Wednesday, April 15, 2009

A New LEED Certified Home in our Midst



So I was at the Great Green Expo a few weeks ago and I met this guy who had a booth at the show. His name was Ave Topel. He proceeded to tell me about how he and his wife, Vicki, recently built a LEED Certified, sustainable home in nearby Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. So we talked some more and I realized I had read a story about this couple and their home in the Community News paper months ago. Long story short, Ave gave my wife, baby and I a tour of his home couple of days ago. The home is gorgeous. A beautiful blend a natural materials, sustainable building methods and modern comforts and conveniences. Turns out Ave and Vicki wrote a book about their journey in building a sustainable home, and they give very thorough educational tours of the home. Although the tours cost a little money, it is absolutely crucial for anyone even casually considering building a sustainable home. It will light a fire inside you and inspire you toward your dream.

So visit the Topel's website, schedule a tour and buy their book. Check out the book and movie reviews and see for yourself. I don't intend for this to be a commercial for them. I absolutely feel that their book and the tour are worth the money to anyone interested in sustainable living. Also read some of the articles published about their home and the LEED certification process.

Here's to sustainable living in Delaware!

Monday, April 13, 2009

(More) Change is in the air...


Well, since everyone else has been promoting change, we figured we had better jump on the bandwagon. Not really, but we have made some changes to SustainableDE.com in order to make the site more user-friendly, useful and, well, better.

As you'll notice, our home page has undergone a bit of a makeover. It now features a blog feed with the photo, title and teaser for each of the 5 most recent posts from our blog. We've done this because the site is now going to be centered around our blog, which will serve as a news feed of what's currently going on with sustainability in Delaware. In addition to reading our thoughts and ideas, you'll also be reading posts from industry professionals and experts on topics related to sustainable living. And as time allows, we'll be imbeding the blog into the site instead of hosting it with Blogger.

You'll also notice that the Sustainable Products & Services Finder down the left side of the page has undergone some updates as well. Our list of sustainable businesses has been growing quite a bit. So to accomodate all those businesses we grouped them into their respective categories and added drop-down menus. We did this because if we didn't do it the page would be REALLY long, leaving a ton of white space in the center column of the layout. And that's no good. So we fixed it. Hope you like it.

We want to hear from you. If you have any suggestions on how we can improve this site, please contact us. We're constantly striving to make this an excellent and fun resource for all of you. And in order to do that, we need to hear what you think.

Talk to you soon!