Photo: Flickr , CC But you can never find one when you need it… According to a new regional survey, the states of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin together have 1,260 square kilometers of paved parking lots, or 5% of urban land use. That’s about 2.5 parkings per car, but that’s not even counting street parking, private parkings, and parking structures . If you add all of this together, you get about 3 to 3.5 parkings per car and a higher percentage of urban land use…. Read the full story on TreeHugger

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Did You Know That Many U.S. States Have 3.5x More Parking Lots Than Cars?

Images via Piezo Shower Showers are an issue for both water use and energy use for heating the water used while bathing. But the Piezo shower aims to cut down on the energy problem. It is designed to capture the energy of the water running through it in order to heat said water. With an award-winning prototype already out, the Piezo Shower shows us what the future of bathing might be. … Read the full story on TreeHugger

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Piezo Shower Heats Water Without Electricity

Cityscapes Frank Gehry is often a provocative old curmudgeon. Blair Kamin quoted him speaking last month in Chicago, criticizing green building and LEED: When Pritzker asked Gehry about energy-saving green architecture and global warming, t… Read the full story on TreeHugger

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Frank Gehry Starts Architectural Bunfight with Comments on LEED and Green Building

Designboom We don’t quite know what to do with human bodies. Putting them in the ground takes up a lot of space, and putting ashes in a jar is just so useless and boring. Dutch artist Wieke Somers has a better idea: she puts them into a 3D printer and turns them into something useful. The late Anne Lindeboom makes a rather nice looking toaster…. Read the full story on TreeHugger

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Ashes to Ashes, Dust to …Toasters?

A book vending machine in Hamburg, Germany. Photo by Hamburger Automatenverlag . Lots of people talk about the need to get kids and adults “in the habit of reading,” but one German publisher has taken this idea to somewhat literal — and very clever — lengths by recycling machines that used to feed bad habits into devices that encourage good ones…. Read the full story on TreeHugger

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Clever Reuse in Hamburg: German Publisher Sells Books out of Old Cigarette Vending Machines

Images via Yanko Design Portable wind power is, on the whole, a failure for a viable way of gathering up a charge for gadgets. There are a few winners out there on the market, such as the HyMini, but personal wind turbines are really only a good idea if you’re a cyclist and want to keep your iPod turned on during your commute from home to work. And even then a charger that runs off your pedal power is probably a better option. Still, the

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Portable Solar Windmill Gathers Gusts for Gadgets

Snow Peak makes camping equipment. But as our lifestyles become more mobile and our homes become smaller, furniture that is light, minimal and can be folded up when it isn’t needed makes some sense. The stuff is beautifully made and looked as good as much of the more conventional furniture…. Read the full story on TreeHugger

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Camping at Home: Minimalist Living from Snow Peak

Last year at ICCF the material du jour was felt; while its presence is still being, well, felt, this year the stuff that dreams are made of is cork. And not just thin sheets of cork but big honking blocks of the stuff. It is post-industrial recycled cork (what is left after the wine corks are cut out), ground up and compressed with a polyurethane binder. The importers, Ecosupply , have been using Suberra Cork for kitchen counters for years. … Read the full story on TreeHugger

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The Designer’s Material of the Year: Cork

What do you think? Our friend Clarence Eckerson Jr. rode around New York with Randy Cohen, author of “The Ethicist” column for the NY Times Magazine. Mr. Cohen is obviously passionate about cycling and raises many good poin… Read the full story on TreeHugger

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Randy Cohen: Should Cars be Allowed in NYC’s Central Park? (Video)

When I first head about the MusicLite from Osram Sylvania, combining an LED light fixture with a wireless sound system, I was reminded of Saturday Night Live with Chevy Chase selling Shimmer! “It’s a floor wax! No, it’s dessert topping!” But in fact it does make some sense. … Read the full story on TreeHugger

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MusicLite Combines Audio System and LED Bulb in One Fixture. The Question is: Why?