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Bamboo buyer beware, says Kelly LaPlante.

"This is one of the biggest areas for greenwashing," she told me during a tour of a suite she redesigned on behalf of Lexus at San Francisco's Fairmont Hotel. (As part of a marketing campaign, Lexus is sprucing up hotel suites in San Francisco and Washington, D.C, The Fairmont one costs $869 a night, but you get to use a Lexus hybrid V8 while you're there.)

A coffee table from Lexus

(Credit: Michael Kanellos/CNET Networks)

A lot of companies offer bamboo flooring and panel so they can sell a green product, but many of them also use toxic adhesives and other chemicals that take away the advantages of using bamboo. Bamboo grows fast and needs little fertilizer, making it a relatively green building product.

Some also grow it in distant places and truck it in, eliminating further environmental advantages. You've got to dig into the suppliers to figure out if you're buying green. Later this year, she will set up a site that rates various building suppliers on how green they really are. It should be good reading.

Other remodeling tips from LaPlante:

• Recycle as much as possible. She recently remodeled three cottages in Venice, Calif. They reused drywall and so much material that they didn't even need a dumpster out front. The less stuff that ends up in the land fill, the better.

"When you demolish something, are you demolishing or carefully removing," she said.

That footstool/table you see in the picture is an example of recycling. It's made out of leather found in old Lexuses.

• Green is not necessarily a statement. You can consciously pick green materials, but it doesn't have to be a theme. In fact, self-conscious green will likely look dated in the future.

"We try to make things that don't look like green design," she said.

What do energy hogs deserve for the holidays? Earth Aid Kits are a not-so-subtle hint to those who leave the lights on when they leave the room and the faucet on while they brush their teeth.

The customizable packages start at $75 for a dorm room, $80 for an apartment, and $99 for a home. The accompanying Web site offers carbon calculators designed to tally a household's needs and potential resource savings.

Thrown in the dryer, these balls are supposed to help dry clothes faster.

(Credit: Earth Aid Enterprises)

A family of three would save $460 in energy bills and 7,442 pounds of carbon after using a kit for a year, the company suggests.

Depending upon the need of each home, each kit includes a combination of programmable thermostats, smart power strips and timers, fluorescent bulbs, LED night lights, low-flow shower heads, tire pressure gauges, and weather sensors.

Recent college graduates launched Earth Aid Enterprises out of Washington, D.C.

(Via Sustainablog)

Call it building-integrated solar power for cookie-cutter housing.

DRI Energy has developed roofing tiles with solar cells built in them. For commercial customers, it has solar panels that literally glue onto flat roofs. The products, branded under the Lumeta name, will be available in the second quarter.

The Lumeta roofing tiles have solar cells embedded to fit in with the roof line.

(Credit: DRI Energy)

The green tech company sells to builders of commercial constructions, like retail outlets and office buildings, and developers of tract housing, large developments of new homes.

The problem with installing solar electricity in these types of developments is that builders don't want to work solar panels and the racking systems, said Stephen Torres, chief operating officer at DRI Energy. "They don't do rack installs unless they have to," he said.

In the southwest United States, where DRI Energy operates, many roofs aren't strong enough to support a large installation of solar panels, he added. And residential customers in many cases would prefer not having visible panels.

At the same time, there is growing interest in solar power because it's cleaner and it's a hedge against rising electricity prices. So, DRI Energy has designed roofing tiles that have the solar cells within them.

The Lumeta Power-Ply is designed to stick onto flat roofs, eliminating the need for racking.

(Credit: DRI Energy)

They start with standard terra-cotta colored s-tiles or flat concrete tiles and add a cavity to hold the wiring and solar cells which convert light to electricity. The added photovoltaic cells make their roofing tiles slightly thicker than tiles but are far less noticeable than adding flat panels, Torres said.

For business customers, it has designed solar panels that stick onto a flat roof with an adhesive. That "peel and stick" approach eliminates the need for brackets, said Torres.

Placing panels flat on the roof does have drawbacks. The panels will not generate as much electricity as others that are tilted to optimize the sun angle. Also, they will get hotter than rack-mounted systems which benefit from an air flow below them. That extra heat will lower their overall efficiency.

The company hopes to make up that loss with lower installation costs because there is less labor involved and they eliminate the cost of the racking, Torres said.

A Cambridge, Mass. home is expected to get the highest rating from the Green Building Council at what appears to be market prices.

The two-unit building, which I took pictures of while it was being built, has got many of the green features you could think of: bamboo flooring, air-tight insulation, and a combined solar electric and hot water roof.

The developer and designers of the house--Sustainable Living and PowerHouse Enterprises--said on Friday that they expect the house to get Platinum certification, joining only about a dozen other residences with that rating.

And the price for this two-bedroom, two-bathroom townhouse in a desirable neighborhood? It's listing for $869,000, which appears to be in line with local prices.

Typically, green homes are custom-built for very wealthy people with a team of architects.

Getting the price to market prices is the driving idea behind PowerHouse Enterprise, according to company executives. To keep costs down, the designers use off-the-shelf components and assemble the home at the factory. It is delivered by truck and put into place by a crane.

Utility bills for the house should be 70 percent lower. Savings from space heating should be about $2,000 a year, according to PowerHouse.

For a look at PowerHouse Enterprises' PowerPod, a small modular home, see these photos and a video.

Green homes come from factories.

It sounds like a contradiction, but it isn't. By building a home in a factory, builders can cut down on the amount of wood that gets thrown out and trips back and forth to the lumberyard. Plus, building in a factory lets the contractors get tighter seals on everything, which leads to better insulation and less chance of mold getting into the walls. (The home also gets done in much less time and costs a little less, if you live in an area where construction costs are high.)

Michelle Kaufmann Designs is currently building a demonstration green home in a factory owned by another green builder, XtremeHomes. You can see the home in part of this video. In a few weeks, we will film another video when the home will be put on a foundation. The home will be on display at the West Coast Green conference staring September 20 in San Francisco.

One thing to note in the later video will be the style of the home. Many assume that a home out of a factory will be sort of dumpy, like a double-wide trailer. The homes are actually being pitched to upper and mid-range buyers and can have more design nuances than traditional subdivision homes. (Before starting her company, Kaufmann worked for architect Frank Gehry.) XtremeHomes is building a 6,000 square foot home for someone in Lake Tahoe. You can see that home going up in the video too.