So what does it mean for a home to be "green"? Well, if it is going to be certified by one of the national green building programs - such as US Green Building Council's "LEED for Homes" or NAHB National Green Building Program - the home needs to be evaluated by an accredited third party to make sure it meets certain criteria.
The home should incorporate the obvious environmentally friendly attributes like water and energy efficiency, but the location, building materials and building process all factor into a home's greenness. An energy efficient home that wastes a lot of material in the construction phase is less green than one that minimizes and recycles waste.
Peter Guida, the builder I interviewed for tonight's story, told me about a fascinating company his firm uses called Second Chance, which rescues the wood, metal, stone and other architectural elements from old buildings and puts them to use in new buildings. Their process saves space in local landfills and allows people to repurpose perfectly good materials in new homes.
But whether or not a new home is certified green, I can see why more and more people are interested in eco-friendly housing, whether their top concern is global warming or their electricity bill. Who wouldn't want a well-insulated home that costs less to heat? Or appliances that cost less to run? I wonder how long it will be before we stop labeling this sort of construction "green" building and just call it "building."
Comments
Peter and his team at Bethesda Bungalows are helping to raise the bar and establish the "Green Standard". Their keen sense of construction by incorporating efficiencies at every step in the building processes is truly innovative. They have a great appreciation for the right "green" products, methodologies and systems. This coupled by beautifully designed efficient homes makes this team a real standout.
I agree, let technical items of service run there full life before replacing them. Drive less, bring fewer products into the technical cycle is the best thing you can do besides riding your bike to work.
Additionally all technical items of service should have a recycle or reuse strategy before we are allowed to sell them to the public.
Why should the consumer be responsible for figuring out how to get rid of products that are filled with either valuable resources or toxic materials? Manufactures have saddled the consumer with the disposal of there products for too long .If the manufacture was to bare the cost of the disposal of toxic materials think how much safe our products would be.
In new home design or remodel the most straight forward approach to a more sustainable project is to focus on the energy efficiency of the building. We need to systematically eliminate all materials that are toxic or harm full to the inhabitants. (Being less bad is still being bad)
@Karljackson -- you're right. people seem to forget that the first words in reduce-reuse-recycle mean you should stick with what you've got. That's more environmentally sensitive than trading in (or up).
I have no idea when the earthworm turned, but these days when I pull up in my snazzy 1996 Honda Civic, I feel like people are judging me because I'm not doing my part to save the earth by driving an (expensive) "hybrid" vehicle. In my opinion, as far as cars go, the absolute greenest thing you can do is drive whatever car you have until it's literally falling to pieces.
wrinkle creams