Is living a green and healthy lifestyle wearing you out?  Now you can protect your health and your environment while you sleep.

Out of all the items in your home, your mattress is likely the most indispensable and at the same time, taken the most for granted.  Manufacture and supply schemes of the leading mattress companies require long, costly shipping chains often originating over seas, shipped, and then trucked from storage warehouses to retail stores where they end up getting trucked again to be delivered to your home.

The other problem with synthetic, petroleum-based foam mattresses is the issue of “off-gassing.”  The scent, or VOC, produced when a mattress is taken out of its package may contain toxic vapors like acetone and toluene that can lead to serious irritation of the eyes and mucus membranes and can accumulate in the body, never to be expelled.

One company hasn’t been sleeping on the ill effects of the mattress industry and has developed an innovative, completely centralized manufacture and direct supply chain from the product’s inception to your bedroom.  Keetsa Mattress Company figured out a way to eliminate harmful off-gassing using a natural, plant oil-based foam which can be recycled when it’s life cycle is complete.

Joe Alexander, General Manager of Keetsa Mattress.

You know, “green” doesn’t just mean you throw an organic cover on your mattress and now you’re a green company. We’ve addressed it from the manufacturing, from the shipping, from the distribution, to getting it to the customer’s home, to the product itself, and to ultimately, the demise of the product.

For more ways to save the planet while you sleep and the full interview with Joe Alexander, click here.

Photo courtesy of denizen8.

Lately, more than just a tree grows in Brooklyn.  Try 80 acres of the most sustainable waterfront park ever devised.

In it’s heyday, the Brooklyn waterfront was a booming center of maritime trade and manufacturing, also a great political and military base of operations for most of North America.  But as the revolutionary turf wars subsided, shipping technology increased, and modern economic realities set in, the site on which the Brooklyn Bridge Park is being constructed was for the last century or so, a miserable shell of forsaken urban decay.

Adrian Benepe, Commissioner of the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation.

It would be safe to say (that) in New York City at least and perhaps around the country or around the world, this is the world’s first almost completely recycled park.  It’s an incredibly sustainable park.  Everywhere you look and even in places you can’t see underground are things that were done here that are revolutionary and that will be probably setting a new standard on how to make a sustainable park.

Michael Van Valkenbergh Associates is the firm leading the landscape design charge on this project and have introduced progressive systems like irrigation ducts that use storm water runoff.  Recycled materials like reclaimed granite blocks from the old Willis Avenue and Rosevelt Island bridges are being reshaped for use on the promenades, and the careful extraction of reclaimed wood from existing buildings on the site, some dating back to the time of Columbus, is being reconditioned for use on park benches and the frames of new structures within the park.

While it’s only 7% complete, these home town eco sluggers in Brooklyn are looking to knock this triumph of a sustainable landscape design ball well out of the park.

For the  video on the project and full interview with Commissioner Benepe, click here and here.

Photos courtesy of jackie weisberg and Michael Van Valkenberg Associates (via the New York Times).

Downtown Cleveland gets taken over by a mall, which gets taken over by a farm.

Shopping malls haven’t shown any sign of slowing down in their rampant development since the first one opened near Kansas City, Mo., in 1922.  The economy, on the other hand, has shown woeful signs of slowing down to the extent that many retail centers are closing their doors due to the traumatic hit consumer confidence has taken in recent years.

Such was almost the case with the Galleria at Erieview in Cleveland, Ohio but it took the bright idea of Vicky Poole, their marketing and events director to do more than just drop the cost of rent.

I started, again, reevaluating the space and when this idea came for urban growing and I got, again, more involved in the local food movement, I realized that there was no reason why we couldn’t implement growing and still be a business center and an events center.  We could still remain a community and yet benefit from the plants and the local food.

Vicky says the businesses will take time to come back, just as the plants will take time to grow.  For now, the visibility and good feeling the greenhouse gives to the community is a solid foundation for a sustainable future.

For the full interview with Vicky Poole, click here.

Photo by T-FIZ.

It’s one thing to make a documentary film on America’s sustainable communities but it’s another to do it by bike.

The hand brakes have been applied to the pedal-powered production phase of a soon-to-be-released documentary film called Within Reach, a 6000 mile bike tour of communities, cohabitations, and communes shot entirely using solar-powered electronics and leg-powered bicycles.

We caught up with riders, director, and producer Ryan Mlynarczyk and Mandy Creighton encamped and rejuvenating at the Joyful Path Healing and Meditation Center out in Blue Mounds Wisconsin.

For us that meant eco villages, co-housing communities which are more of an urban, townhouse style co-habitation, a co-op where everybody lives under the same roof but you each have your own bedroom.  And then we also visited a couple of the old communes that are still around.

The movie isn’t slated to be screened until Earth Day 2011 but you can catch teasers, clips and blog posts on their website, WithinReachMovie.com.

For more on sustainable communities and the full interview with Mandy and Ryan, click here.

Photos by Ryan Mlynarczyk.

Are winter energy costs freezing you out?  Why not try some space heaters that actually save space and money?

It’s unfortunately all too common for most homes, whether in a hot or cold climate, to be improperly insulated against whatever weather conditions it faces.  This could mean thousands of dollars a year in energy costs not to mention the toll energy transmission and generation takes only to be wasted on the end user.

One solution, at least for those bracing against cold, is  selecting one of the new lines of electric space heaters available.  Here are a couple things to keep in mind when buying:

1.) Only go for newer model heaters up to date with all the current safety features which bare the UL stamp of approval.

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2.) Choose a thermostatically controlled heater, as they avoid the energy waste of overheating a room.

One such model that fits these specs and was tested here at Green Air HQ is the Dayton U33 Electric Space Heater available at Air-n-Water.com.  It’s compact, thermostatically adjustable, and even electrostatically adjustable saving us from bank account busting winter heating costs.

For more specs on space heaters and ways to stay sustainably comfy, check out the following links.

Portable Heaters (United States Department of Energy)

Space Heaters: Reviews (ConsumerSearch.com)

Eco Heater: Good for chilly rooms and heating bills (GreenUpgrader.com)

Photo by oatmeal2000.