It’s been an interesting week: Brad Pitt has unveiled a floating house for New Orleans (it’s not as good as it sounds), Australia shows off the world’s longest solar footbridge–which even provides electricity to the main grid–and we pulled together a slideshow of terrific — if terrifying — treehouses. We’d also found time to wonder: What’s up with all these buildings designed like letters? Weird. [SButtonZ button="digg"]

We began covering toxic Chinese drywall at the beginning of the year, when larger media outlets were ignoring it. Now come reports that thousands of people are sick, many across the Gulf Coast states where the products were using in post-hurricane construction. Their resulting houses, already corroded from the inside out, will probably need to be rebuilt once again.

Smarts grids and smart appliances are going to play a large role in improving our energy efficiency, perhaps someday soon. But since smart meters and appliances will be sending lots of data to utility companies, is there a reasonable Big Brother concern here? Who’s going to know how often we shower (besides the people we stand next to on the subway)? Should there be such a thing as “energy privacy”? If believe strongly the answer is yes, maybe it’s time to make your own power meter…

In the same week that California levied a fee of 15 cents on each ton of big polluters’ greenhouse gas emissions came the proposal in the Golden State to ban energy-hogging big screen TVs.

England keeps putting bottled water makers on notice: there’s a big new water fountain in Hyde Park, and a set of water dispensing machines that refill reusable bottles around the country. (In Australia, remember, the town of Bundaloon has already banned bottled water outright.)

To prevent the poop waste of winter campers that sneaks into waterways come spring thaw, a national park in Scotland has been using bags and tubes. Could such a system keep other snowy pastures clean?

Tags: TREEHUGGERIST