Home Building Blog - Eco-Friendly and Green

November 24th - Buy Nothing Day

Tomorrow, November 24th is ‘Buy Nothing Day’. Every November, for 24 hours, we remember that no one was born to shop. If you’ve never taken part in Buy Nothing Day, or if you’ve taken part in the past but haven’t really committed to doing it again, consider this: 2006 will go down as the year in which mainstream dialogue about global warming finally reached its critical mass. What better way to bring the Year of Global Warming to a close than to point in the direction of real alternatives to the unbridled consumption that has created this quagmire?

And the pressure is never-ending. There’s always a newer gadget or a trendier pair of shoes, so we keep spending. Makeup and perfume alone are a $33 billion industry.

Not only is this addiction to spending hurting our wallets, it’s also hurting our environment. A disturbing report by the World Wildlife Fund revealed last month that if humans continue to consume the way we do now, by 2050 we will need twice the resources our Earth can produce. The Living Planet Report said human consumption is “bankrupting” natural resources and that our ecological footprint — the impact our consumption is having on cropland, forests and fish — has tripled since 1961.

“We are in serious ecological overshoot, consuming resources faster than the Earth can replace them,” the report said. “The consequences of this are predictable and dire.”

It also said that Canada is using natural resources faster than most. If everyone in the world consumed at the rate of the average Canadian, we would need four Earths to support our lavish lifestyle. In short, our spending is killing the Earth. Without smarter shopping habits, our society of abundance won’t last much longer. But if we change the way we consume, this trend can be reversed.

A good place to start is with tomorrow’s Buy Nothing Day. Every year, millions of people around the world put away their wallets for a day as a protest against the psychological and environmental impacts of consumerism and overconsumption. The event, which started in British Columbia more than a decade ago, is now celebrated as far away as Taiwan and New Zealand. It’s no coincidence the day falls right after American Thanksgiving, when the Christmas shopping season starts in earnest, and billions of dollars are spent in a mad rush of consumption.

So instead of heading out to the malls this weekend, invite your friends over for a potluck dinner. And instead of driving a gas-guzzling SUV, use public transit.

But that’s only the beginning. Our wallets are like ballot boxes — they show what we value. By becoming conscious shoppers year-round, and by moving away from the “spend” mentality, we can put an end to overconsumption. Our Earth, and our bank books, will be better off. As the holiday shopping season gets underway, let’s all do our part by making environmentally friendly decisions, as well as buying fair-trade, sweatshop-free goods or local, handmade products.

Or better yet, let’s spend less time consuming and more time with the people that bring us real fulfillment — family, friends and community. Those are the things that money can’t buy.

Read more about Buy Nothing Day at The Toronto Star

Posted in Green Stories | No Comments »

micro-CHP - It heats and powers homes.

Just found this story at The Christian Science Monitor.

Down in Bernard Malin’s basement is a softly thrumming metal box that turns natural gas into hot water and generates $600 to $800 worth of electricity a year - a bonus byproduct of heating his home.

It’s like printing money

Mr. Malin, the first person in Massachusetts - perhaps in the nation - to own a residential “micro combined-heat-and-power” system, also known as micro-CHP.

But he’s not likely to be the last.

Since Malin changed his home heating system to micro-CHP in February, 18 other families in the Boston area also have adopted the technology, which squeezes about 90 percent of the useful energy from the fuel. That’s triple the efficiency of power delivered over the grid.

Factories and other industrial facilities have used large CHP systems for years. But until the US debut of micro-systems in greater Boston, the units had not been small enough, cheap enough, and quiet enough for American homes. Add to that the public’s rising concern about electric-power reliability - seen in a sales boom of backup generators in the past couple of years - and some experts see in micro-CHP a power-to-the-people energy revolution.

“Right now these residential micro-CHP systems are just a blip,” says Nicholas Lenssen of Energy Insights, a technology advisory firm in Framingham, Mass. “But it’s a … technology that … could have a big impact as it’s adopted more widely over the next five to 10 years.”

Read more about micro-CHP.

Posted in Green Home Building, Green Stories | No Comments »