TV shows that are promoting green… and not
We were watching the dreaded renovation channel. Filling our heads with ideas of remodeling and making sure I get off my butt and get that master bath redone! But as we were viewing the shows I noticed that more and more are promoting “green”. Nice folks ripping out kitchens and walls. Pulverizing tiles floors and back splashes. Smashing arborite (trademarkered?). All with the goal of replacing them with the green alternative.
I watched as a “flipper” ripped out an oak floor to put in the sustainable bamboo. I watched another home owner add 1500 sq ft to the home, all with enviromentally friendly wall covering and paints. Such good people…
One show even bulldozed an entire home. Destroy bathroom fixtures, windows cabinets with fervor and joy! Ok these guys don’t claim to be green. They are just do gooders.
What struck me was the waste. If they must redo a cmplete home, why not remove the cabinets and windows. Reuse, sell to a used building materials company, donate to charity… do anything but smash perfectly good toilets and windows! come on people!
How can you claim to be enviromentaly frinedly but increasing th esize of your home. Increasing the heating demand, increasing the energy used to heat and cool. The materials that are consumed. the green space removed.
These shows should be made to rethink and reuse.
Not only is it bad for the environment, but it is a waste of money!
Or am I just off target.
My thoughts.. your thoughts?
Masdar City
Ok those crazy guys in Abu Dhabi have done it again. A carbon neutral city!
But wait a second just what is a carbon neutral city?
Is it just buying up credits, moving cash around so we can all feel better?
Or are they truly trying to develop a sustainable city?
Let’s all keep an eye or three on these guys. Let’s use their good ideas at home and locally, and call them when they stretch the meaning of green and sustainable living.
http://www.masdar.ae/home/index.aspx
Tea towel’s vs Paper towels
OK, lets start by saying i know most people use tea towels (dish towels) for drying dishes etc. But as i was being lectured by my fiance over the weekend for using the “teat towel” to wipe up some tea from the counter, I started to think.
Are papers towels really what we should using? They are used once and thrown out. A tea towel is used again and again, washed and used again and again. Now i know there are health and sanity concerns… but can we not be reasonable?
argument for tea towels: they are used multiple time from a renewable resource (cotton).
They will allow men to use a cloth towel to wipe up messes with out being nagged.
They take up less counter space.
they fill up laundry loads when you are washing jeans and work shirts.
against? is cotton really sustainable?
the fertilizer and water contamination created during cotton farming is beyond belief.
The cotton must be bleached and dyed.
We need to run a washer and dryer to clean them.
Arguments for Paper Towels:
The are clean.
Trees grow back.
My paper towels are recycled (seriously I heard a neighbour’s wife say that at a dinner party)
against:
They depleted forests and wood products.
They use bleach and other chemicals to make them all pretty.
They get flushed in to the sewer system and add to the waste problems in landfills!
I am at a loss.
Plus my GF likes paper towels…
!
Renovations… are the all the green we want them to be?
I was looking at a friends new home renovation and comparing it to our recent kitchen family room refit.
1. They knocked down a dividing wall, so did we
2. They gutted the kitchen layout so did we.
3. They added new cabinets with a special low VOC paint coating made from recycled wood products. We used the existing cabinets and resurfaced in our garage. Totally changed the layout, but only added two new cases.
4. They added a garbage disposal. We added an extra cupboard under our sink to store compost raw material.
5. They added cfl pots as we did.
6. They put in cork flooring and we did ceramic tile. Apparently the cork is sustainable. We left our old vinyl down and used it as a membrane for the tile, they tossed their old flooring in the dumpster.
7. DUMPSTERS! they made 3 trips with a 8foot by 20 foot dumpster, we did it all in the Buick. ok it was 3 or four trips, but it fit in the Rendezvous.
I only mention this because they stated they were green. Seems like a lot of waste, a lot of brand new materials used when old could be reused. A lot of dumpster stuff when less impactful ideas would have sufficed.
What is GREEN, and what is being frugal? That is the answer I am looking for…
Just a thought or two on developing a sustainable home
The truly weird thing about sustainable living, at least to me, is all the cool stuff you can buy!
The CFL, or any light bulbs for that matter, are packaged up the ying yang. A water flow reducer I was looking at the other day was plastic wrapped cardboard with hard plastic case. Talk about over kill!
We get 8 page full colour flyers telling us about all the ECO items we can buy at the local markets.
What ever happened to reduce!
Take shorter showers…before you go and buy an over priced water restrictor so you can feel good taking a 15 minute shower. It really seems counter productive.
More to come on a more friendly note I promise!
