make green decisions we do not need to compromise areasonable level of comfort. Josh refers to this as making an “Eco Choice.” He went on to say we have to create solutions that are grounded in reality. We should choose easy, stylish and cost-saving products to make green fit the way we live.

So how do we accomplish this? Here are a few products that make sense: The Aqus toilet by WaterSaver Technologies uses gray water from a bathroom sink to flush and saves about 5,000 gallons of water a year. Solatubes can allow daylight to penetrate areas of the house that once couldn’t be reached by windows or traditional skylights. We also need to look at reclaimed and alternate materials such as locust wood and water hyacinth.

Josh also addressed the green-washing question and pointed out that if a major corporation makes changes just so it can jump on the green bandwagon, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

I’ll sum up with a motto from Josh that I think is as thoughtful as it is simple: Sustainability is living as well as we possibly can while still being in sync with nature.

-- Jeff Holloway