Daily Loaf

Are you green? Words can mean different things to different people. The word “green” seems to be based upon a genuine concern for health; your health, the health of those around you (both near and far) and the health of the planet. This simple concept is a great foundation for your own embellishments if you desire to be green. You might express that concern by recycling, or buying and consuming healthy food. Of course, merely focusing on health can be somewhat nebulous and open to a good deal of interpretation. If your taxes contribute to the deaths of innocent people half way around the world can you call yourself green? How much trash would you have to recycle to make up for the death of small child in Afghanistan? Maybe those questions aren’t in good taste. If you need a happy face on everything find another blogger.

From this architect’s point of view it seems more and more fashionable, marketable, and finally cost effective in terms of building life cycle to build green. I joined the United States Green Building Council (USGBC)a few years back and quit after I found out that they had recently approved some products made of plastic. Somehow that didn’t quite fit into my definition of green. Maybe I was wrong in thinking that we should be more concerned with our carbon footprint. Maybe my studies in homestead sustainability from 35 years ago got in the way. Maybe I was just wrong and uninformed. Anyway, my middle ground was joining the Florida Green Building Coalition (FGBC). It was more local; I like that about an organization in which I am a member.

On the issue of Green Building, I know of at least four different ways to look at the subject. There is, of course, Green Building that has been defined by USGBC, FGBC, and many other certifying entities (they use plastic, you know). There is also Healthy House Construction, Sustainable Building and Natural Building.

I began studying Healthy House Construction methodology about six or seven years ago. At the time it was being defined, for the most part, by a guy named John Bower whose wife had some extreme allergic reactions to all sorts of building materials and furnishings. He spent a great deal of time studying building science, product ingredients, and rethinking “standard procedures”. For the most part it’s okay to use plastic in Green Building and Healthy House Construction but not in Sustainable Construction (unless it’s totally recycled) and Natural Building (only natural plastic, if you please).

Oh wait, I almost forgot to mention the type of building that we will be doing in the post-carbon world: Rob Hopkins would call it Natural Building but James Howard Kunstler calls it something like scavenger building in World Made by Hand. You can easily guess what scavenger building is. All the materials come from existing unoccupied homes (there will be a LOT less people in the future), land fills, dumps and simple theft. I find it very interesting to imagine the range of future scenarios discussed by people like David Holmgren, Dimitry Orlov and James Howard Kunstler. Some people define the two basic camps of visionaries as the “doomers” and the “optimists”. I prefer to see them as the “realists” and the “delusional utopian dreamers”. But I digress.

Sustainable Construction and Natural Building are very similar. I see some degree of building technology and manufacturing existing for perhaps another three to five years or so. That’s where we will be building sustainable buildings with recycled steel and other recycled materials along with various green products. During the descent the availability of manufactured building products will slowly dwindle. Some of the Peak Oil guys have some ideas about what that curve may look like. Sustainable Construction makes use of such products as photo voltaic panels (PV) for the production of electricity at either the homestead or village level. Noteworthy in this area is Babcock Ranch. (I happen to prefer through parabolic concentrating solar collectors, co-generating electric power with a generator and also producing waste water hot enough for yet additional use).

The purpose of Sustainable Construction is simply to be totally off grid; no hook ups to power, water or sewer and you grow your own food or are a part of some community effort. Natural Building, on the other hand, involves materials and methods like cob construction and thatched roofs. PV doesn’t really fit into the purists approach to Natural Building but the co-generation system might. It depends on how much technology you see in the post-carbon world that’s just around the corner.

I have touched on enough subject matter to keep me going into more detail in future blogs for a very long time. I especially like exploring the differences between the “realists” and the “delusional utopian dreamers”.

I suppose the question is not, “Are you green?”, but, “What shade?”

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