Not a Chia Pet, a Chia house, this takes “one with nature” to another level. Yes, this house is off the grid. Yes, it is powered by solar panels. The differentiating factor however, is that this house is covered almost entirely in farmable land. The house features a sod covered roof which reduces energy absorption by half. The roof is covered in wildflowers and native grasses and is essentially, a garden in disguise. Located on California’s coastline in Big Sur the location is perfect for a project like this.

This grass house is “ground breaking” in more than one sense. The flighty wing shape structure which protrudes from the earth in a somewhat spherical way, is aerodynamic to the 100 mile winds at Cooper Point. Muenning’s masterpiece is powered entirely by solar provided by the many panels across the rooftop amongst the garden.

This project was created by architect Mickey Muenning, a 74 year-old architect clearly determined to take sustainable design to a new standard. Muenning consulted with botanists, geographers, and architects before he started building. Even the windows and doors are strategically placed beneath the sod roof to expand upon the naturally beautiful view of the California coastline .

The building process paralleled the environmentally conscious nature of the finished structure. During construction, botanists researched the building site and noted areas containing endangered plants, these were preserved to refrain from disturbing the natural landscape.

The overall look and feel of Muenning’s dream “green house” seems to be something from exactly that, a dream turned reality.

Paddling out into the ocean, entirely surrounded by nature, one may never think that surfing is actually not particularly environmentally friendly or conscious. How is this? Wetsuits and surf boards. Until recently, surfboards were created using foam blanks, or cores, which produced extremely toxic waste when disposed. To add insult to injury, wetsuits also consist of a material that is extremely hazardous when discarded. Luckily, San Clemente based business partners and surf industry veterans, Joey Santley and Steve Cox recently introduced Green Foam Blanks and ReSurf Recycling which features the first ever high performance recycled polyurethane surfboard blank. This also includes an environmentally sound means of recycling the toxic waste produced by discarded surfboards as well as the neoprene wetsuit scraps from the cutting floor. After these hazardous materials are recycled they are then transformed into a number of products such as asphalt for paving roads using a proprietary, patent-pending cryogenic methodology. Additionally, wetsuit companies such as O’Neill and Quiksilver have agreed to hand over all unused wetsuit materials to be rendered into 100% recycled yoga mats.

Producing eco-friendly foam blanks that are as durable and high performance as all modern day shapes and materials, Green Foam Blanks has already
provided blanks to some of the industry’s top surfboard manufactures, including Matt Biolos, Channel Islands, Rusty, Doc, Timmy Patterson and Pat Rawson. Green Foam Blanks are now manufactured at Just Foam in Oceanside, Calif.

This is an astonishing solution for the surf industry, particularly in California, as it has been calculated that between Los Angeles and the Mexico border nearly 1,000 surfboards are produced every day. Additionally, about 20% of the foam used to create these boards ends up in landfills along with the toxic materials used to finish each board, resulting in an enormous amount of waste produced by the surf industry, an industry that profits off of surfers which ironically enjoy a natural relationship with the ocean and nature.