This January we spent 3 days walking the floor of the International Builders Show at the Las Vegas Convention Center. We did interviews with over 30 of the greenest product vendors and in the months to come, we will make those videos available on the site, but for now, we wanted to share 5 of our favorite products with you.

The Products:

Cree LED Lighting
Cree LED Lighting introduced the CR6 LED fixture, a six inch downlight that replaces both incandescent and compact fluorescent models with higher efficiency, better light quality and longer life. We were pleasantly surprised during a lighting demonstration that clearly showed how the CR6 could outperform it competitors. The price isn't going to be cheap when this product hits your local hardware store later this year.

$60 sounds steep for a single bulb, but as we saw in last month's article, LEDs can easily make up for cost with longevity and efficiency. The lighting quality comes from technology that blends white (somewhat yellowish) standard LEDs with red LEDs. The result is a pleasantly warm light.

Olde Wood Limited
Olde Wood Limited presented a line of truly sustainable wood products. The product that wowed us was the engineered wood flooring, with veneers produced from reclaimed wood. They harvest wood from dilapidated barns, mill it, cut it into veneers and attach it to dimensionally stable birch ply. The veneers are 5 mm thick, giving them the same wear and refinish cycles of standard tongue and groove. All of that and the character of old growth wood.

Olde Wood also has a solid plank version of the reclaimed wood product and it was equally stunning. Not all of Olde Wood's products were reclaimed though. Olde Wood also clears standing dead trees to produce a line of sustainable virgin wood products.

In today's world of nostalgia and desire for something historical, this is a product line that fits the bill.

Windtronics
The WT6500 Wind Turbine from Windtronics takes the wind turbine and "turns in inside out".

We admit, upon first glance it looks a bit off-the-wall, but when you hear how it works and what it does, you'll be sold. This wind turbine gains its power at the tips of the fins and not through the turning of an axle in the middle. As explained to us, this means the resistance is greatly reduced and the output is higher because the power production is at the edges where the speed of the turbine is.

The WT6500 also has the benefit of working in a larger range of wind speeds. Without the heavy resistance of gears and a central hub, it starts turning with just 2 mph of wind and produces power at 8 mph. And with the integrated computer system that keeps the turbine constantly oriented for optimal power production, the WT6500 can still produce power at 40+mph, when other turbines are stopped by their safety brakes. This wind turbine could help to make small scale wind power generation viable in more markets.

Rainwater Collection Solutions, Inc.
We were impressed by Rainwater Collection Solutions who introduced us to the Original Rainwater Pillow. The pillow is composed of a polyester mesh coated with a polymer alloy on both sides. The pillow is strong, durable, flexible and completely sanitary.

Put under your deck, in your crawl space or hidden away on your property, the rainwater pillow provides anywhere from 1,000 to 40,000 gallons. No need to dig out that large cistern anymore, the rainwater pillow provides a scalable solution with easy installation. Use it for irrigation, washing the car or flushing the toilets in your home. The Original Rainwater Pillow has also been approved for potable water (filtering including UV was recommended)

Certainteed Thin Film Solar
Certainteed brought at assortment of products to this year's show, but the one that caught our attention was the new thin film solar product, EnerGen. Certainteed intends the product to be fully integrated with roof systems, especially their solar reflective shingles. The product uses a “peel-and-stick” application process and can be installed by the same professionals used to install your roof, saving the homeowner on installation costs.

The panels perform at about half the efficiency of larger crystalline panels but don't require rails or specialized installation. Because of the low profile of the product, the appearance helps maintain the aesthetics of the home, which is one of the most prevalent shortcomings of larger panels.

This, of course, is just a small sampling of the products presented at the International Builders Show and doesn't even scratch the surface of the sustainable products we learned about. There is definitely a shift in the building industry, calling for new and innovative sustainable products. We thank all of those who spoke with us over our three days at the show and hope that more companies will follow your lead in producing sustainable products.