Sustainable Minds | Blogs

What's Better for Green Design: Glass or Ceramic?
By Travis Lee, November 16, 2009
One of our designers here at LUNAR was recently working on a project that required a material with a cold, smooth, high-quality feel, and she asked me which was a more sustainable material, ceramic or glass. This is what I told her: Glass: There are many different types of glass, but I’ll focus on soda-lime glass here, the type most commonly used in containers, windows, etc. Glass is heavy......

Test Your Green-Q with 2009 Trivia Quiz
By Sustainable Minds, January 04, 2010
SustainableMinds offers up this year-in-review take on 2009, "taken from our perusals of some of the quirkier green stories we’ve seen this year." Go ahead: Test your green cred.......
LEEDing the Economy to Sustainability
By Ken Hall, August 25, 2009
Within the industries that create and operate our built environment, the LEED green building certification system has become a positive market force...
Six Ways to Keep Green Design Alive and Well in an Ailing Economy
By David Laituri, July 01, 2009
At a recent gathering of sustainable design professionals in Boston, there was no shortage of passion in the room and there were plenty of good ideas to share, but the consensus amongst all was......
A few words and a few degrees
By Ken Hall, February 20, 2009
During his inaugural speech, President Obama said, "...we'll work tirelessly to... roll back the specter of a warming planet." Specter is a powerful word to use, imbued with dark magic – a...
How to spend all that infrastructure money from the Obama stimulus package in a sustainable way?
By Joep Meijer, February 13, 2009
With the new administration, the green building industry cries victory and LEED is getting ready to help all federal and government agencies spend money on making buildings more energy efficient....
Taking the Hit: Not Letting Perfection Get in the Way of Progress
By Travis Lee, January 11, 2009
Recently, quite a few people have been asking me the same two questions: how do I feel about greenwashing and do I think we will see more or less greenwashing in the coming years? To which I......
LUNAR Elements Case Study - SanDisk ImageMate card readers
By Scot Herbst, November 21, 2008
It’s not uncommon that I’m asked the simple question “what exactly is product design?” It’s a fair enough inquiry – removing yourself from the product development process just long enough to...
Going down stream: a work in progress
By David Laituri, November 15, 2008
When is the right time to develop a product end of life strategy? Now, roughly – give or take a day. Even though our first product has been in-market for about a year and we shouldn’t expect to ‘......
Green Seal’s revised paint standard works to get out the VOC
By Linda Chipperfield, October 24, 2008
Because paint is one of the biggest contributors to indoor air pollution, Green Seal has recently updated its environmental standards in a new Green Seal Standard – GS-11....
If I was King I’d make the world out of Lego.
By Lorne Craig, October 04, 2008
OK, this is going to rile a lot of young, over-imaginative product designers out there, but when elected Supreme Monarch of the World, (or when my Loyal Armies seize power in a dramatic yet...
Are we prepared for the DTV switch? Do we understand the bigger-picture impact?
By Richard Kubin, September 15, 2008
As most people in the United States are aware, February 17th, 2009 marks a landmark event in the history of broadcast media – the switch from analog to digital signal broadcast for ‘free’...
Where the trash cans go moo
By Rajat Shail, August 22, 2008
One advantage of being born in a ‘developing’ nation and moving to a ‘developed’ one is the viewpoint it gives me on both worlds. Often, this sensibility cannot be defined by a ‘logical’ analysis...
The Promise of the Future
By Ken Hall, August 01, 2008
When I was 19 years old, I was feet away from my best friend as he took a chance and lost his life to a whirlpool in a western mountain stream of ice-melt. The choices he made that day cost him...

Sustainable Minds

Sustainable Minds Inc. is a greener product design software and information company dedicated to bringing environmentally sustainable product design into mainstream design and manufacturing in an understandable, empowering and credible way. Sustainable Minds is the first on-demand, software and information service that estimates a product's potential life cycle environmental and human health impacts, in a collaborative, learning work space. At the core is decision support software that enables life cycle assessment and rapid iteration of product concepts in the earliest stages of design.

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