TreeHouse Aims to Make Homes Thoughtful, Sustainable and Healthy

Austin-based TreeHouse, a home improvement retailer focused on eco-friendly construction materials, has selected Dallas as its first stop outside its hip hometown. Tuesday, it will announce plans to open a store in early 2017 in a new shopping center in North Dallas. TreeHouse CEO and co-founder Jason Ballard believes he can sell the world on eco-friendly homes in the same way that Tesla is broadening the customer base for electric cars. As the first retailer that Tesla has authorized to sell the Powerwall, its battery for the house, TreeHouse is already a powerhouse of sustainable good. They are also one of the top-selling retailers of Nest smart-home products, Ballard said. “We resist being a niche company,” Ballard said. “We’re not just for customers with dreadlocks and card-carrying members of environmental groups. We’re going to prove with the Dallas store that we’re not a store for special people, we’re a store for everyone.” Single-store sales have increased 3…
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9 Alternatives to Candy for Trick-or-Treaters

So, Halloween is the holiday most known for it’s spooky amounts of candy. It starts out as a sweet little, “we’ll buy a bag to hand out to the disguised kids knocking on our door”; but then develops growing more horrific by the minute. “Okay, I’ll take one for myself.” “Let’s get an extra bag for us”. “Wow! I haven’t seen this candy since last year! Let’s get some!” From innocence to guiltiness, one by one we consume more and more candy; the result? – feeling terrible the following day, your face breaks out like a leprous zombie, and the creepy monster that roared the night before is feeling shameful and disappointed in itself. To appease the candy vampire within, try serving one of these alternatives for yourself and/or the costumed minions rapping on your door. 1) Fruit Apples, Bananas, & Oranges all make great snacks and are sturdy enough to survive the night in a trick-or-treaters bag. 2) Veggies Chopped celery with peanut butter and raisin…
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(Part 1 of 3) Catching Cunning Companies and Their Claims: The Ingredient List

by Jessica Justiniano for GreenBusinesses.com Raise your hand if quite often you find yourself confused when reading the ingredient list on a packaged food. “High-fructose corn syrup”? “Partially-Hydrogenated Oil”? “Aspartame”? Companies have no problem deceiving consumers into thinking they are purchasing something healthier, and then hiding the hurtful ingredients behind big words. Here is some insight into what you are reading on that package. The easier the ingredient list to read, the healthier this product will be. A bag of potato chips, for example, should only mention potatoes and some sort of oil (canola preferably for it’s monounsaturated fats). However, oftentimes there are many other additives included. Food companies, at least the unhealthy ones, do not like to share what ingredients are in their foods, so the ingredient list must be decoded to understand what one is consuming. Trans fat and partially-hydrogenated oil Trans fat does not have to be claimed o…
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