Green Products Blog | Green Depot -

What are VOCs, and What’s the Big Deal?

If you’ve been in the market for paint lately, you’re surely seen and heard the marketing noise about low- and zero-VOC paints. You know it’s something green, and clearly VOCs are something bad, so you’re intrigued and may even have bought some of this paint by now…. But you may also be wondering: What, exactly, are VOCs?

Well, as it turns out, there is no single definition of a VOC that is agreed upon by regulating agencies worldwide. But the letters stand for Volatile Organic Compounds, which the EPA used to refer to as reactive organic gasses (ROGs), if that’s any help. Some occur in nature; others are man-made.

In the world of green products, VOC usually refers to a man-made, liquid solvent that gives off toxic fumes. You can often smell the VOCs in paint and other liquids you find in hardware stores–it’s that not-so-nice, often headache-inducing smell you get from wet paint, turpentine, varnish, and products in that vein. But a substance can continue to emit VOCs even after it has dried and you no longer smell anything, often for years at a time.

This is why VOCs are such a big deal when it comes to paint. According to the EPA, indoor air pollution is one of the top 5 hazards to human heath–and VOCs are a major contributor to it. The EPA recommends the use of low- and zero-VOC paints, and it defines low-VOC as having 250 grams or fewer VOCs per liter. GreenSeal has an even lower limit of 50 grams for low-VOC paints.

Things become tricky, however, when color is added to a base: The VOC rating applies only to the base color, not whatever pigments might be added. So be sure to find out whether your tints are low-VOC, as well.

Then there’s zero-VOC, which is of course the best option. Most zero-VOC paints actually do have very low levels of VOCs, as the EPA requires only that they have less than 5 grams per liter to carry that label. But truly zero-VOC paints do exist–to find them, you simply have to know what you’re looking for on the label.

To start you out in the right direction, Green Depot’s house line of paints and primers, Ivy Coatings, is truly zero-VOC, even when tinted. And it’s available in a huge range of colors, including a set of four subtly different premixed shades of white–for just the right white, which can be more important than many people realize.

Green Depot also carries a number of other low- and zero-VOC coating options, including non-toxic Ana Sova Food Paint (which really is made of mostly food-grade ingredients, including milk proteins), Yolo Colorhouse paints, and a range of not only paints but wood stains, polyurethanes, concrete stains and more from AMF and EcoProCote.

Yellow paint photo credit: Even Roberts/Flickr.com

On the Ceiling

So you’re renovating, or maybe even building something new, and you’ve finally finished framing out your new walls. Now you’re ready to put up your drywall and maybe some tile, or maybe even wallpaper—but what about the ceiling? Sure, you can just drywall it too (and hopefully you’ve been using recycled-content drywall), but there are several other options to consider as well.

The decision of how to make your ceiling can be influenced by a number of factors beyond your decorative choices. A few things to keep in mind are how much sound transmission in and out of the room you want to allow, whether water and/or humidity will be present, whether the room’s activities require any particular kind of acoustics, and whether you’ll be applying tiles.

Here are a number of green products designed for ceiling use that you may want to consider, and some ideas on how they might best be used in your building project.

1) Recycled Content Drywall
If you’re not already using drywall with recycled content for your walls, your ceiling may offer another opportunity to include it. Typical drywall is made of a core of mined gypsum and two outer layers of non-recycled paper. The mining of gypsum typically launches large amounts of particulate matter into the air, threatening both the respiratory health of the miners and the air quality of the surrounding areas. And like most mining, the extraction process leaves large scars on the landscape at the mining site, and often contributes to soil erosion on the slopes where it is mined.

Instead of mined gypsum, recycled-content drywall is made of synthetic gypsum—a byproduct of the process coal-fired power plants use to limit the amount of acid-rain-causing emissions they release into the air. And not only does the use of synthetic gypsum reduce manufacturing waste, but it’s purer than mined gypsum, making for drywall that’s stronger and easier to work with. As an added benefit, the paper facing used on recycled content drywall is 100% recycled.

2) Tectum Interior Ceiling Panels
A dropped ceiling of rectangular panels, typically made of sound-absorbing (acoustical) materials, is another option. A dropped ceiling consists of a grid of lightweight metal strips that are hung from either exposed beams or a drywall ceiling, which hold the panels in place without screws or adhesive. This allows for easy access to any wiring or ductwork underneath, as well as easy replacement of any panel that needs it. Acoustical panels reduce the amount of noise bouncing around within the room, while also limiting the amount of sound traveling through the ceiling to rooms above.

For a green option, Tectum interior ceiling panels are made of wood fibers that are bound together without chemicals and come from Aspen trees grown in FSC-certified forests. The air-drying, low-energy binding process uses only sand, limestone, salt, magnesium oxide (from seawater), and water that gets recycled after use. The finished panels don’t off-gas at all, and are non-toxic enough to be added to compost piles for soil amendment. So not only do you get a quieter room, for a healthier indoor environment, but you get it without hurting the outdoor environment either! And for even further reduction in the noise coming out of the room , take a look at QuietRock Soundproofing Drywall.

3) Durock Cement Backerboard
If the room you’re building is a bathroom or kitchen, or any other room where high humidity and spilled water are common occurrences, you’ll need to use backerboard –commonly called “blue board,” because a common brand is (you guessed it) blue. Backerboard is typically used underneath tiles even in dry areas, where it acts as a surface stiff enough to keep the surface from flexing and pushing them off—and in wet areas, it provides a layer of water-blocking protection for the framing and surrounding rooms.

Durock cement backerboard is not only resistant to moisture, but mold as well, protecting the room’s air quality. And concrete is so durable that it’ll be a long time before you have to replace it, which saves the waste of valuable resources. And it’s even made of recycled materials—it’s 10-20% recycled fly ash.

ceiling, ceiling tiles, drywall, green building, renovating, sheetrock

The Seasons, They Are A-Changin’: Three Ways to Insulate Your Home

September 20th, 2010 | Posted by tjones in Air Quality | Environment | Green Building | Green Homes - (8 Comments)

Here in the Northeast, the first signs of autumn have arrived: brisk evenings, golden leaves on the trees, the smell of wood smoke. As days grow shorter and the weather colder, we’ll be turning to our furnaces and stoves to keep us warm. Of course, we should keep in mind that however we choose to heat our homes – with wood, oil, or gas – there will be an environmental impact.

The more we heat our homes, the more money we spend, the more resources we consume and the more greenhouse gases we emit into the atmosphere. The EPA estimates that in the United States, approximately 4 metric tons of CO2 equivalent are emitted each year from residences – a major percentage of which is related to home heating. Since most homes rely on furnaces and boilers that burn fossil fuels, it is essential to ensure that our homes are heated as efficiently as possible, saving the individual both energy and money. Hence, the importance of insulation!

Using conventional insulation can only go so far in achieving environmental sustainability. Conventional fiberglass insulation is a suspected carcinogen, and is typically produced using new materials, by melting down glass and spinning it into tiny fibers. Those fibers are painful – touching fiberglass insulation leaves an itching, burning sensation as those fibers lodge themselves below the skin. Fiberglass insulation dust becomes airborne during installation and can become embedded in the lungs. Finally, the chemicals used to bind fiberglass batting together are often petroleum-based and are suspected to “off-gass” toxic phenol, formaldehyde, and VOCs (volatile organic compounds).

It’s fortunate that there are several green products available that can help keep homes well-insulated (indeed, better than conventional insulation), their inhabitants safe, and are more environmentally-sustainable in their use of recycled materials. They are exceptional products – composed of recycled paper, cellulose fibers, and blue jeans.

Three of these green products are featured below:

1. Bonded Logic Ultratouch Recycled Cotton Insulation is constructed from recycled blue jean material – and is remarkably soft. While touching fiberglass insulation can result in pain, cotton fiber insulation is soft enough to use as a pillow. Bonded Logic insulation in particular is chemically-treated by anti-fungals and fire retardants that are EPA-registered and environmentally sound. The R-Value (that is, a measurement of insulation efficiency. The higher the R-value, the better the material retains heat) is notably higher than that of fiberglass insulation – 3.5”-thick fiberglass insulation has an R-Value of 10.9, while Ultratouch is rated at 13.

The product is also LEED-certified and can installed easily at home. Green Depot is also able to quick ship Ultratouch Recycled Cotton Insulation in pallets to specific states. For more information on where this product can be shipped as well as all technical specifications, please click here.

2. Knauff’s EcoBatt Glasswool is an comfortable option for homeowners wanting to insulate their homes with a more familiar – and significantly safer – fiberglass option. While conventional fiberglass insulation has any number of problems – it is energy- and material-intensive in its production, it puts out significant amounts of dust during installation, and outgases formaldehyde – EcoBatt is far more kind of people and the environment. Constructed out of a minimum 30% post-consumer recycled glass bottle content, EcoBatt as contains no formaldehyde and is low-dust. Conventional fiberglass uses binding materials that are petroleum-based; EcoBatt, on the other hand, uses a binder that is made from renewable organic materials. All told, EcoBatt’s production practices and materials are more mindful of the environment and the individual – up to 70% less energy-intensive than traditional binders.

EcoBatt is also a bit more versatile than Ultratouch – it comes in a number of widths, R-values, densities, and facings. For technical specifications, you can either visit Green Depot here, or view the product brochure here.

3. National Fiber Cel-Pak Cellulose Insulation is a third option. Cellulose insulation is notably different from familiar batten insulation — it is fill insulation, meaning that it is pumped in with vacuums into walls, attics, and ceilings. Cellulose insulation is made from 100% recycled newspapers and treated with non-toxic borate fire retardant. A substantial benefit of cellulose insulation is that it fills every nook and cranny. Batten insulation, and especially fiberglass insulation, leaves large gaps between pipes and beams that can reduce insulating efficiency for the home, costing energy and money.

For installation, material, and safety specifications, you can click here.

(Autumn house photo credit to ktylerconk)

Green Your Floor With Bamboo

September 20th, 2010 | Posted by cramcharran in Environment | Green Homes | Green Products | Nature - (0 Comments)

Installing a new wood floor? Instead of traditional hardwood, you may want to consider an eco-friendly alternative: bamboo. It may be hard to imagine that reedy green plant growing wild in your yard making a good flooring material, but some varieties of bamboo (when mature and properly dried) are as hard as oak–and some are even harder.

Photo: chefranden at Flickr.com

Green Depot carries bamboo flooring by Foundations, a New York state-based company that offers click-together “floating” strand boards, as well as traditional tongue-and-groove solid-strip options, both in prefinished and unfinished varieties. Foundation’s strand planks are made of the Moso variety of bamboo, which proves to be two times harder than red oak when subjected to the industry-standard Janka ball test. And Moso isn’t a natural food supply for a pandas, so harvesting it even in the wild doesn’t endanger their habitat.

But why else is bamboo such a good choice? The reasons are many, beginning with bamboo’s rapid renewability, which makes it one of the greenest of green products used in building. A tree takes 80 to 120 years to grow to a size where it can be harvested for hardwood flooring planks, but a bamboo plant reaches maturity in only 3 to 6 years with minimal (if any) fertilization or pesticides, and it renews itself without replanting. This means it requires not only fewer natural resources to thrive, but less labor, as well. And bamboo can easily grow up to a foot a day, so it’s not just fast, but plentiful.

Photo: Ajari at Flickr.com

Bamboo is also a boon to the natural environment itself, in a number of ways. Mature bamboo has a very complex and dense root structure (which, incidentally, is why is can be so hard to get out of your garden), which goes a long way to avoid soil erosion in areas where it’s planted. Furthermore, a bamboo forest absorbs up to twice as much carbon dioxide as trees.

From a social responsibility perspective, as well, bamboo is winner—600 million people worldwide depend on income from it, and the industry employs nearly 6 million people in China alone. And as it grows in popularity, those numbers only expand.

Then there’s affordability, which ties back to bamboo’s ability to renew itself rapidly. The laws of supply and demand are at work here: A product that springs back into place quickly and with so little effort and expense can easily be kept in abundant supply, so prices for it can be lower, even in times of great demand. And its durability gives it another layer of affordability, as many kinds of bamboo flooring can go for long periods without refinishing or replacement. Several brands, including Foundations, coat their pre-finished planks with multiple layers of a water-based, zero-VOC, aluminum oxide-infused polyurethane that doesn’t off-gas at all. Nice!

And that’s not even touching on the design options bamboo flooring offers. Bamboo is available in any number of colors, many of which can be achieved using eco-friendly methods. Heating bamboo makes it darken to a rich amber color without the use of stain, and bleaching it in non-toxic hydrogen peroxide gives it a birchlike white-blond color. Its natural tone is a warm golden hue that lies somewhere in between the two, and bamboo can be colored with traditional wood stains to take it to anywhere from a medium chestnut brown to a near-black ebony.

Bamboo’s narrow-strand structure allows it to be pressed into planks in a number of different formats, unlike wood, which of course comes naturally bound into wide pieces (tree trunks). Some bamboo flooring manufacturers even offer planks made of mixed dark- and light-colored strands, for an unusual streaky look. Still others turn the plant’s fibers the short way, so the cut ends of the stalks are what make up the visible surface. The effect is a sort of small-dot pattern that is unique to bamboo.

As a side note, Green Depot also carries Plybam, an excellent companion to bamboo flooring. Plybam is plywood made entirely of bamboo instead of wood veneer, and it’s perfect for use in cabinetry, furniture, paneling or any other project that usually calls for plywood. Its edges have a multidirectional pattern that offers an alternative to plywood’s striped edges, and is attractive enough to make edge veneers a thing of the past.

bamboo, bamboo flooring, flooring, green flooring materials, rapidly renewable

Summer Entertaining in Green-Savvy Style

August 18th, 2010 | Posted by cramcharran in Green Homes | Green Products | Living Green - (0 Comments)

Are you one of the millions of Americans trying to make your dollars stretch by taking a “staycation” this summer? Hanging around the house can be a good thing. You get to tackle projects you don’t have time to get to during the year, and you can invite friends over who you never see—even though they’re local. You invested in all that patio furniture, in your deck, in your barbeque—so show it off by making a nice dinner for friends and serving it outside in the backyard.

We’ve got a couple of recommendations for green products that’ll help you entertain in style, without sacrificing your environmental values.

Soji Solar Lantern

Light up the evening with the Soji Modern Solar Lantern. These elegant lanterns have a solar panel that collects sunlight during the day, stores it in a rechargeable AAA battery, and then lights up the night with very efficient LED lights. They’re portable and freestanding–they don’t require extension cords running across the grass into the house or garage! Comes on automatically at dusk unless you turn it off. They’re made from hard plastic, so they’re durable, and they’re pretty affordable, too.

Wasara plates

Whether you’re serving chili, grilled vegetables, burgers and chicken, or old fashioned corn on the cob, make your clean-up job easier by using these cool disposables. Nope, they’re not paper or plastic. Wasara plates, bowls, and cups are made from 100% tree-free rapidly-renewable materials: sugar cane fiber (bagasse), bamboo, and reed pulp. They’re much more elegant than anything you’ll find in your local supermarket, and they fit comfortably in hand. Strong, oil- and water-resistant, good for hot and cold foods, and best of all: fully compostable. Available in multiple sizes and types.

Fair trade napkins

Use cloth napkins as an alternative to throw-away paper. These fair trade, 100% organic cotton napkins are hand woven by rural women in Guatemala using centuries-old techniques and looms. Income from weaving helps support their families and maintains ancient cultural practices. After the party, just throw them in the laundry with your colors.

Woolly Pockets "Island" planter

Finally, bag spending money at the florist, and consider this cool alternative “plant in a bag” for your table centerpiece: Woolly Pockets Freestanding Islands. They’re made of 100% post consumer recycled plastic felt, and they’re lined so they won’t leak all over a nice table. Fill them with lush plants during the summer, and bring them indoors in the fall to enjoy year-round. Made in New York by a very cool company.

NatureMill composter

When the party’s over, remember to compost your leftover food! Corn cobs, soggy salad, watermelon rinds, and stale buns can all be enjoyed by worms or bacteria and fungi. Check out the Worm Factory, and the NatureMill composter that fits under the counter in your kitchen. And several months later, you’ll have an excellent, nutrient-packed soil amendment to use in your garden outdoors, or on your houseplants.

Enjoy the rest of the summer!

Getting Stranded on…an Urban Heat Island

August 13th, 2010 | Posted by cramcharran in Air Quality | Living Green - (0 Comments)

The dog days of summer are upon us, and many of us are sweltering in the heat. If you live in a big city, you may feel worse than your country cousin due to the “urban heat island effect”. In an urban heat island, temperatures may be 6-8ºF warmer than surrounding rural areas, fields, or woodlands. Urban heat islands are caused by a combination of factors:

Loss of vegetation that shades buildings and cools the air through evapotranspiration
Hard surfaces (buildings, streets, and parking lots) that absorb solar radiation and radiate it back to the air/atmosphere
Waste heat from electrical use, water heating, car & truck exhaust, and other thermal and mechanical sources

The temperature differentials are worse at night, when hard surfaces like asphalt pavement, brick, and concrete radiate the heat they absorbed during the day back into the air. Calm air also makes it worse.

The urban heat island effect causes a number of problems. It exacerbates normal summer discomfort for everyone—causing people to crank up the air conditioner (and yes, generate more waste heat), and it makes elderly or sick people more susceptible to problems brought on by heat waves. It’s tough, and sometimes dangerous, for athletes and for those who work outdoors–such as construction workers, roofers, police officers and highway workers. Higher temperatures also increase smog formation, which boosts health risks to the elderly, children, asthmatics, allergy sufferers, and those with respiratory problems. Finally, stormwater runoff from paved urban areas causes excess warming in creeks and lakes, which can damage ecology in those environments.

There are a number of green building materials and practices that urban individuals and organizations can use to mitigate or reduce the heat island effect:

Plant trees. In summer, they create shade which reduces air conditioning loads on a building, and in winter, they shield buildings from wind and unwanted heat loss. They also produce oxygen, and create bird & animal habitat.

Green roof with walking path

Install green roofs and walls. These are vegetated, carefully engineered surfaces that support plant life, and keep the building cool. They provide other benefits, too, including improved drainage (protects underlying roof and reduces stormwater runoff), recreation for employees or occupants, and even herb or vegetable growth. Green roofs also improve air quality because plants convert carbon dioxide to oxygen, and filter out other contaminants. Although green roofs may cost $10-$15/sf more than traditional roofs, these costs are offset by energy savings, longer roof life and reduced maintenance costs, and by various grants and tax incentives.

GAF green roof system, showing drainage mat & moisture barrier

Green Roofs have enjoyed increasing popularity in Europe over the last decade, with government incentives stimulating a multi-million dollar industry. North American planners, builders and consumers are also beginning to consider green roofs for malls, schools, hospitals, and homes. In New York State, green roofs have been installed at the Bronx Zoo, Cornell University, Pace University, the Bronx County Courthouse, and at Rockefeller Center Roof Gardens.

White roof coated with Bulldog Durex.

Install a white roof to increase reflectivity (albedo), so that solar radiation is not absorbed by your roof to be re-radiated later. For flat roofs, Green Depot recommends Bulldog Durex Elastomeric White Roof Coating. It’s a flexible, mildew- and UV-resistant waterborne roofing topcoat made with 100% acrylic resins. It reflects heat from the roof surface: lowering cooling costs, and extending the life of roof membranes and surfaces. It can be used over a variety of existing roof surfaces, including metal, asphalt, masonry, and EPDM.

To learn more, visit Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory’s Urban Heat Island site, or the independent site Urban Heat Islands, or the US EPA’s site on the Heat Island Effect.