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Many times people you’ll meet will be skeptics of your ambitions to live a green lifestyle and protect the planet.  They may say some scientists do not support the theory of climate change, some may say we humans are not the cause of it and some may be… well, lackadaisical.  

Please share with them this highly scientific, carefully drafted decision making graph that may help them understand the picture.  If you were in a driving seat and saw these signs, would you keep going?

This masterpiece was inspired by the sunny Saturday morning and a cup of green tea. 
Copyrights are strictly unprotected.    Have a great weekend!

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A scam?  A rip-off? A deal of the century?  Ready or not folks, it’s here!  A solution that gives access to solar power even to the most cash strapped green minded suburbanites and….… it’s brought to you by the very people who delivered to us the sub-rime mortgage debacle.  It’s called a “residential solar lease” which is a “no money down” program that can get you electricity cheaper than what you cash out to PG&E on monthly basis.  Sounds familiar? 

The idea is simple; instead of buying your panels by dishing out thousands of dollars upfront you lease them for “one low monthly fee.”  You win, the solar company wins, environment is happy.   So what’s not to love?  How about a 15 year contract, a 3.9% increased payment every year and our Wall Street friends who have their fingers all over this sweet deal? 

On the surface, this sounds like a viable option for many home owners.  It solves an expensive problem of purchasing the panels outright for around 27,000 dollars (average 1,700 sq. foot home).  It works a bit like a car lease where home owners sign a deal that locks them in for 15 years with the option of extending their lease or buying the panels at the end of the contract.  With a solar lease, your monthly payments can be around $110 which, according to the service providers, will normally be around 15% less than your PG&E bill.  Are you sold yet?

After all, the way these companies and even our media like to paint it – it’s a no brainer deal.  SolarCity, which is based right here in our backyard of Silicon Valley, is one of the very well financed operations that is the first to start aggressively market this contract for home owners all over Bay Area and western states.  SunRun is another similar co. based in San Francisco.

Who really finances these deals?  (more…)

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Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the greenest of them all…?  As if we didn’t already have hundreds of eco labels to worry about every time we visit a store, now there are green home certifications that are mushrooming up all over the Bay Area and the country.  Understanding these new ways of classifying quality and operation costs is becoming a must, especially when you build, remodel or in the market for a home.  Yet another chief reason for being able to decipher these new terms is to avoid growing generalizations or greenwashing. 

Frankly, most folks could careless about “green” homes. Very few want to pay extra for labels they don’t understand.  And why should they?! Price and quality are and should be the two high priority areas of concern.  However, if you remember from a previous post called “What’s a Green Home and Why Do We Care?“, green homes address much more than just fancy “eco-friendly” building materials.  They also encompass elements like energy efficiency, indoor air quality, water efficiency, materials use (recycled, reclaimed, sustainable), community and environmental impacts.   

Third party sources play an important role in verifying that green homes are truly are as they are cracked up to be in their marketing.  Here are the three most prevalent green home titles you are most likely to see in our Bay Area neighborhoods:  (more…)

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Image is by a wonderful artist: Misha Gordin. You can enjoy more at bsimple.com

Can you imagine what would happen if the entire world, from the poorest to the wealthiest, would wake up tomorrow with one single thought in mind: “Yes, the planet’s ecosystems are in peril, I have contributed to it but I can also make things better because my actions matter.  From now on this is a priority.”  

What would happen to the world in one year after we woke up with that one thought and took action?  What about five years?  How would it feel to breathe clean air in our cities and sustain ourselves without depleting earth’s natural resources?  While we could only speculate, it is invigorating to even give it a thought.  But what’s even more entertaining is how, while trying to imagine this Pandora like, new world, our minds have already spit out the most potent green house gasses of them all –  doubt.  

In the age where many are paralyzed by apathy towards climate change one can blame nothing but doubt.  Doubt is a product that we get for free these days either on TV, newspapers, the internet and from our less joyful friends.  But do we ever think what could be the real cost of doubt?  

Recently, while reading a wonderful book called Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, I came across wise words from a Buddhist teacher with a name of Sogyal Rinpoche.  These were the most powerful and illuminating words about the nature of doubt that I have ever heard.  He said: 

“Our minds are riddled and confused with doubt.  I sometimes think that doubt is the greatest block to human evolution.  Our society promotes cleverness instead of wisdom, and celebrates the most superficial, harsh, and least useful aspects of our intelligence.  We have become so falsely (more…)

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You and I probably had a similar experience when we saw that plasma TV quality for the first time at our local Fry’s store.  The picture quality was so vivid and beautiful it seemed like you could reach in a grab that tropical fish.  The technology is truly wonderful but unofrtunately, plasma TVs have become the home’s equivalent of a gas-guzzling SUV, consuming two to three times more energy than other smaller types of TVs. In fact, some models, even when used only a few hours a day, will suck up as much electricity each year as a refrigerator. Powering a fancy TV and full-on entertainment system can add nearly $200 to a family’s annual energy bill.  In five years this will add up to a $1000 easy.  Plasma TVs are really a gift that keeps on taking.

Comparison of energy suckers by California Energy Commission

Now if someone started regulating the size of TVs we can buy or own, most of us would have a serious conniption with this.  But wouldn’t it benefit us if we were made aware of (more…)

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Did you know that your roof color can actually affect your energy bill, your comfort in the house and even contribute to climate change?  It’s true.  Our usually dark colored composition roofs contribute to what is called an “urban heat island.”  The problem with most of home roofs is that they absorb the heat of the sun, the temperature of the area rises and our air conditioners have to work much harder to keep us all cool and cozy. 

What’s a Heat Island? 

No, it’s not an island in the Bahamas.  The term “heat island” describes built up areas that are hotter than nearby rural areas.  According to the EPA, the annual air temperature of a city with 1 million people or more can be 1.8–5.4°F warmer than its surroundings. In the evening, the difference can be as high as 22°F. 

Source: EPA Website

Heat islands are no joke.  They can affect communities by increasing summertime peak energy demand, air conditioning costs, air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, and heat-related illness.    

What Can Home Owners Do? 

Very simple.  Next time you are replacing your roof, opt for a (more…)

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Which part of the world does your bite come from?

It seems not just that many years ago, imported food was considered a status symbol, no matter what condition it was in when it finally arrived at the table.  This was just as true in Eastern Europe, where I grew up.  My mother used to be a “produce director” at one of the biggest grocery stores in town.  Once in the blue moon she would bring home what everyone called “deficit” goods.  Those included exotic nuts from India, baby fruit purées, and of course the mighty banana!  Gosh you should have seen the looks in our eyes.  My sister and I were more excited to see a banana than most people buying a brand new hybrid today. 

Those days are long gone and now Europeans as well as Americans live in economies where food is so plentiful that we are faced with hundreds of choices of fruit and veggies from every corner of the globe.  Things change but today we’re facing a very different dilemma.  There is a growing awareness that the food that ends up on our dinner plates has a much higher price tag than what we actually pay for it with our hard earn dollars.  What does this mean? 

In many cases, Western society routinely purchases food that was grown more than 1000 miles away and transported to the local grocery store.  While food prices in the store are relatively inexpensive, the environmental cost of transporting our food is often very high.  You see, all these trucks, trains, and boats, all of which consume fossil fuels, are the primary methods for transporting large quantities of food around the world.  Inevitably, transportation of these goods leave a trail of pollution and produce (more…)

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Synthetic turf can look just as real grass from a few feet away but does it hold water with its new eco claims?

Installing synthetic turf has become all the rage recently. It was even featured on some Bay Area local channels. Commonly known in the past as astro turf, it has been reinvented, repacked and now called ‘eco turf.’ It is being touted as the latest in green landscaping. There is even a striking list of ecological “solutions” that this product addresses. Those include no mowing, no watering or expensive irrigation systems, no weed control, and no other maintenance headaches like fertilizing and hauling away grass clippings.

The latest synthetic turf is even manufactured from recycled plastic and is recycable at the end of its life. Your kids can play on it in the rain and won’t get muddy. It is wheel chair accessible. So it seems like we have solved a horde of environmental issues with one product, so what’s not to love?

Stepford Lawns

Do you recall the part in the movie, The Stepford Wives where one of the Stepford wives gets stabbed and it messes with her wiring and she starts repeating “ I thought we were friends, I thought we were friends? That’s what I imagine synthetic turf is saying when I stab it with my accusations of it being a pseudo green product. Like my friend Owen Dell would say, it’s kind of like organic heroin, organic or not it is still fundamentally a bad idea.

Aromatherapy it’s not

I’ll begin with the deceptively simple argument that my primary distrust of synthetic turf is based on the fact that it is not alive. It does not breathe and therefore it offers no oxygen as a byproduct. On a warm day the entire area around a synthetic playing field reeks of melting off-gassing plastic, not an enjoyable smell. It certainly is not aromatherapy. Again because the stuff is not living and breathing the cooling effect is absent and thus the heat island affect is increased. The ‘heat island’ refers to the phenomena in which urban air and surfaces sustain higher temperatures than nearby rural areas.

The images below comparing air, water, bermudagrass, sand, asphalt, and synthetic turf surface temperatures illustrate how (more…)

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