Melbourne Water, a water supply company owned by the Victorian State Government, is encouraging Australian residents to create 10,000 rain gardens – and they’re already up to 7,804! A rain garden is a water-saving garden that is designed to capture stormwater from hard surfaces such as driveways, patios and roofs via downpipes after it rains. The water supply company has set up a website with information on designing, creating and caring for rain gardens – no previous experience necessary.

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Post tags: container gardening, eco gardening, Gardening, gardens, green garden, green gardening, landscape design, raingardens, rainwater collection system, rainwater runoff, water filtration, water issues, water saving, water use

The municipality of Zwolle in the Netherlands invited four design firms to submit proposals for a new community center for this up-and-coming city, and they awarded first prize to MoederscheimMoonen Architects for Het Anker. The 3,000 square meter building is topped with a lush green roof, and it aims to take sustainability to a whole new level that the entire community can enjoy.

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Post tags: community center, eco design, green design, Het Anker, insulation, landscaped roof, mixed-use development, MoederscheimMoonen Architects, rainwater runoff, sustainable design, the netherlands, Zwolle

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Post tags: 2014 world design capital, Cape Town, carbon sink, eco design, Green Building, green roof, hemp, hempcrete, noordhoek, planted roof, rainwater runoff, South Africa, Sustainable Building, sustainable design, the hemp house, tony burden

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Post tags: Chiba Minamiboso, Daylighting, eco design, green design, Japan, rainwater runoff, rosewood, Seaside home, shell house, sustainable design, Sustainable Materials, Takeshi Hirobe

Let’s be clear – paving a surface does not reduce storm water run-off, but if you must create a street, parking lot, driveway, or any other form of this detriment, an apples-to-apples comparison between pervious concrete and asphalt paving will show many exciting benefits from this innovative form of paving. First of all, those little air pockets mean less material overall, and with the cost of oil as unstable as the resource itself, petroleum-based asphalt is no longer the cheapest form of paving. For the first time in history, the cost of concrete and asphalt have reached comparable dollar values. Add in the cost of additional storm water management devices – grids of piping directed towards drains and retention ponds, and suddenly permeable concrete starts making a lot more sense. Then there is the environmental cost of leaching toxic chemicals, such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) used as a sealcoat on asphalt, into what should be nature’s flow of water back to the ground table.

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Post tags: green building strategies pervious pavement, green design, green landscaping, permeable pavement, rainwater runoff, stormwater run-off, sustainable design