Sustainable Building Archives - Page 6 of 8

Ay Caramba, IKEA!

April 15, 2009 by David Mark Brown

Oh the misery of being morally responsible in a morally corrupt world. When should a corporate entity be given a break on their sustainability policy and when should they be bypassed for the lesser of many evils? I will be the first to admit that the waters are shark filled and the fields are filled with mines today when it comes to tracking original sources for refined and fabricated materials. But some actions and policies by companies have to be held to account, right?

It has been known for years now that almost half of the timber coming from East Russia is harvested illegally and that much of what China is using in its growing factories comes fromEast Russia. It is also widely known that much of the finished products that we buy here in the United States are fabricated in China. Companies such as IKEA and Home Depot have even been visibly seen making efforts to discover and root out illegally and immorally harvested timber. But at what point do we consumers call the bluff and say enough is too much?

Snipe Hunting and Green Buildings

April 11, 2009 by David Mark Brown

fremont-home I’ve been following the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association blog, and particularly Paul Eldrenkamp. I don’t live in the Northeast, and a lot of what is discussed sails over my head, but I like the depth of intelligent conversation going on there. It’s fresh and new for such a vapid chap as myself. And who couldn’t be struck with thought by statements such as, “This, I believe, is an honest assessment of what a building is—that is to say, about as inefficient and unnatural an act as our species does on any similar scale.”

New Tricks With Old Bricks

March 23, 2009 by David Mark Brown

I found a recent study, albeit a small one, done in the UK that brings up an interesting question (even if it doesn’t provide too many answers). New Tricks With Old Bricks, a study done by the Empty Homes Agency, tries to show that an old refurbished home can be just as “green” as a new build. Now by “green” in this particular study they are referring only to the home’s carbon emissions, or as we refer to it across the pond, carbon footprint. While they did include embodied carbon and operational carbon they only studied six homes, and they projected the totals over a fifty year period.