SanJoseGreenHome.com

Do you ever find yourself so deeply entrenched in your beliefs that you miss a bigger picture?  It’s safe to say we all do.  Recently, I had a chance to speak with a lovely lady who had purchased a fantastically green home.  The house had all the latest in green building like engineered lumber, sustainable materials, non-toxic finishes and many other bells and whistles.  You can imagine that my eyes sparkled like a five year old’s at a sight of an ice-cream truck.  Meeting her filled me with much excitement.  

My first questions obviously were:  “So how do you like it?  Does it feel good to have a low carbon footprint?  Don’t you just love your solar water heater?”  I was expecting to hear something profound like: ”Wow, we love the fact how much less wood was used to construct this house, how much stronger it is because of engineered lumber, how low the heating bills were,” you know…, the standard stuff that we greenies get jazzed up about.  But you know what her answer was? “It’s nice; we love the quality of the floors and are very comfortable here.”  

My jaw dropped.  “What?” uninvited but silent thoughts started creeping in, “She’s got to be kidding… this home should be like a Lincoln monument for green building and all she cares about is bamboo floors… For the sake of the planet, what’s wrong with her!?”  

Needless to say, this was puzzling as hell but on the way back home it dawned on me (more…)

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Homes in Mexico built from garage doors salvaged from Bay Area and LA. Photo is a courtesy of The Reuse People. http://thereusepeople.org/

You’ve heard the saying: “One man’s trash is another one’s treasure.”  Nothing can be more true when speaking about the actual parts of your house.  We reuse and recycle things like plastic to paper without giving it a thought so why should it be any different when it comes to our home?  Various parts and systems of the house can be often reused in other properties and often re-purposed for building homes for the less affluent ones in Bay Area or even across the border.  Amazingly, deconstruction can even be more cost effective than plain demolition. 

The questions abound… If you are tearing down an old home or a part of it do you demolish or deconstruct?  Do you take it to a landfill or would you rather have someone else enjoy your “trash” as their treasure?  What’s more cost effective and what’s more reasonable for the environment?  Most people believe plain old demolition is the way to go but hold your horses; you may be up for a surprise.  

Salvaging means deconstructing the house piece by piece to keep the materials and systems in tact.  The advantages can be enormous: 

• Salvaging saves embodied energy – the energy that was used in the work of making a product. This lifecycle of each product includes raw material extraction, transport, manufacturing, assembly, installation, disassembly, etc. 
• Salvaging can actually improve a standard of living – allows low income members of society to buy materials at a fraction of the cost.   This can really mean the difference between a straw barn or a functional house, like in the case of homes in (more…)

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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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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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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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Sure we can talk about green products like bamboo floors and solar cell phone chargers but with our homes accounting for a 21% of total U.S. carbon emissions, the focus is obvious – energy efficiency.

If we really want to reduce pollution and our carbon footprint we ought to be honest with ourselves and start with things that have the biggest impact.  Yes, it’s true, caulking those windows to improve the efficiency of our homes is not as sexy as the designer eco-smart, ventless fireplace in the corner but we have to be real, don’t we?

Green products are fun, really, but when it comes to a more holistic approach to lowering our impact on the environment, nothing is more effective than making some smart improvements like tightening that ductwork, good insulation, and weather stripping.

Enjoy this fun video where you will go on a room by room tour of a typical home and receive tips on energy improvements while tapping your foot to some groovy music in the background.

By making smart improvements we can usually make our homes more comfortable and efficient at a fraction of the cost.  Doesn’t matter whether we own or rent, sustainability starts at home.

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Composting can be either an enjoyable or a dreadful experience, can it not?  Personally, being a landscaper I love to play with dirt so to me it’s sort of like playing in sand box – fun!  

Composting is good for the environment and it’s a smart way to put the nutrients back in the ground.  It helps to reduce greenhouse gases by sequestering carbon back into the soil; storing the carbon for plants to use. Sequestering is actually considered by the US Environmental Protection Agency as a carbon ‘sink’, because it takes the carbon (C) out of (CO2), and leaves just the oxygen (O2) to float into the atmosphere. EPA has more info on this if you’d like to read more. 

In our first month of composting at home, my wife and I reduced our trash waste from three 30 gallon bags all the way to one bag. Wow! We now get excited to see how much we can do to reduce our waste. Our worm bin in the garage and the outdoor stackable bin are also put to use and are doing great. 

If you have not tried composting yet then I would like to invite you to consider it. Relax, you really do not need to run out a buy a pound of worms to get started.  There are a few simple ways to ease into it.  

For example, you can begin by (more…)

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Sometimes weapons are our only hope for peace.

As the talks in Copenhagen are picking up momentum and the “Climate-Gate” scandal is unfolding, more and more people get perplexed and raise good questions.  Is this thing real?  Why would the scientists try to hide something or mislead us?  

In situations like these our human nature and its subtle expressions become very obvious.  It’s fascinating to observe two sets of beliefs and convictions.  One group says Yeh!, the other group says Nae!, and then there is a silent majority who are waiting to be nudged in the right direction.  

Why the mainstream media is over-inflating the climate scandal instead of focusing on real scientific numbers is probably beyond all of us but a one thing is certain: we’ll see some very positive and some very negative outcomes of this “Climate-Gate” fiasco. 

Some immediate effects are obvious – scientists will have to be more transparent, disclose sources of data and be able to back up their finding with sound and undisputable reasons.  Climate change and data that supports it ought to be visible and open to our scrutiny, it’s that simple.  There is no doubt that when all dust settles, we will still have an overwhelming amount of research showing the planet is indeed warming and we are unequivocally contributing to it more than ever. 

At the same time, doubts in the process and questionable ethics of the science community only fueled the skeptics and fed more excuses to folks who never cared about the issue in the first place.  The creepy part is that people like Sarah Palin will latch on to this piece of news like a bulldog and will keep mauling it on the media, further spreading doubt and apathy among those who don’t lack it already.  You know what separates Sarah Palin from a Pit-bull?  Nope not lipstick (more…)

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