Greywater & Sewage

Catalina Island: 14-Year Car Waiting List

Catalina Island is the only place in California where the number and size of road-going motor vehicles is regulated by law. For residents of the island who want to bring a personal car, this means signing up at the bottom of a 14-year waiting list. Tourists are not permitted to ferry a vehicle from the [...]

Read the full article →

Stunning Vertical Forest Skyscraper By Stefano Boeri’s

Urban living requires efficient use of space, but it can be a very environmentally-friendly lifestyle:  city residents generally live in small homes with access to walkable neighborhoods and public transportation.  One common downside is a lack of green space, but architect Stefano Boeri aims to change all that with his “Bosco Verticale” concept.  Italian for [...]

Read the full article →

Efficient Outdoor Water Use

Efficient Outdoor Water Use

A recent Metaefficient post offered some ideas for reducing water consumption in your home – but why stop there? Read on to learn about some tips and products that will help you manage water use in outdoor spaces like lawns and gardens. Best of all, you’ll reduce both your environmental impact and utility bills in [...]

Read the full article →

Reduce Your Household Water Use Efficiently

Reduce Your Household Water Use

Reducing household water usage has big-time benefits for both homeowners and for the environment: reducing strain on local water resources, cutting demand on wastewater treatment facilities, and lowering both water and sewage utility bills, to name a few. Although this is by no means an exhaustive list, we’ve put together a collection of water-saving tips [...]

Read the full article →

Chicago’s Green Alley Initiative

Urban alleyways. Grubby places that only scrappy cats or cop-show perps could love, right? Not in Chicago, where the Department of Transportation is giving them some serious TLC with its recently implemented Green Alley Program. This city-wide renovation initiative will offer some surprising environmental benefits and improve quality of life for residents.

Read the full article →

Update: Bank Of America Tower, Greenest Skyscraper In The U.S.

A while back, MetaEfficient profiled what could be the greenest skyscraper in America, the Bank of America Tower in New York City. Located in midtown Manhattan at One Bryant Park, the 945-foot tall, 55-story structure is scheduled to open later this year. Here’s a closer look at some of the groundbreaking features that should help [...]

Read the full article →

Sewage In, Clean Water Out: “Living Machines”

The people in the photo above are walking through the coils of a “Living Machine” in Emmen Zoo, Netherlands. It is a machine that filters and cleans 260,000 gallons of wastewater per day using nothing but plants. The water that comes out is drinkable.

Read the full article →

Hyper-Optimal: Create an Oasis with Greywater

The book “Create an Oasis with Greywater” by Art Ludwig is packed with information about how to reuse greywater by diverting it into your garden. What is greywater? It’s all the “waste” water produced in a house besides sewage — e.g. water from showers, sinks and washing machines. This is a key meta-efficient technique because, [...]

Read the full article →