Tag Archives: being green

Being Green… but is it fun?

Posted on by — 2 Comments ↓

Hi Folks:

Friday once again, and that means it’s ‘Being Green‘ day here on our little corner of the web.  BTW, if you’re looking for one of my ‘Being Green’ posts you can reach them all from this link: http://bit.ly/beinggreen.  It’s a lot easier to remember.

If you’ve read our other posts for this past week you’ll know that Marcia and I are putting the finishing touches on her book of poetry before sending it off to the publisher, and that’s been taking up most of our attention.  I’ve been helping out with cover design, editing and technical support.  It also means this might be a little shorter than usual.  Or not.

So.  Yesterday I was reading the June 2010 “Responsible Travel Report” from Sustainable Travel International, and the opening paragraph contained, “You shop for food, clothes, cars, energy, and maybe even your job with a conscience, but how about your travel? If you’re planning summer travel, how does sustainability factor in to your booking decisions?”  That got me thinking of a couple of things.  For one, green travel is certainly as important as green building or any other issue regarding green living.  As with green building there are standards and certifications for green travel, such as the “Green” Hotels Association, or the Green Key Eco-Rating Program.  The American Hotels and Lodging Association also has its own ‘Green Resource Center‘, although these are ideas for ‘best practices’ and not covered under certification.  Every hotel or other lodging must be built of something, and so the rules for green building apply here as well, and some have done much to curb their waste stream and both water and energy use.  Should one provide individual (branded) soaps and cosmetics in the guest rooms for guests to take with them, or is better to buy in bulk and use dispensers instead?  Hand dryers or paper towels?  There are both energy use and health issues to consider.  Cleaning products?  The list goes on and on and can effect every aspect of a hotel or resort’s operation.  Marcia and I both have experience with the hospitality industry, so we’ve looked at this from both sides of the proverbial coin. Continue Reading →

Being Green – Questions?

Posted on by — 2 Comments ↓

Hi Folks:  Friday once again, and time for this week’s ‘Being Green‘ post.  I was originally going to call this post ‘Being Green – Tradeoffs’, but decided to change it.  Let me explain.

A couple of decades ago I was hired to do environmental work for a gas pipeline construction contract taking place across several Canadian provinces.  The pipeline company was ‘looping’ – adding extra lengths of pipe that would eventually be joined to make another line.  Basically this involved widening the existing right of way and digging a trench some 15′ deep and wide enough for a 4′ diameter pipe.  As the environmental inspector on the job my function varied depending on where I was working.  On the prairies the largest consideration was topsoil preservation, whereas in northern Ontario it was timber removal and water crossings.  There was a manual that outlined the job in some detail, and there were of course existing provincial and federal laws; part of my work was acting as liaison with local agencies with regard to environmental concerns.  The bottom line was that the pipe was going in the ground, and my challenge was to work with the gas company and the contractor to do it in a way that caused the least environmental impact without overly inflating the construction costs.  In practical terms, every day was about trade-offs.  I’m sure just about everyone reading this has experienced this in their own way.

Earlier this week I listened to a webinar with  “Interior Designer and Green Building Insider” Patricia Gaylor, called “Living Eco-logically: Sustainability with Style”.  In her talk Ms. Gaylor mentioned doing a kitchen remodel where the clients insisted on having granite countertops.  As granite is a mined resource and not renewable, it’s not exactly a ‘green’ option.  Ms. Gaylor’s suggestion to her clients was that to offset using granite for the countertops they might agree to using “Energy Star“-rated appliances… a trade-off. Continue Reading →

Being Green – Accountability

Posted on by — Leave a reply

Hi Folks:

Before I get started on this week’s ‘Being Green‘ post I wanted to mention two things. First, last week I mentioned that several members of Victoria’s Emerging Green Builders collaborated on an entry for the USGBC’s 2010 Natural Talent Design Competition. You can find more information on their entry here: ARK | Hurricane Resistant Flooding Solution. Second, if you’re in Kelowna, BC on June 15, 2010 you can “Explore the Future of Architecture at Okanagan College”

Okay… it’s taken me a little while to get started on this week’s post. I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to say, but I wasn’t sure how to get started. In short, writer’s block! For all you non-writers out there, writer’s block is not when you’re sitting there staring at a blank screen or a blank page. Writer’s block is when you’re doing everything but sitting there staring at a blank screen/ page.

So, in desperation (that’s my belief and I’m sticking with it) I decamped to the local Starbucks for a tea and a cookie. Starbucks is about a 20 minute walk from where we live, but because I was already behind schedule I elected to take the bus down instead. As I stood there waiting for the bus I picked up about 10 or 15 pieces of litter and put them in the trash can located beside the bus shelter. I didn’t get to the many cigarette butts before the bus arrived. Continue Reading →

Being Green – Green Building and Health

Posted on by — Leave a reply

Hi Folks:

Friday once again, so it’s time for this week’s ‘Being Green‘ post.  First of all, tomorrow (June 5) is the United Nations Environment Programme’s World Environment Day.  I’m not sure how it differs from ‘Earth Day’, but any day that celebrates this planet we inhabit sounds good to me! This is also International Green IT Awareness Week (June 1-7) and next week is Rivers to Oceans Week (June 8-13).  June’s shaping up to be a busy month.

Before I get started on this week’s post I wanted to offer a shout out for a couple of things.  First, I was at the Victoria Emerging Green Builders meeting last night, and there is a ‘Carbon Neutrality’ workshop coming up on June 21, here in Victoria.  This workshop is being offered in collaboration with Sustainability Solutions Group.  For more information and to register for this workshop, click here: Cutting through the hot air: a course on carbon neutral buildings.  NB: Registration for this event is limited, so it’s best to get in early.  Cost for the workshop is on a sliding scale, and since this is the first time this workshop is being offered, costs are expected to rise for future events.

Several people from the Emerging Green Builders group have also collaborated on an entry for the USGBC’s 2010 Natural Talent Design Competition and they profiled their submission last night. I had the chance to talk to a couple of them at the end of the meeting and was quite impressed with the amount of effort and forethought they put into their design.

Second, next week is the 3rd Annual Canada Green Building Council National Conference in Vancouver, BC, running from June 8-10.  Should be interesting! Continue Reading →

Being Green – Emerging Technologies

Posted on by — Leave a reply

Hi Folks:

For this week’s ‘Being Green‘ post I wanted to offer a shout out to a few new (to me at least) emerging technologies.  All three of these have the ‘power’ (pun intended) to change our future.  I don’t often highlight specific companies in my blog posts, but have when I thought it was worth doing so and this is one of those times.  Continue Reading →

Being Green – Going Solar

Posted on by — Leave a reply

Hi Folks:  Before I get into this week’s ‘Being Green’ post, last Friday I talked a bit about ‘Modeling and Monitoring‘.  I came across a link this week from the American Society of Landscape Architects on “Sustainability Toolkit: Environmental Models” that fits in with that post, so I wanted to mention it first.  Also, I’m a big advocate of LED lighting, but I came across an interesting article this week on LEDs and why ‘not all LED lights are created equal‘. Continue Reading →

Being Green – Modeling and Monitoring

Posted on by — Leave a reply

Hi Folks:

Friday once again, and time for this week’s ‘Being Green‘ post.  Before I get started, last week’s post included a shout out for Steve Satow and a group of dedicated people in the Victoria area who are working to develop the Alternate Solutions Resource Initiative.  They’re still looking for support from interested parties.  On a more personal note, Steve is currently in the process of building his own home using ‘rammed earth’.  If you’d like to keep up to date with his progress, you can find out more at: the Natural Building project: a model for sustainability.

Now then: since one of the attributes of many if not all green building certification systems is the integration of a building’s different systems (heating/cooling, energy and water use, etc.), it’s very helpful to be able to model a building’s performance as part of the design plan.  Anyone who has done energy modeling (and I haven’t) will tell you that getting this exactly right is impossible.  Too much depends on the number of occupants of a building at any given time, their activity and resulting energy use, local weather conditions…  Still, an approximation can be made.

Once a building is completed and in operation, it’s also very important to determine whether or not the building is performing to specification, and if it isn’t, to be aware of it, determine the source of the problem and rectify it. Continue Reading →

Being Green – Cost/Benefit Analysis

Posted on by — Leave a reply

Hi Folks:

Friday once again…  Before I get started on today’s ‘Being Green‘ post I thought I’d take a second for a little shameless self-promotion.  Marcia and I write on a variety of topics, as you can see from the columns on the left side of the page.  In addition to Friday’s  post, on Mondays Marcia does a ‘Marcia’s Meanderings‘ segment, on Wednesdays she writes her ‘Poetry Corner‘, and on Sundays we both write on a shared topic in our ‘He Says, She Says…‘ posts.  There are also sections on food, photography, random items, spirituality, and at the top of the page you’ll find links to some of our short stories and other creative writings.  Okay, that’s all the ‘advertising’ you’re going to get here, so on with the show!

Okay, the title for this week’s post is ‘Cost/Benefit Analysis’, and it has several sources for its inspiration.  In some Native societies there’s an idea of the ‘seventh generation’ – that we must plan our actions now for how they will affect the earth seven generations from now.  In a world run by politicians we tend to think in four-year terms instead, knowing that a new candidate or a new government can overturn much of what’s previously been done .  If the world were run by accountants, everything would have a margin of profit or loss and everything would be measured in terms of whether or not a specific product or activity made a profit.  We tend to apply such thinking to most if not all of what we do as a society. Continue Reading →

Being Green – ‘Pulchraphilia’

Posted on by — Leave a reply

Hi Folks:

Friday once again!  The topic for this week’s ‘Being Green‘ post is ‘pulchraphilia’.  If you’ve never heard the word ‘pulchraphilia’ before, don’t be surprised.  I’d not heard of it myself until recently.  In truth it’s a made-up word.  Then again, all words have to begin somewhere…  I have no claim to it; the word was invented (as best I can tell) by Jason F. McLennan, CEO of the Cascadia Region Green Building Council, and the creator of the ‘Living Building Challenge’.  The word has two Latin words as its base: ‘pulchra’, meaning ‘beauty’, and ‘philia’, meaning ‘love of’.  Roughly translated then, pulchraphilia would be a love of beauty, just as biophilia is a love of life.  It comes from an article in the Spring 2010 issue of Trim Tab, the e-zine put out by Cascadia. Continue Reading →

He Says, She Says…

Posted on by — Leave a reply

Hello, Dear Reader:

Well, today is Sunday, April 25, so this is the last official day of ‘Earth Week 2010‘.  Of course, as the adage goes, we should all make every day Earth Day.  We’ve had some fun this week, taking part in several of the various local activities.  On Earth Day itself we stayed close to home but we were at the Earth Day Parade yesterday and at the local Sierra Club’s Earth Fest today.  So, with that in mind we thought we’d make the topic of today’s ‘He Says, She Says‘ post about ‘Earth Day’.

Have a great week!

Hugs,
M&M

Follow these links to read what He Says/She Says: Marcia’s View / Mike’s View