You don't need a lot of space to live well.
Lloyd Alter
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The current financial and foreclosure crisis is causing a lot of people to re-evaluate how they live. Suddenly, the home is less of an investment and more of a millstone, and our lifestyles are changing as we worry more about our jobs and paying the bills. The flip side is that the changes we are making have a side-effect: they are often good for the environment. This Earth Day, we offer TK ways to think about your home and garden in a whole new light.
- Small is the New Big
Even as American homes were built with better furnaces, double-glazed windows and more insulation, they consumed more energy because they just kept getting bigger. Of course when it was easy to borrow money and house prices could only go up, people did tend to buy more than they needed because it was an "investment." But the best and simplest way to save energy is to simply heat or cool less space. Smaller houses placed tightly together mean shorter roads and enough density to support neighbourhood stores, which in turn keeps people out of their cars and reduces suburban sprawl--perhaps one of our biggest and most intractable problems. - The Greenest Brick is the One Already in the Wall
It takes a lot of energy to build: to fire bricks, move construction workers to sites, and build roads. It takes a lot less energy to upgrade houses and buildings to make them more energy efficient and more comfortable. It also creates more jobs; in new construction, the cost split between labour and materials is about 50-50; in renovation it is about 75% labour and 25% materials, and right now there are a lot of construction workers without jobs. Buildings consume 48% of our energy, so if we are going to achieve energy independence and roll back climate change, we have to fix the millions of buildings that are already standing. - Rent Instead of Own
It has been American government policy since Roosevelt to promote home ownership; they even make mortgage payments tax deductible, something that isn't done anywhere else in the world. But as Richard Florida has written in the Atlantic, "Not only is it now readily apparent that not everyone should own a home, and that the mortgage system is a big part of what got us into the current financial mess, but home ownership also ties people to locations, making it harder for them to move to where the work is. Home ownership made sense when most people had one job and lived in the same city for life." Today, it may not. Similarly, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman has noted that "Although it’s rarely put this way, borrowing to buy a home is like buying stocks on margin: if the market value of the house falls, the buyer can easily lose his or her entire stake." James Surowiecki and Matt Yglesias have chimed in on this, too. There are lots of alternatives that go beyond just renting in a high-rise, including co-operative housing, as in Freiburg, Germany, low-rise housing such as IKEA is selling in Europe, and co-housing. - Good Design Saves Money
Most houses were not designed by architects, but by builders. And many don't worry about orientation, about window placement, solar angles, anything but getting the plans approved and built. But all these things cut energy use, give you more natural light and make your home a better place to live. Good design also leads to more efficient use of space. People are afraid of architects, and they shouldn't be. Right now there are a lot of talented people out there looking for work and doing very creative marketing; John Morefield introduces himself by offering his services for five cents per consultation; in Detroit, Design 99 believes that "contemporary architecture and design is not reserved for a select audience. By locating our design practice within a retail storefront environment, we hope to create an open dialogue with the general public." Their fee schedule starts at 99 cents per minute. - Invest in Quality and Durability
In Products for a Happy Life, author Jennifer McKnight-Trontz reminds us that instead of on-line shopping for last month's have-to-have item, there are products that represent quality, modesty, economy and durability. They don't come with a brand and a logo, and they don't make any false promises. These are things that were once made in factories close to the homes of the people who bought them. Consumer items that promise nothing more than to do their jobs. Architect Steve Mouzon also suggests that "When times are tough, the thought of replacing a tool, a piece of furniture, or whatever on a frequent basis is really frightening... we simply cannot afford to do that. So I believe that the Meltdown will begin to cause people to think long-term again, and to begin to value enduring things." Cheap things break down more quickly and are harder to repair--the head of an appliance repair company noted that "many products are now made in China and it can be hard to get parts." - Low Tech Is Better Than High Tech
Everybody is talking about ground-source heat pumps and solar panels on the roof, typical of the expensive, high-tech solutions that cost a lot of money. But as James Russell of Bloomberg wrote:
Homes designed today can be much more efficient at low cost. Whether they're high-tech or old-fashioned, houses with awnings, porches and carefully placed windows can harvest natural breezes for cooling. Just shifting the primary orientation from east-west to north-south keeps summer's roasting sun off glass and lets windows grab winter heat. It can knock several percentage points off fuel and lighting bills.
Similarly, we can design for natural ventilation instead of relying on air conditioning, use natural light instead of making it artificially, or even just plant a tree. - Multifunctional Furniture
Bucky Fuller once said:
Our beds are empty two-thirds of the time.
Our living rooms are empty seven-eighths of the time.
Our office buildings are empty one-half of the time.
It's time we gave this some thought.
We have. One of the problems is that so much of our furniture serves only one function and takes up so much space. It wasn't always this way; in Medieval times people essentially sat on their trunks and could pack up everything and move it. Officers in 19th century armies had cleverly designed campaign furniture that folded up for travel. The wealthy traveller might have a dressing table that folded into a trunk.. Now, clever designers are figuring out all kinds of ways to get more utility out of space and furniture by making it serve several functions--we call them transformers. (See a slideshow of our favorite examples.) There are all kinds of ways to get rid of beds, tables that can adapt and change sizes, chairs that can hang on walls. They make it easy to live with less space by adapting to different uses. - Skip the Store: Download!
Like the music for our iPods, dematerialized bits and bytes can be put together again where we need them, without the waste of a physical intermediary. In a world where we watch our carbon output as closely as our waistlines, we don't want to be driving to stores; in a world where everything can be digitized, why not move material only when we are interested in ideas, creativity, and talent?
We are just at the very beginning of a new era where you won't be limited to what the store wants to sell you, but will be able look around the world for the design that meets your needs, and print it out, either at home or at the neighbourhood Kinkos3D. It is happening already on a small scale; Unto This Last is a shop in London where you pick out the design of your choice and the materials you want, and they cut it out on a big computer controlled router for you. Nicola Enrico Stäubli, an architect in Switzerland, has designed a wonderful stool that you can make out of cardboard; go to his site and you can download it and build it. But the biggest experiment is going on at Ponoko, where designers are listing designs that you can buy (which Ponoko produces and ships to you) or customers can actually ask designers to produce to order. Basically, If You Can Think Of It, They Can Design and Make It.
I remember buying my first plotter for architectural drawings; I paid fifteen thousand bucks. Now you can buy any of a number of 3D printers for that; Desktop Factory has just introduced one for $6,995, the price of Apple's first laser printer. Soon you may well downloading and fabricating objects right at your desk. Have a look at our website devoted to the subject: In An Absolut World Everything is Downloadable. - Green Power
Almost half the electricity in the United States is produced by burning coal to boil water to spin turbines to run generators that send it over long distances to connect to our houses where we turn on the stove and use it—to boil water.
It is silly: We use the wrong fuels for the wrong things in the wrong places. Electricity is a sophisticated and expensive power source that can do all kinds of things, and with the advent of LED lighting, notebook computers, and iPods, we don't need as much of it as we used to. That is why it is becoming easier for people to make their own green power using solar panels, small wind turbines, and even local hydro power. But if you are not ready to go that far, you can put photovoltaic panels on your roof and put the power into the grid, or even put your roof into a service program.
And the easiest of all is to just sign up for a green power program from a utility. The one I have used for four years, Bullfrog, gets its power from hydro-electric plants and wind. It costs 30% more than conventional power, so I am very careful about leaving lights on. In fact, so careful that my bills are not a whole lot bigger than they were before. Green power is available in many places--and often not at such a premium as where I live, in Toronto, but for just a few dollars extra per month-- the Department of Energy has a helpful map. Or read our posts about how to get green power in the city where you live.
But the greenest power of all is the Negawatt—the power you don't use. The first thing you should be doing is just using less, investing in CFL and LED lighting, turning off switches, junking your fridge if it is older than 10 years, and hanging your laundry on a line. - Edible Landscapes
You could plant your front yard with grass, pay money for fertilizer, sprinkle it with water, and spend all your time cutting it, or you could tear the damn thing up and plant productive, edible perennials, have a beautiful garden and save on your food bill. They can be quite beautiful; landscape architects and garden centers are getting into it. Fruit, nuts, elderberries, and edible dogwoods as well as your usual garden vegetables can all be grown in edible gardens.
A lot of people are thinking of them as Victory Gardens, which, during World War II, produced a significant proportion of the food people ate in Britain and America.
There are so many green trends that can converge on your front lawn. You'll be frugal and green by growing your own food, reducing water use and pesticides, and providing a habitat for insects and birds, so get digging! - Composting
Then, when you are done growing your own small portions of food that you cook with green power, you can compost theremainders. It isn't hard, but there is a conundrum--inside or out? A NatureMill composter can just fit under the sink in your kitchen, great for apartment dwellers. The Japanese make fancy electronic ones that can eat up your waste in just 24 hours. Look at the green basics of compost and composting here
Another approach is to bug your politicians into introducing municipal composting. It is terrific; we have a little green bin with a supposedly raccoon proof top, and every week they come and take it away. They can deal with a lot more stuff than you can in your yard, composting cat and dog waste as well as the usual kitchen stuff. It is all processed and purified and given to farmers.
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