Sustainablog

A happy Veterans Day to sustainablog readers who’ve served in the US military… and happy Remembrance Day to Canadian vets.

For many veterans of the US armed forces, the rewards of their service are intangible: pride, discipline, commitment to country and community. Of course, veterans also receive more tangible benefits — educational assistance, low-interest home loans, health care — but as we’ve seen over and over again, the provision of these services is often less than ideal. Yesterday, the American Society of Interior Designers announced a partnership with Rebuilding Together’s Veteran Housing Initiative to support our veterans by assisting them with home renovation; part of that support will include “[providing] REGREEN resources, the nation’s first sustainable residential remodeling guidelines, to Rebuilding Together affiliates.”

REGREEN, a partnership between ASID and the US Green Building Council, was launched in March, and is dedicated to “…the development of best practice guidelines and targeted educational resources for sustainable residential improvement projects.” The ASID/RT partnership will begin with a pilot project in the Washington, D.C. area, and will involve “…[renovating] the home of a deserving veteran.”

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For a growing number of people, sustainable living means endeavoring as ecopreneurs for organizations with missions they believe in while working in a “green office” space that incorporates green or sustainable design. Typically, “green design” addresses energy efficiency, preservation of resources and the minimization of detrimental effects of construction - if not also improving the health and well-being of the local community as a whole. Some ecopreneurs might work from a home green office, like me, while others find it necessary to gather in office spaces that are, in various ways, ecologically sound and healthier for all.

In State College, Pennsylvania, I had the opportunity to tour the 2,400 square feet Matson & Associates Eco-Building, home to three ecopreneurial enterprises: Matson & Associates, an environmental assessment services company, often engaged to provide “expert witness” testimonials on some of the most timely waste processes issues; Envinity, a green building and home energy audit consultancy; and Matson Biofuels, a company developing a more ecological and non-toxic approach to making biodiesel called Green Biodiesel. For all three of these triple bottom line green enterprises, it’s not just what you create with your product or service — but where you work to create it.

As one of the first examples of green architecture and integrated energy efficient design in State College, the Matson & Associates Eco-Building received the Energy Star certification as a residential office in 2007. The Energy Star certification designates buildings that use 30 percent or less energy than similar code compliant buildings. As an added bonus, the construction cost of this green building was no greater than that for a conventional one.

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 Former Canadian municipal councilor and current building design consultant David Braden, has built himself a green home using current building techniques that doesn’t even require a furnace.

We’ll be able to heat our entire house with a common hairdryer, Dave boasts.   No furnace even in the extreme Southern Ontario weather.

Braden is not the first to promote taking one’s home off the grid, but he is trying to do it in a way that utilizes common building techniques and architectural devices (i.e. not with flushless toilets, buried geothermal lines, and other techniques that are available, but that most observers associate with “treehuggers”). According to Braden

I don’t want to be conveyed as a hippie. I want to get the message to the mainstream. People need to know that in fact there is a great solution sitting right in front of us. Read the rest of this entry »

A woman who set-up a simple system to catch and purify rainwater from her rooftop says that she gathers nearly enough water to avoid using the tap in her Austin, Texas home.

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Some people build houses. Others, go abroad and help build or rebuild communities. Still others build… mobile kitchens! Earlier this year, students from the University of Toronto’s master’s program at the faculty of architecture designed and built a mobile kitchen. So what you say? What’s so big about a kitchen table on wheels? Well, some people pimp their cars, these UofT students pimped their kitchen! This kitchen comes with a barbeque, seats about 50, and has garbage, recycling and composting bins available.
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Study: If we painted every rooftop in 100 major cities white, it would offset the entire planet’s carbon dioxide emissions for one year. That’s nearly 44 metric gigatons.

It makes sense. We all know white reflects heat (that’s why we wear white shirts and dresses on hot days), and we even knew that painting rooftops white lessens the need for air conditioning. But until now, we didn’t know that changing dark-colored surfaces to white would help fight against global warming.

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The Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency enlisted 100 goats to clear a 2.5-acre downtown lot yesterday, saying that the goats are cheaper and better for the environment than humans with weed-wackers, the LA Times reports.

The steep, weed-coated property temporarily turned to somewhat of a zoo, with downtown workers halting from their commute to gawk at the munching mountain goats. Subway riders snapped photos on their cell phones, capturing the stark contrast between the skyscrapers and the specialty-breed South African Boers. Being so close to Hollywood, many onlookers assumed the goats were part of a film set or public art installation.

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Over at Green Building Elements, Philip Proefrock’s post Showing the Green Building Process highlights a Philadelphia couple’s blog, Building Green on Montrose. Archtitects Christopher & Emily Stromberg are renovating a South Philly row home, and they document their progress on the blog. I live outside Philadelphia, and I’m always excited when hear about another great green endeavor going on in the city.

What got me most excited about the project that the Stromberg’s are working on is that they are setting up the roof of the row home to be able to accommodate a green roof. Green roofs in a city environment have enormous environmental benefits. They do things like lower the temperature around the building, improve the air quality in the area, help with water retention and create urban wildlife habitats.

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Though I’ve never experienced the college dorm setting in my lifetime, I have spent far too much of my time watching TV shows focusing on the college dorm (Gilmore Girls anyone?). So this story has a little bit of a soft spot with me, on top of the fact that it is just really cool environmental awareness and friendliness.

Students at Sarah Lawrence’s Warren Green Hall will this fall be composting together, monitoring their electricity usage and drying their dirty laundry on a clothesline. They’ll be sharing appliances, cooking and shopping together too, to reduce waste and energy, and using the electric light as little as possible.
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When the award-winning film The End of Suburbia was released in 2004, it was considered by some to be an amusing but exaggerated view of what Peak Oil will do to the suburban way of life. As gas prices approach $5/gallon, it doesn’t seem quite so shocking.

As a passionate enemy of suburban sprawl, I listened intently to an interview this morning on NPR with Brookings Institution demographer William Frey in which he notes that housing prices are falling faster in the areas outside cities. Is this a permanent correction that is making “exurbs” less desirable overall? And how are gas prices influencing this loss of home value? Mr. Frey was cautious in his answer, saying “the jury is still out” and that Americans have a history of moving outward from cities in order to buy more housing for less, seeing long commutes as an acceptable trade off.

However, it doesn’t take a genius to see that, when a commute costs more than one is saving on housing, while sucking up hours of one’s valuable time, (and as the saying goes, “They aren’t making more of that”) why would one buy a home in the far suburbs? Why, indeed?

Sperling’s Best Places did a survey two years ago when gas prices were at $2.90 a gallon. The following were the most expensive cities in which to commute and listed the average annual commuting cost:

City Annual Commuting Cost (2006)

1. Atlanta $5,772
2. Birmingham, Ala. $5,464
3. Orlando, Fla. $5,404
4. Jacksonville, Fla. $5,360
5. Pensacola, Fla. $5,173

So, if gas prices reach $6.00, Atlanta’s commuting cost would be over $10,000 per year. Yikes.

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