Better Living Show Highlights
3/30/2009

The '09 Better Living Show, touted as the largest sustainable lifestyle show in the Northwest, featured booths with food, renewable energy, cleaning supplies, clothing, art, transportation, building materials, and the list continues.

Other than walking into people, fighting over a sample of bread, sitting next to someone that smells on the Yellow Line of the Max, and having sore feet from standing so long, it’s fun and exiting to see the technology and innovation that is helping to lead and aide in living for a better tomorrow.  

A couple highlights from cruising around the show happened to be based around your home. 

Light Benders has a product called Solatube, which is like a skylight, but in a tube form so it can reach rooms throughout your home.  It’s able to bend and angle light through incredible science to brighten any dark interior space like kitchens, closets, and laundry rooms. 

Now that your house is lit the natural way, walking on mud floors never looked so unique, natural, and warm.  Warm?  Yes, your tootsies will be toasty! From These Hands creates earthen floors from clay, sand, and straw.  The natural warmth of the sun will heat the flooring, or warm water can be piped through the mud slabs to heat them.

Finally, with all the literature being handed out, which is mostly informational, Growing Gardens, a local non-profit who helps builds organic gardens in urban backyards handed out a gardening tip sheet. 

Growing Gardens Gardening Tips:

• Lay red plastic on your tomato beds to heat up the soil before planting.  Tomatoes need warm soil to grow.
• Vegetables need 6-12 hours of sunlight per day…Ideal locations will have an open southern exposure
• A 2” layer of organic compost will help to keep moisture levels even and feed your plants as it breaks down. 

By: Jonathan Davis
 

Other User's Reviews   nwcfcorp , 3/31/2009 Aside from the large crowds, this year's Better Living Show was great. But who can complain? More people are being exposed to healthy living alternatives. I was really impressed by a lot of the products including the earthen floors mentioned in this article and the recycled granite slab pavers made by EcoStone. Was this review?   Witty (48)   Helpful (47)   Smart (45)

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