Welcome

I bought my daughter an environmentally friendly toothbrush the other day. It's made out of recycled materials and can be recycled at the end of its lifespan. I don't live in a particularly organic, crunchy-granola community, nor did I go out of my way to find this toothbrush. I simply went to a typical chain store, and the price for the toothbrush was right.

This small purchase made me think of how far sustainability has come — that green thinking has percolated down to the toothpaste aisle at my local grocer's.

Some seven years ago, when Sources+Design began covering sustainable design on a regular basis, green projects and products were few and far between. We had to make a lot of phone calls and do much research to uncover an almost-underground network of design professionals and manufacturers who created with sustainability in mind.

Now, with our 2008 Green Issue, we've found the landscape has changed dramatically. Since the imple­mentation of the landmark USGBC LEED program, many commercial and public buildings are going for the green. Ditto for homes. More architects and homebuilders are working eco-friendly elements into their projects than ever before. Even the last frontier — residential interiors — has had an environmental consciousness-raising of late.

Colorado interior designer Klea Jones knows this quite well. She's designed one of the Denver metro area's first green interiors — a model home featured in this issue — and has done painstaking research on green interiors, visiting the Green Living Pavilion at the Las Vegas Winter Market, making phone calls, Googling and reading. "A lot of green products were just not available for interiors a few years ago," she explains, "and even now, not everyone in the industry 'gets it.' But consumers are smarter today, and green is what they're demanding."

You, our readers, have also asked for green from us, and we're giving it to you. In this issue, we're not just touring Jones' project, but two others as well: a prototype REI store in Boulder, Colorado and the educational, well-received Las Vegas Springs Preserve. In our "Green Scene" department, we're taking a look at how one Las Vegas architectural firm gets its employees to think sustainably, both at home and on the job. "Design for All" explores sustainability's third dimen­sion, while "Materials+Methods" checks out Smith-Laredo, the eco-friendly tile manufacturer. Did we mention our "Market Watch" department? This issue, it's bursting with green products, from fabrics to plumbing fixtures.

Our upcoming issue will be all about office design and contract furniture. But with every issue, our favorite color is green.

Photograph by Elliot Lincis