In Omaha, Neb., Travis Freeman is a bit of a local Christmas legend. Not only does he own and operate Brite Ideas Decorating – which specializes in both commercial and residential seasonal lighting – but he also is known for his efforts in putting together the Salvation Army’s  Tree of Lights, a big part of the local holiday landscape.

Omaha's Tree of Lights uses LEDs (Photo: Brite Ideas Decorating)

Christmas, of course, isn’t a famously “green” time of year, unless you are talking about the trees we cut down or the currency that seems to fly endlessly out of our wallets and purses. The spirit of the season almost insists that we throw caution (and energy) to the wind when it comes to fancying-up trees and winning the arms race on outdoor decorations.

For years, the Salvation Army was no different.

“When we had our tree outside the Crossroads Mall, Travis used incandescent lights on real evergreen trees offered each year by local residents…not very green!” recalls Susan Eustice, Divisional Director of Publications and Communications for the Salvation Army. “Travis encouraged us to think a bit more green…”

That process started about five years ago, when Freeman began to dabble in new kinds of lighting. This year, he may have outdone himself.

The 2009 Tree of Lights, made of metal, weighs more than 6,000 pounds, stands 75 feet tall, and will be illuminated by 55,000 lights and 100 starbursts. The 10-foot base features an additional 16,000 red and green lights, and the tree is topped by a star illuminated with another 2,500 lights.

An electric bill only Warren Buffett could afford?

Hardly. Freeman’s creation is built entirely with LED (Light Emitting Diode) bulbs. By his estimate, this year’s tree will use about 90 percent less energy than a similar display using traditional incandescent lighting.

“It takes about one-tenth the energy to run LED lights as it does incandescent lights,” he said. “It used to take 180 amps to run that tree. Now, the whole thing draws about 19 amps.”

When you go shopping for lights this season, you’ll find no shortage of LEDs vying for your attention, sitting on shelves right next to their incandescent brethren. Those boxes will tout savings of 80 percent or more over the older technology, an environmentally-friendly edge that could take some of the sting out of those post-holiday bills. Claims that the lights will burn twice as bright and last up to 20 years are pretty attractive, too.

The catch: A significant difference in your up-front costs.

Outdoor LED multi-colored lights

During an early November visit to a local home and garden store, we priced the incandescent mini lights we’ve used on our outdoor display in recent years against similar LEDs. A string of 100 incandescents  on a 25.5 foot length were offered at $4.99. A string of 60 warm white LED minis (20.33 feet) came in at $14.99.

Bottom line:  Making the switch is the “green” way to go on several fronts, but you’ll have to part with considerably with more cash up front to do so.

Bottom line 2: If you can pony up that cash, you’ll probably get your money back over the long haul…and maybe save yourself some other aggravations in the process.

Most folks are accustomed to trudging to the store in November after discovering that a significant number of last year’s strings mysteriously passed away in a closet, basement, or attic. And anyone who has known the joy of seeing that middle string on the tree burn out after the ornaments, tinsel, etc., have been added can appreciate the prospect of more dependable, longer-life lights.

While acknowledging the cost, Freeman says he is finding more and more customers willing to dig a little deeper on the short end.

“It’s an easier sell, because people are keeping their lights. They’re not throwing them away; they’re taking better care of them. With the old ones, they’d buy new lights every year. It’s not even worth it to keep them.”

Mindful of the price gap, some retailers are offering creative incentives. From Nov. 5-15, The Home Depot offered customers a $3 credit on old or broken strings (up to five redemptions) toward purchase of LED lighting. Online retailer HolidayLEDs.com offers a 15 percent discount for shoppers who send in their old strings to be recycled.

For those unfamiliar with the new kids on the illumination block, LEDs are a type of semiconductor that generates light when an electric current passes through positive and negative materials. Different colors and efficiency levels result from altering the composition of those materials. Early on, LEDs found applications in traffic lights, DVD players, cell phones and other electronic devices. Ongoing improvements in the technology are allowing LEDs to expand into new markets.

Today, LEDs seem to be leapfrogging compact fluorescent lights (CFL) as the next significant change in lighting technology. More than a year ago, lighting giant Philips announced it was shifting its focus from CFL to LED moving forward. Others seem to be following suit.

“We know the cost will come down and the technology will improve,” Kevin Dowling, vice president of innovation at Philips Color Kinetics, told the San Jose Mercury News.

While making the monetary commitment to LEDs can be a difficult call for the average consumer, manufacturers find themselves in a quandary as well.  Conventional business has been based on the assumption that customers need to replace bulbs regularly. Philips and others must weigh the advantages of cutting costs with the knowledge that better bulbs mean less frequent sales.

And, like hybrid cars, LED lighting is cutting edge, with all the good and bad that implies. Both have clear advantages, with a few bugs yet to be worked out.

Angel LED light (Photo: 1000Bulbs.com)

“The one thing, and it’s getting better, is the colors,” Freeman says. “Particularly with the whites and warm whites, it’s getting consistency. The reds, the blues, the greens are definitely better.”

Good enough that the citizens of Omaha will be getting an eyeful this holiday season.

“It’s an amazing tree,” Freeman says. “Every year, more and more people are attracted when we light it.”

This year, they’ll be seeing more than colors and holiday cheer. They might just be getting a glimpse of Christmas Future, too.

Copyright © 2008 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Looking to upgrade from your old, often unreliable incandescent Christmas lights to those cool, environmentally-friendly LED (light emitting diode) numbers you’ve heard so much about? The Home Depot is offering an incentive to do just that.

Between Nov. 5 and Nov. 15, you can redeem old or non-working Christmas lights and get a $3 off coupon toward the more energy-efficient LED string lights as part of the company’s second annual Christmas light trade-in. Customers are limited to five redemptions, and all of The Home Depot’s US stores are scheduled to participate.

LED lights cut energy use by about 80 percent over traditional incandescent string lights. They also are estimated to last up to 10 times longer.

So, what happens to your old lights after you part with them? According to The Home Depot Web site, here’s the recycling process:

• The light bulb coupler and the socket plug are manually clipped.
• Three byproducts result and four categories of raw materials.
• Each byproduct is independently shredded for separation, returning glass, HDPE plastics, and non-ferrous copper as well as ferrous steel.
• The prepared separated raw materials are then sent to licensed smelters for re-casting or re-molding, all in accordance with local, state and federal statutes.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Ornamental gourds (Photo: Cooksgarden.com)

If you’ve cruised the produce section at the grocery lately, you probably stopped to eye the small, colorful, oddball gourds near the pumpkins and winter squash.

You might have seen the Shenot crown of thorns, looking like a squash-like starfish (below right); the winged gourd, the mini red Turban (reminding one of a very small pumpkin with a bigger pumpkin hat), and the golf ball-sized prickles, which might make you think twice before touching them.

Shenot Crown of Thorns (Photo: Reimerseeds.com)

Autumn’s wee ornamental gourds have been staples of the harvest for many years, but time and hybridizing has produced smaller, wackier (or more beautiful, depending on your perspective) ones.

We’re talking about the colorful, warty gourds in the Curcubit family (which includes squash, pumpkins and cucumbers), not their bigger, more utilitarian cousins, hardshell gourds.

Those larger hardshells have been used for thousands of years as practical tools – spoons, dippers, bowls – as well as birdhouses, masks, pipes and even musical instruments. Throughout the centuries, artists have turned Lagenaria gourds into fascinating works of art. (Check out a sampling of some.)

But for now, we’re talking about mini-gourds such as the multi-colored eggs, the Ten Commandments, apple gourds and the huggable wooly bear.

Mini Red Turban gourds (Photo: Johnneyseeds.com)

“Think of them as cucumbers with an attitude,” Judi Fleming said. She is the point person for the American Gourd Society when it comes to talking about tiny gourds.

“I have noticed the trend of the last 10 years: The traditional bi-color pears, egg gourds, spoon gourds and crown of thorns have given way to the more popular angel wings and warty gourds,” she said.

If you buy some shiny (that’s because of a coat of white varnish or shellac) mini gourds at the grocery store, don’t think about eating them. Unlike other popular edible winter squash, such as butternut and acorn, you have missed the window of opportunity for eating small gourds.

“All gourds are edible in their young stages,” Fleming said. “In fact, most European and Asian cultures think we Americans are strange in that we let our gourds get old and hard. The ornamentals can have a slightly bitter taste.”

(OK, you can bake the tiny orange or white pumpkins if you want.)

The big question: Are they organic?

Maybe, maybe not.

Organic gourds are more likely to come from your local farmer’s market rather than the big grocery store.

Whole Foods’ produce expert James Parker spoke to a company representative, saying that they buy locally grown squash and gourds when possible, “to get them to market quicker. But they can come from anywhere.”

Prickles gourds (Photo: Johnnyseeds.com)

Right now, Whole Foods’ gourds are mostly from Indiana, North Carolina and California. “There are dozens (if not hundreds) of gourd varieties produced throughout the U.S. Some of the more common have simple names that match up with there general shape and color: apple, orange, pear, spoon, warty and egg.

“Unfortunately, the organic availability tends to be spotty, and very much local,” he told the representative.

“Yes, they can be grown organically. Any agricultural product can be produced organically if it is in compliance with the National Organic Standards,” said Miles McEvoy, director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Organic Program. Large producers of small gourds would “have to get certification from an accredited certification agency if they sold more than $5,000 of organic products.”

Growing large numbers of these gourds can be tricky, which could be one reason lots of commercial producers don’t go organic. The gourds can fall victim to a variety of bugs and disease.

Their mortal enemies come under many names: striped or spotted cucumber beetles, squash bugs, aphids and the dreaded squash vine borer. Then there are the diseases: bacterial wilt, mosaic virus, mildew and others. Fruit rot is also a problem.

Plus, since most colorful little gourds are used as decorative items, there is probably a lower demand that they be organic.

Ten Commandments gourds (Photo: Reimerseeds.com)

But you can grow them organically.

The experts at Organic Gardening magazine say all gourds can be grown organically.

“Gourds, squash and pumpkins grow very well organically. There are many certified organic seed providers, and although insect pests sometimes pose a problem, it is easy to take care of them organically.”

The gourds fare best in warm climates, but they can grow in cooler climates as well. They must be planted immediately after the final frost. The magazine’s editors advised using row covers over the plants in the first month or so, until they’re sturdy, then remove the row covers and use soapy water or a hard water spray to zap the pests.

“Gourds, squash and pumpkins are some of the plants most susceptible to absorbing and retaining pesticides, so it is especially important that they are grown organically,” said a representative from the magazine.

Wooly Bear gourd (Photo: Johnnyseeds.com)

“Plants that are shipped across the country can leave a huge carbon footprint, even if they are grown organically, so ask your grocer if their gourds are organic,” they add. If not, find a local organic farmer, they suggest.

A few tips for growing gourds:

First, they take a while to grow, and they can’t survive the first frost of fall, so very cold climates won’t suit them. They are slow growers, and they’re big and sprawling, so you need to give them plenty of room. They prefer bees for pollination.

If you need advice on growing them organically, the USDA has many resources on their website. The American Gourd Society has a cornucopia of information and links for gourd growers.

Interestingly, a Whole Foods representative said that this year, the small ornamentals haven’t been selling as well as in previous years. Plus, the grocery chain has seen an uptick in sales of the larger, hardshell gourds, such as the gooseneck and the snake.

Psyched up to get some gourds? Hurry, because after Thanksgiving they’ll vanish.

Autumn Wings blend of gourds (Photo: Johnnyseeds.com)

Resources:

Cooks Garden

Reimer Seeds

JohnnySeeds

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Those pretty knick-knacks and decorative items around your home likely have a history. There’s the crystal bowl that was an anniversary gift from a dear friend, or the candleholder your mom gave you before she died — they all hold great significance.

We’ve found 20 lovely decorative items with their own stories. Our picks come from far-flung nations or close to home, made by fair-trade artisans or creative artists using recycled, natural materials. Take a moment to shop our selections. (Most of the websites selling these goodies have lots of other green items to check out.)

1. A colorful swirl basket from Uganda: This handmade basket, above, is made with coils of natural banana fiber by women in rural Uganda. It’s 15″ wide and 3″ deep, with a loop for hanging. The money you pay goes to employment and training for disadvantaged women, children, the disabled and those with HIV/AIDS. It’s very wallet-friendly, too, at $4.95 from World of Good at eBay.

2. A detailed retabolo photo frame: Artist Alejandro Chavez of Peru hand-makes these Andean life folk art dioramas (above) reflective of life in his country. The lower panel of this one, for example, re-creates a colorful Andean feast. It’s $34, also from World of Good.

Lighting and energy experts have been scratching their heads for sometime over how to make LED lighting as effective and pleasant as CFLs, because LEDs are even more energy efficient than CFLs.

Renaissance Lighting, based in Herndon, Va., appears to be inching forward in this effort. The company will be showcasing its new, all white solid-state LED downlight fixtures at the LIGHTFAIR International 2009 at the Javits Center in New York City. The new fixtures are brighter than ever and have two and half times greater efficacy.

The new white downlights are available in a full range of light color temperatures and use Constructice Occlustion technology, which produces a uniform, glare-free and efficient output. LED lighting provides an alternative to energy-efficient CFL bulbs, which contain small amounts of  mercury.

“In less than a year Renaissance Lighting’s products have made significant gains in breadth, value, price, efficiency, output and overall performance,” said Barry Weinbaum, CEO, in a statement. Technology in the LED lights is still evolving. These lights are available for commercial projects, but not yet available for every day home use.

The LIGHTFAIR International, is a three-day lighting industry trade show and confrence.

The sickening effects of atmospheric formaldehyde may have become a hot topic thanks to FEMA trailers after Hurricane Katrina, but the problem is hardly limited to mobile homes. Formaldehyde and other volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are a widespread health concern introduced to buildings through industrial textiles like carpeting and by materials, like plywood, that use certain adhesives.

That doesn’t mean we have to accept living in toxic rooms. Researchers in Korea have measured the extent to which household plants can clean the air, and their discoveries are encouraging.

In a report whose findings are currently circulating online, Kwang Jin Kim of Korea’s National Horticultural Research Institute says that he was able to use plants to remove 80% of the formaldehyde in a room within four hours.

In rooms without the plants, levels decreased naturally by around 7% during a five-hour period.

The team tested unusual configurations of the plants, from setups in which leafy parts were trimmed away to others in which the below-ground portion of the plant was sealed off from the room’s air.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the best performer was an array of complete plants – specifically, the Weeping Fig (Ficus benjamina) and Fatsia japonica, an evergreen shrub. Microorganisms in the potting soil contributed to the air-cleaning process, the scientists believe.

Copyright ©2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

If you’re working on making your furniture environmentally correct, but you don’t want to sacrifice on style, we’ve found a handful of websites with wonderful, elegant options. Today, we’re shopping for chairs.

Earthsake sells all kinds of furniture made from sustainably harvested wood and luxury eco-friendly fabrics. We like the Milan Puff chair (at left), which comes in a variety of bentwood frames and lots of fabric for the cloud-like cushion. They’re on sale now, and range from $315 to $415 based on the grade of fabric you select.

There are several seating options to pick from at Viva Terra, including rattan chairs and very amusing “felted wool stones” that look like big soft smooth rocks. But we’re taken with the colorful Barcelona armchair, made of woven wicker with a natural kapok cushion. It’s $329.

Branch.com is a whimsical site with lots of colorful, zany, decorative items for the home. Their statement-making “knit” chair is handmade in Mexico of Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC)-certified beech or white oak and cotton rope (at right). Wood panels are held together with the rope in this comfy-looking lounge chair (it won a design award in 2005). The chairs are made to order and – gulp – they cost $5,998. But hey, it’s art!

Vivavi.com calls itself a “modern green furniture and furnishings” retailer, and their furniture designs are modern and edgy. They have lots of seating options, but their Spring chair caught our eye. It’s a single curved piece, made of bamboo with a sleek ergonomic design. It has a non-toxic finish that comes in natural, ebony and cherry, and it’s $690.

The seating options at Viesso are made with locally sourced alder, natural or recycled materials and water-based glue. The results are plush, colorful seats that can be combined with other pieces to create sectionals or love seats. The Blumen line is very modern and colorful, and the chair pictured (at left) is $732, but there are less expensive armless options. See other chair designs at Viesso as you scroll down their “chair” page.

Copyright © 2008 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Who are green consumers? And what do they want?

These are two questions being hashed about by marketers and businesses around the country as Americans become increasingly conscious of wanting products that are cleaner, less-toxic, verifiably sourced, responsibly made, and reasonable in the bargain.

Green consumers, it appears, do come in peace. And while they might not speak green,  they’re willing to learn. That’s what Sarah Beatty has concluded after a few, fast and furious years in the green building and living supply business. She’s the founder and president of Green Depot stores, which is opening its seventh store this month after less than five years in the business.

“One thing that is true is that there’s a shift occurring in the marketplace, people want to know what – beyond screwing in a light bulb – they can do,” Ms. Beatty said. But they also want to pursue “their version of green.”

For Ms. Beatty, her personal first “version” of green became clear when she was pregnant with her first child nearly five years ago. She and her husband had recently had their Brooklyn apartment renovated and the kitchen floor was “bubbling” in weird ways. Being under the nesting spell that besets pregnant women, Ms. Beatty wanted the floor smoothed out before the big event. An expert was summoned, and one possible bubbling floor culprit was identified: toxic mold.

It was enough to send any expecting mom fleeing the building. Fortunately, Ms. Beatty didn’t have to. The mold didn’t materialize. The floor was fixed.  But the concept for a green buildings supply venture took root.

“It really just woke me up,” she said.  “That incident occurred at a vulnerable time in my life…I really do care about the environment and I want to make responsible decisions. But I’d never considered this in terms of health and well-being.”

Helping consumers improve their indoor air quality remains a key driving factor at the Green Depots, located online and in  Brooklyn, Stoneham (outside Boston), Newark, Philadelphia, Greenport (Long Island), Chicago and opening this month in Manhattan.

The stores offers HEPA air filters, zero-VOC paints, floor pads that don’t use noxious glues and cabinets that forego formaldehyde – reducing or eliminating toxic fumes that have been linked to respiratory health issues.

Green Depot also sells an exclusive indoor air testing kit called the Family Air Care Home Testing Kit, that allows a person to take a sample of their indoor air and have it tested by National Jewish Health, a leading respiratory hospital, to identify offending allergy triggers, such as mold spores, dust mites and pet dander. For some people with severe allergies or asthma, the $349 kit can be covered by health insurance.

The store has other offerings for consumers who want to be green in various ways. For those who want to renovate with a light carbon footprint, Green Depot sells reclaimed wood flooring and counter tops made from recycled quartz shards and also from recycled industrial waste glass. The latter, called IceStone, is made in Brooklyn.

Confused about light bulbs? There’s a dizzying array on the market, not just at Home Depot and Lowe’s and online at 1000Bulbs.com, but at many home supply stores.

For any given lighting job, you may find yourself confronted with several types of bulbs that could work — CFLs (compact fluorescent bulbs), a halogen or two or ten, and some of those ongoing, but supposedly outgoing, incandescents. Conversely, for specific needs, like say the flame-shaped bulbs you need for your chandelier, you might find the choices wanting, perhaps there’s an incandescent available, but not an EnergyStar CFL.

To shine some light on these issues, GE has set up websites that are, frankly, incredibly comprehensive. (But then this is where they really shine, eh?) The result is that you can study the specs on bulbs in every shape and size, for indoor, outdoor and specialty use. There’s a new component, just announced today, where you can “Find Your Lighting Style” by answering some quiz questions and then listening to tips from a non-threatening, bespectacled fellow who’s apparently a really bright bulb in the bulb department. It’s helpful, and interesting.

Unfortunately, we, and you, may not always have a great deal of time to fiddle around figuring out that you’re a “fuzzy slipper” type person who likes romantic lighting in a game room. In other words, the new website (and related websites) that GE has put up can be nearly as mentally taxing as pacing around the lighting department of your local big box store wishing for someone to just hand you the right item.

GE does cut to the chase with several pages of charts about light bulbs, called Bulb and Fixture Basics, where you can compare and contrast lighting choices. There you can click on a certain shape or type of bulb — like a Blunt Tip or a Tube Shape or a PAR light — and learn all about it. You’ll quickly pick up that halogens and CFLs last longer than incandescents. This tool tells you the estimated life hours for bulbs and their voltage and lumens, so you could jot down what you need and then go buy it somewhere.

If you want to stick strictly to CFLs, GE has a few pages devoted to them, including this one that demonstrates how a single 13 watt CFL can save you $34 over the life of the bulb compared with a 60 watt incandescent.

There’s also a glossary to help you sort out terms in what turns out to be a vast lexicon, explaining words  such as Amperes, Ballast and Coefficient Utilization. You’ll have to be your own guide as to what info you can use.  You can see it gets pretty deep and we only got to the “C”s.

Some useful info about color is embedded in the glossary, where it explains that the Correlated Color Temperature (CCT) can tell you how blue or yellowish the light cast will be. Color is measured on the Kelvin scale, with the lower numbers representing more yellow and “warm” colors and higher numbers, up to 6000 for “daylight”, being “cooler”. This has been a dicey area for CFLs, which started out on uneven ground; aside from flickering, humming and turning ghostly in cool air in their early days (and sometimes even lately), CFLs became notorious for casting rays that seemed unnaturally greenish or blueish.

Knowing the CCT or Kelvin rating that you’re seeking might help you avoid this problem. It is certainly better than diving in uninformed. But these color definitions can only go so far in virtual reality. To see what “daylight” looks like in your ochre bathroom or on your fuzzy slippers, you’ll have to try one out. Or at least see it. Which means, you may have to go to the store, to the lighting department…

(Photo credit: GE Biax bulb for restaurants and offices, GE)

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Though bibliophiles instinctively recoil at the idea, the fact is that some books are good for nothing: outdated science texts, surplus copies of bestsellers everyone owns, current-events hack jobs by disreputable writers looking to make a quick buck. If you can’t even give a book away, what’s to be done with it?

While it is possible to recycle old books, you likely can’t do it in your curbside bin: The glues and binding materials don’t play well with the machines used by most municipal programs. If you’re graduate designer Laura Cahill, you make furniture out of them.

Cahill, who exhibited some of her wares at London’s New Designers event, was looking around for waste goods to use as raw material when she thought of books, which have some built-in structural properties that lend themselves to a variety of uses. The most appealing of the works she showed, a set of vases, isn’t new — you may have come across something similar in a nice museum’s gift shop — but two other objects are more novel. In one, she drills through two stacks of books, turns them on their sides, and bolts them to wood to make a stool; in another she extends the flower-vase process vertically to make a sensuously curved floor lamp. (Don’t worry, she doesn’t put anything flammable near the bulb.)

Cahill’s work is popping up on enough blogs that it may not be long before artsy types around the country are turning their college computer science and history texts into bandsaw-sculpted objets d’art.

Copyright © 2008 | Distributed by Noofangle Media

So you need to replace your mattress, and you want to do the green right thing, for your health and for the environment. You may be trying to reduce your overall carbon footprint, or perhaps to choose a product that’s better for your health. Ideally, you can do both.

Unfortunately, there is a plethora of “natural,” “green,” “eco-friendly” mattress solutions out there, some with a hefty price tag. How’s a consumer to know what’s worth springing for – and what’s not?

Conventional mattresses are very likely to contain chemicals, some potentially toxic to humans and/or harmful to the environment. One way to go green is to choose a mattress with fewer chemicals or no chemicals.

My husband and I went the less-toxic, rather than 100 percent chemical-free, route. We bought a new mattress from Keetsa, which offers an alternative to the traditional memory-foam mattress. We had been shopping for a Tempurpedic because we loved the feel of “memory foam” (made of visco-elastic polyurethane). But polyurethane, a petroleum product, releases gasses from volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that can cause respiratory harm. They’re also highly flammable, which makes them more likely to be treated with chemical flame retardants.

Friends who were in the same boat recommended Keetsa. We zipped over from the mattress discount warehouse to Keetsa’s San Francisco showroom, lay down on the Tea Leaf Supreme, (pictured below) a mattress they said contained lower-emission memory foam blended with green tea leaves, anti-bacterial silver and organic cotton. We were instantly transported to mattress nirvana.

The price, at $1,759, was a little higher than Tempurpedic, which runs about $1,499 for the lowest-priced model, but we felt good about the reduced VOC emissions (almost zero, according to Joe Alexander, the sales and marketing director, pictured), and the fact that our mattress and its modular box spring were packed in boxes we could fit into our car. Keetsa’s mattresses are made in China in a Keetsa-owned factory, Alexander said, which is is “ISO 900″ rated for quality management and pays a “living wage.”

There are other green mattress options for chemically sensitive people, or those who are committed to 100 percent organic materials. Northern California-based Lifekind, Inc. makes what it says are 100 percent organic, chemical-free mattresses in its Yuba City factory. (Their “organicpedic” natural rubber mattress is pictured above.) The company was started by chronically chemically sensitive Walt Bader, who wanted to make beds in which he could sleep.

Sylvia Seymour, a Lifekind representative, said, “It comes down to what we’re exposing ourselves to for a third of our lives.” Lifekind’s mattresses are made from three ingredients: pure wool (used both as stuffing and quilting material and as a flame-resistant barrier), certified organic cotton, and 100 perent natural rubber, harvested from rubber trees, imported in powder form in tightly sealed metal drums, and reconstituted in the U.S. and formed into the mattress core.

Lifekind sells organic mattresses with metal inner-springs as well. Lifekind’s prices for king-sized mattresses, until Sept. 1, 2008, range from $2,595 for the “Euro” (which is a completely natural-rubber mattress) to $3,695 for the OrganicPedic, a three-layer natural-rubber bed geared toward people with pressure point discomfort. Other companies offering fully natural rubber mattresses with organic wool and cotton include FloBeds ($1,949 to $2,949) and Organic Mattresses, Inc. All three companies make and ship their beds from their own U.S. manufacturing facilities.

Conventional mattresses may have chemicals in the materials they’re made of (typically polyester, polyurethane foams, synthetic latex, Styrofoam and nylon), with additional chemicals introduced in the form of flame retardants, required by the government.

A 2007 national fire-resistance standard for mattresses requires a tougher test than ever before, resisting ignition when exposed to open flames. Mattress manufacturers can make mattresses meet the standard any way they choose. Some use fire-retardant chemicals. Some use chemical-free, naturally fire-resistant fabric barriers. Some use a combination of both.

A mattress made from organic cotton or wool doesn’t necessarily mean it’s free of fire retardants or other chemicals, but, because these materials are more inherently flame-resistant than foam, they require fewer or no added chemicals to meet safety standards. Rubber is naturally flame resistant and wool is being increasingly used as a non-toxic fire-resistant barrier in mattresses. Organic materials – those grown without pesticides – are a greener choice because they are better for the environment.

However, Sonya Lunder, a senior analyst at Environmental Working Group, a health and safety watchdog group, said, “Organic fabrics don’t necessarily offer any health and safety benefits to the consumer.”

The Environmental Working Group is concerned about health and safety hazards, though, and some mattresses do present such dangers to consumers.

The group has published research on PBDEs, polybrominated diphenyl ethers, which have long been used in foam furniture as flame-retardants — and have been found to cause developmental harm. Thankfully, the most commonly used form of these chemicals was withdrawn from the U.S. market in 2005. So you can be pretty sure your new U.S. or European-made mattress is free of the banned PBDEs.

But your new mattress could have other chemical flame retardants in it, such as brominated hydrocarbons or chlorinated TRIS, a cancer-causing chemical that was banned from children’s sleepwear in 1977. Most manufacturers won’t tell you which chemicals they use as flame-retardants because they consider it a trade secret. As the environmental group’s Lunder said, “There isn’t really any system for directing manufacturers toward the least-toxic products.”

And toxic they can be, some consumers claim. One previously healthy Texas woman, Tanya Tollefson, shared a horror story about health issues both she and her husband experienced that started as soon as they brought their new standard mattress home. Tollefson said the couple’s symptoms ranged from weepy eyes, to severe headaches and tinnitus. These symptoms continued unabated for two months until they replaced the mattress with a wool-wrapped, 100 percent natural latex one from FloBeds (pictured above).

“We got the mattress in the home and within the first week we started noticing these health issues,” said Tollefson, a mother of three in her 30s. “Several that started occurring at the same time, and they finally went away or subsided after the mattress was out of the house.”

“As soon as the mattress was gone, Damian’s headaches were gone. The weepy eyes quit.”

While they don’t know for certain whether their symptoms were related to chemical flame retardants, or the mattress materials, or both, theirs is not an isolated example – other consumers share their mattress-related health issues at Chem-Tox, a website put together by a professor at the University of Florida.

As Lunder mentioned, few U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulations exist to monitor indoor air quality, but there is an independent certification, Greenguard, that can give consumers some measurable information about the levels of chemicals their mattresses release into the air.

The Greenguard Certification Program is an industry-independent, voluntary third party testing program for low-emitting products and materials, overseen by a non-profit organization, the Greenguard Environmental Institute. The Greenguard Online Product Guide features products which are regularly tested to ensure their chemical and particle emissions meet acceptable indoor air quality guidelines and standards. A search on the guide turned up 16 mattresses with Greenguard certification, from three companies: Lifekind, Naturepedic (baby products), and Organic Mattresses, Inc.

The Environmental Working Group maintains a list of PBDE-free products, including mattresess, cribs and futons. IKEA is one company on the environmental group’s lists as phasing out all PBDEs from their products. European Sleepworks, also on that list, sells mattresses certified by a Swiss association, Oeko-Tex (which claims to thoroughly test its textiles for harmful chemicals and health hazards).

Companies that sell greener products sometimes go the extra mile to try to green their business model as well. Both Keetsa and FloBeds compress and pack their mattresses into boxes that fit in a standard car (Keetsa) or can be shipped by standard shippers like UPS (FloBeds). Keetsa doesn’t use delivery trucks, and sales and marketing director Joe Alexander said they could fit five times as many mattresses into a standard shipping container than traditional mattress companies, further reducing the business’ overall carbon footprint.

The bottom line? A little research can go a long way towards a greener night’s sleep.

“Critical mass” may not be the most comforting metaphor to use about coverage of radiation in kitchen countertops, but it’s hard to resist. After stories by such high-profile outlets as The New York Times and Associated Press, long-simmering concerns about granite counters have become sufficiently mainstream that Stephen Colbert can joke that, on the upside, the counter in a new McMansion might do double duty as a microwave.

Much of the attention centers on work done by Rice University professor W.J. Llope, who as the Houston Chronicle recently reported has made unsettling findings in his study of granite available from Houston-area dealers. In a sample of 55 stones, Llope tells the paper, he found some that “could expose homeowners to 100 millirems of radiation — the annual exposure limit set by the Department of Energy for visitors to nuclear labs — in just a few months.”

That’s because the stone can contain uranium, which produces gamma radiation and radon gas. As the Times summarized the situation, “The E.P.A. recommends taking action if radon gas levels in the home exceeds 4 picocuries per liter of air (a measure of radioactive emission); about the same risk for cancer as smoking a half a pack of cigarettes per day.” Their story featured a homeowner’s kitchen where “readings were 100 picocuries per liter.”

None of the reports assert that this is something, as Llope put it, for homeowners to “lay awake worrying themselves to death about.” And naturally, stone dealers are quick to downplay any risk: The Marble Institute of America has posted a response online including such headings as “Radioactivity in Granite: It’s Natural” and asserting that the bad publicity is being generated by companies hoping to sell synthetic alternatives to granite. The MIA response notes that soil and concrete, and even well water and outdoor air, emit the vast majority of radon found in and around homes.

If that’s all there is to the issue, of course, granite purveyors should welcome the researchers’ call for more testing of household stone, if only to clear the air of doubt.

• Should sampling show that your home’s radon exceeds the EPA’s safe threshold of 4 pCi/L, the government agency recommends further testing. To find qualified radon testers in your area see the EPA’s radon info. Or visit the National Environmental Health Association website, which also hosts a list of radon professionals.

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