Via the BBC comes news of this house coming up in Southern California built out of scrapped Boeing 747.

"The recycling of the 4.5 million parts of this 'big aluminium can' is seen as an extreme example of sustainable reuse and appropriation. American consumers and industry throw away enough aluminium in a year to rebuild our entire aeroplane commercial fleet every three months."

The Rochester Institute of Technology has been awarded a $465,000 grant by the Henry Luce Foundation for the creation of an interdisciplinary Ph.D. program in Sustainability.

"We fully expect this program to advance the development of environmentally and socially sound industrial system design while also educating engineers and policy makers around the world on the importance of sustainable principles," adds Nabil Nasr, director of the Center for Integrated Manufacturing Studies and leader of RIT's Interdisciplinary Design Team for the Ph.D. "The ultimate goal is to produce graduates, at the highest educational level, that are equipped to become leaders in creating a more sustainable society both in their own communities and around the world."

HP wins the first Design for Recycling Award. From the announcement made by the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries,

This year ISRI chose to honor a company or individual whose product design has incorporated one or more of the following:

* Reduction in the number of different recyclable materials
* Reduction or elimination of hazardous constituents
* Increased yield of the product's recyclables
* Improvement in the safety of recycling
* Design that allows for easy disassembly for recycling

Here's more information on Green Product Design and how to implement it.