Sustainability: Green Living
 
Sustainable living - that's the key. Whether it's green building, green remodeling, green choices, or green design - it's all about changing our attitudes and priorities. Is it moral to build a 10,000 square foot house for two, whether it's solar powered or not? How can we really measure carbon footprint? Green building has become an important consideration for many women who are contemplating building in Western North Carolina. But is it green building, or green washing? We ask our readers who are doing green building, or thinking about it to contact Va Boyle with your experiences. Our links section can help to to learn about building material options - and about other choices that allow us to find ways to walk softer upon this green earth.
Featured Links:
 Are White Males an Endangered Species?
News or Press Release
If you think the sudden emergence of the Tea Party movement has something to do with dissatisfaction amongst white (primarily) males, then the current demographic trends suggest that they actually have reason to fear that they are losing their grip. 2010 may be the year of the demographic tipping point - when the number of non-white births in the USA exceeds white ones.
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Flame Retardants raise Health Safety Issues
News or Press Release
Flame retardants are becoming a flash point for people concerned with greening their homes. It seems that these chemicals are getting into people - and are present in an alarming number of products. The federal government doesn't either require these chemicals to be listed, or that the chemicals used by tested for safety in either adults or children.
more...
Safe Cleaning Tips for Your Home
News or Press Release
Our homes aren't safe and clean if the air inside is polluted with chemicals from household cleaners. Follow these simple tips to protect your family's health while you clean your home. More..."
Carbon Offsets: the New Racket?
Sheville Staff
Josh Harkinson in Mother Jones has observed that the whole carbon-offsets business is not working as well as the original intention. Briefly, the carbon offset industry was established to allow polluting companies to buy carbon offsets for their emissions: something environmentally bad would be offset by something environmentally good. What Harkinson points out is that this area has been growing fast and has become politically strong - with the result that environmentally questionable
projects are being funded.
At Sheville.org, we would ask a second question. It's wonderful to find ways to fund meaningful attempts to recycle, reuse, and create the infrastructure for alternate energy sources. But isn't the point that it is rampant consumerism that is producing our environmental mess, and that only when we realize that we cannot solve our problems through consumption that we can tackle them? Buying a carbon offset is simply another form of consumption, even if it's a "better" one than many.
Rethinking the Tragedy of the Commons
Sheville Staff
One of the classic pieces of the beginnings of Earth Day and the environmental movement was Garrett Hardin's 'The Tragedy of the Commons,' published in Science in 1968. Ian Angus has recently reconsidered the evidence - or lack of it - for Hardin's thesis in Monthly Review Zine.
The Economics of Gas Guzzlers
Sheville Staff
The price of gasoline has sent SUV's into a free fall on car lots, but this sea change raises all sorts of questions for people who already own them. Judith Warner wrote an amazingly self-critical article over her own love affair with SUV's recently. Just as car manufacturers and retailers are scrambling to dump their inventory of SUV's, and the average price of a used SUV dropped 12% in May and June according to J.D.
Powers and Associates, the question raised for people who own them is: just what should be done with them, or with that truck which wasn't really needed? Even in addressing this as an environmental issue, the environmental cost of manufacturing a vehicle, not to mention sending it into solid waste, doesn't necessarily justify getting rid of it immediately. And this issue of manufacturer and disposal cost, as an environmental question, is the item which is making the decision about buying a hybrid a much more
complex question, because batteries are an environmental disposal headache. Add in a recession at least, and it's daunting to make a decision about selling a vehicle that nobody seems to want. Enter edmunds.com, a wonderful site for information about buying cars. They have added a Gas Guzzler for Gas Sipper calculation page, which allows you to calculate just what the pay-back is for trading in your old vehicle, based on the price of
gas. Of course, the economics of buying a new car based on gas prices is not the same as calculating the environmental impact of a new car. But as we move toward a more sustainable model, one thing becomes clear. We cannot become sustainable by "buying" our way out of our current mess. One of the major tenets that we are going to accept and implement is to consume less. That means keeping cars, computers, and televisions longer. Throwing something away means that all the energy and resources
that went into the production of it are wasted. So we have to find ways to balance moving on from wasteful ways into more frugal ones - but not without deep thought.
J. Lee Lehman
This is a listing of books about energy conservation. Please feel free to suggest additions or changes to the author more...
J. Lee Lehman
This is a listing of books about green building. Please feel free to suggest additions or changes to the author more...
Tom Miller
Most of us, we will spend $1500 to $1800 on energy costs in a year’s time, normally the third largest expense line in our budget. Of this amount, the largest cost is for heating and cooling your home. more...
Gray Water
Sheville Staff
Many of you residents no doubt received the mailing from the state about conserving water. In the midst of the worst drought in 30 years, it also came out that the use of gray water in North Carolina is mostly illegal. Unbelievable?
Here are two websites of interest on this issue:
Click
here for the article text in the News Observer.
Click
here for the Carolina Gardening Forum on gray water
Sheville Staff
It is important for us to continue to find ways in which we can recycle products in order to do our part to help preserves our earth. Below are some tips that might help; try them! If you have some tips to add to the list please send them to shevilleva@sheville.org. Share what you know. more...
Michael Blate
With the I-40 and I-85 corridors slated to see some of the fastest growth ever in America's history over the next several decades, the issue of saving family farms and other "green space" in western NC is truly a pressing issue. more...
Robin Cape
Please join me this year in my pledge to play a role in encouraging Asheville to change 1000 light bulbs as part of the ENERGY STAR Change a Light, Change the World Campaign . more...
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