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Efficient: Eating Weeds

Weed ‘Em and Reap is a light-hearted but informative introduction to the free bounty of wild foods in lawns and woods, prairies and pastures. Even if you have no intentions of brewing up a crock of dandelion wine or tossing a salad of sour dock and purslane, you will enjoy reading Roger Welsch’s adventures in [...]

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The Healing Powers of Peppers

Chile peppers contain one of the most effective curative substances in the world — capsaicin. While many people enjoy eating hot and spicy food they are not aware of the therapeutic properties of chile peppers. The authors of The Healing Powers of Peppers present a wealth of scientific and medical information, including personal testimonies about [...]

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Building Green: A Complete How-To Guide

This practical book is the first step-by-step green building guide we’ve seen. It is packed with photographs illustrating building techniques like Earth Plastering, Straw Bale Construction, Living Roofs, Cordwood Building and Cob Building. At over 600 pages, this hefty guide is useful for anyone wanting to see the nitty-gritty details of green building. The author’s [...]

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Better Basics For The Home: Less Toxic Living

You can make household and personal care products at home. The mixtures you create will be healthier and of a higher quality than those found in stores. Once you have the right ingredients, mixing them up is quite straightforward. The book, Better Basics for the Home, offers more than 800 simple alternatives to toxic household [...]

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The Solar House: Free Heating

People often think of using solar energy for producing electricity, but it is actually easier to harness the power of the sun to heat your home. It’s free heat that has been utilized since ancient times but few modern architects or builders really understand the principles involved. The Solar House, by Dan Chiras, explains architectural [...]

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Earth Sheltered Houses

Earth sheltered houses make use of earth or “berms” for protection against the natural elements. These homes can be complete underground homes, or homes which are protected by earth on just one side. The major advantage of this style of building is that the house has a constant and comfortable temperature throughout the year, so [...]

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“Green Building Products” Released

BuildingGreen has recently released the GreenSpec Directory of environmentally preferable building products and materials. It includes more than 1,850 listings that designers, builders and building owners can use in identifying products to improve the environmental performance of their buildings. This increased availability of a diverse range of such products and building materials is helping architects [...]

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Book Review: Field Guide To Sprawl (De-Metaefficient)

Who would have thought sprawl could be so entertaining? I guess its the combination of Dolores Hayden’s extensive collection of sprawl coinages and the aerial photography by Jim Wark that makes this book an intriguing coffetable read. By glancing through the pages you see examples of curious sprawl phenomena such as “Pork Chop Lots”, “Boomburb”, [...]

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“Biodiesel”: Book Review

Greg Pahl has just released a new book about Biodiesel. Pahl is the author of the informative book Natural Home Heating, which we featured previously. We like biodiesel because it a renewable fuel that can replace conventional diesel worldwide without the need for massive infrastructure change. Here is a review of the book: After setting [...]

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Clumping Bamboos: The Ones To Grow

Many people are reluctant to plant bamboo because they are afraid it will spread like wildfire and have the entire neighborhood up in arms against them. But there’s a simple solution to this problem — plant the right kind of bamboo — the “clumping” kind. The invasive kind is the “running” bamboo which probably should [...]

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