Material Girl

Every once in a while I find good places to learn about sustainable materials and I've found one at Material Girl.  This young blogger offers great places find materials from residential countertops to drapes to flooring materials that have green attributes and sustainable qualities.  One of her posts found Powerbond, or VCTT, as a long lasting fully recyclable material.  It is great to see people who are actually looking for better materials.   Go material girl go!   http://id2775pogue2010.blogspot.com/2010/02/tandus-powerbond-vctt.html

Green Schools Make Cents

Almost one quarter of America goes to school every day. Unfortunately way too many of these students and teachers attend schools that are inefficient do not foster learning in the best environment possible and are exposed to unnecessary health risks. These schools are also often wasteful of our resources and miss obvious opportunities to reduce operational costs. Fortunately now, both public and private schools are realizing that going green is a no-brainer.

Going green can often easily reduce $100,000 per year in operational costs. While that doesn’t always sound like that much in comparison to our total school budgets, think of that savings in terms of a couple new teachers salaries, thousands of additional textbooks and hundreds of new computers for that school. That is worth striving for and a great reason to go green. By promoting the greening of all schools, not only can we make a tremendous impact on the environment but we can also improve teacher retention, student health, and test scores while reducing school operational costs. So what are the key areas we should focus on?

Every child deserves to go to a school with healthy air to breathe and conditions that encourage learning. Green schools are healthy for kids and conducive to their education. Four key areas that these schools focus on include daylight, indoor air quality, acoustics and thermal comfort. Green schools encourage daylight and outside views since studies show that daylight improves student performance. It also keeps teachers healthy and happy and that reduces teacher absenteeism and teacher turnover which amounts to huge savings over the lifetime of a school.

Green schools also strive for better indoor air quality because we know that improves health. Building green means better acoustics because it improves learning potential and poor acoustics have been shown to negatively impact both the teacher and the student. Good acoustics in classrooms ensure that teachers can be heard without straining their voices. Finally, comfortable indoor temperatures have shown to increase all building occupant satisfaction but if done correctly, building methods can also reduce energy usage while improving thermal comfort. Our nation’s students and teachers deserve healthy and effective spaces for learning and teaching. You can make a difference by letting elected officials know our schools should be built, operated, and maintained green.

Do Schools Need A Flooring Education?

Many schools are doing away with carpet in classrooms and at first glance the reasons seem to make sense. Right up until you take a look at the thousands of tennis balls teachers, administrators and facility people place on the bottoms of chairs to stop the scratching of hard surface and reduce chair noise. If you look a little closer to that tennis ball that will never see Wimbledon, you will find a pile of dust highlighting the filthy allergens that we force our kids to live with while they sit on the cold hard floors trying focus on what their teachers are saying. This becomes even harder to understand when you see the carpet samples and area rugs that schools buy to make the learning environment better for children after they suffer through the hard floors for a while. Does this make sense to anybody?

To be fair, poor carpet can be hard to keep clean and some say it might cause mold and mildew and that cannot be good. Well actually, carpet does not cause mildew. Moisture and certain temperatures allow mold and fungi to form but let us not confuse the discussion with facts. Let’s just assume that carpet causes mold and we do not want our kids exposed to biological hazards. But before we throw the carpet out with the mold, everyone should understand that carpet offers greater acoustics for a better learning environment, better thermal characteristics for a more comfortable place to learn as well as the elimination of the need for those ugly dirty tennis balls.

Now that we have that temporarily settled and we throw out the carpet then what do we do? What schools tend to do is go to the cheapest alternative flooring which is VCT or vinyl composition tile. This choice always overlooks the fact that VCT actually increases dust particulates and can worsen indoor air quality for our children. The hard surface also causes increased noise levels, increased glare, increased energy costs, a less comfortable learning environment for teaching and yes, the need for more tennis balls on the bottom of chair legs. What makes this choice even worse is that the cost to operate and maintain VCT over a 10-year period dwarfs alternate cleaning methods for other resilient hybrid soft surfaces adding to the ever increasing costs to run a school district. Wait, “resilient hybrid products?’ Yes, these products are not hard surfaces and are not carpets but rather they are alternative flooring products that provide the benefits of soft surface along with the durability of hard surface while being fully recyclable.

To start your education on school flooring do a Google search on VCTT and investigate hybrid resilient flooring products. Since hybrids are the combination of technologies designed to produce a better solution to a problem, much like hybrid cars, this might be a great place for schools to learn about new flooring alternatives for a better learning environment for students.

Recession Slows Wind

I felt following up on my last post was important when I read, “Recession Slows Wind,” in USA Today last week. Despite $950,000,000 in cash from stimulus money being pumped in to help it seems many power-producing projects are being put on hold because of the slowing economy. It is doubtful wind power growth will even reach 2008 levels according to industry data and before the crash hit 2009 was supposed to be a growth year for alternative wind energy. This fact begs the question, is wind power the engine that drives sustainable alternative energy or is the economy the engine that drives wind power?

Wind farms are a great form of alterative energy that needs to continue to grow and be explored since only 1.25% of all U.S. electricity generation comes from wind power but how will we ever get to 5% unless we have the economic engine running and healthy? Mega watts from wind need mega bucks and a flourishing market with confident lenders and healthy businesses generate those dollars needed. The top five states for wind power include Texas, Iowa, California, Minnesota, and Oregon and in states like California where the economy and deficits are in worse shape than in many other states it appears even with new legislation the thing that can really help renewable energy will be a renewed economy.

Sustainable Sustainability

Recently I read an article with the headline, “Loss of grants squelches conservation efforts.” The article described how the Governor of North Carolina was taking $100,000,000 from the Clean Water Management Trust Fund to help solve the state budget shortfall. This type of thing is happening all across America and highlights a few key realities about sustainability; the economy must be flourishing for environmental initiatives to flourish and to be truly sustainable our efforts should not have to be capital intensive.

No matter how much people want the world to be more sustainable, we won’t do it at the expense of feeding our families, taking care of our children and making sure we have a healthy place to live. People and businesses become very philanthropic when there is extra money available and everyone is cared for but when companies, institutions and governments are slashing jobs, cutting benefits and eliminating opportunities the extra money for the environmental movement often goes straight to the landfill. This means that we must do two key things to make the sustainability movement more sustainable.

First, we must not hurt business and individuals with our green goals. If taxes on people and businesses for environmental products and initiatives become too heavy it will choke the engine of prosperity and growth and it will eventually hurt the cause. Sustainable initiatives should help companies reduce cost, reuse materials and improve profits, not take them away. Offering tax credits and exemptions for individuals and companies that take steps to help our environment in sustainable ways will become an engine for growth and green. This would be a positive idea and not a punitive one.

Second, we should find ways to teach corporations and individuals to implement sustainable initiatives in their homes and companies that are not capital intensive. Organizations like USGBC should look at significant ways to reduce costs to become LEED certified so companies can do the right thing without paying huge fees. Many large corporations are not becoming LEED certified because of the costs, yet they are trying to do the same things that those who spend the money for certifications. This should not be looked down upon but rather we should find more ways to help everyone do the right thing at a lower cost and even for free for certain types of companies. This would help more companies implement environmentally sustainable practices sooner rather than later.

The bottom line is the bottom line. Some might call it a focus on the 3 P’s; People, profit and planet. Some call it sustainable sustainability. Either way, it is evident that the money green helps the environmental green flourish.

Is Blogging Sustainable?

I have been out of touch on blogging for a while for a few reasons; first I think my computer caught the Swine Flu. And no, I won’t call it H1N1 or (Hi-knee) as my friends call it. My computer caught a pig virus and had to have its colon cleansed or whatever it is my geeks did to it to make it run again. Second, I was doing some green research and in the process I came up with the third and main reason I did not blog for a while. Blogging might be unsustainable. I don’t mean that a human being can’t post blogs daily and sustain that I mean quality blogging is unsustainable. It might even cause “babble waste” to increase across the globe and what earth loving environmentalist really wants that to happen.

Think about it for a minute. Isn’t blogging just another word for babbling? Have you ever listened to a 3 year old talk when they really just want to hear themselves talk and then words come of their mouths out but they don’t really mean that much? I have. They just keep spewing babble to hear themselves pronounce words but they repeat themselves over and over and then the words become like language just flowing over you. I think that is what is happening in the blogging, or babbling world. People just like to hear themselves speak (or in this case, watch themselves write). Ask yourself; do we really need to hear from anyone on a daily basis about anything? I know reduce, reuse and recycle is a great way to think when it comes to green products but when bloggists and babbler's do it in blogs it just wastes our time. So maybe bloggers might want to focus on the "reduce" part of the mantra.

Henry David Thoreau said it best when he said, “Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify.” So I’m thinking that reading babble every day is just a waste of time and as a sustainability blogger I think we should cut out ALL waste. As I was doing some LEED and other in-depth study on environmental issues I started wondering if I could blog, or babble, every day about sustainability in floorcovering and have something of real value to say. Then I wondered if any person or expert could and the answer became very clear to me. No. Nobody can provide meaningful and quality babble daily and if you fall into the trap of just reading babble daily you will clutter your life with babble and waste your valuable life away.

So my conclusion is this; it is not sustainable for any individual to provide daily insight on anything of real value. The only way to babble daily is if you just babble and who needs that in their lives. Stop the waste! Cut the babble! Be more sustainable as a blogger. I have decided that I will put more valuable content on my blog for access and as a resource when it is needed. I will try to not babble just to hear myself babble and will commit to thinking before just writing and will endeavor to provide more valuable and helpful information on my blog. And I commit that if I am just babbling I’ll let you know.

Every Day is Earth Day - Top 5 Daily Green Tips

Today is earth day and it occurs to me that every day should be earth day. We all love clean water, pollutant free air, and a healthy mother earth. It really doesn't matter your economic status, your political belief, or your occupation, we all love a clean environment and want healthy living for our children and our children's children. The earth is a brilliantly designed and amazing planet that does an incredible job of taking care of itself but there are some simple and practical ways that we can help to limit our footprint on our great planet as well.

Here are 5 simple things that we all can control ourselves and do every day to help keep our world clean and green.

1. Reduce Energy Usage. Lower your temperature a few degrees in the winter and wear some warmer clothing and turn the thermostat up a little in the summer so the AC doesn't burn unnecessary juice from the grid. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying live in a continual sweat. I'm saying a couple degrees across a few hundred million people means a massive energy savings. The simple things add up. Turn off lights when you leave a room and don't use lights when the sun does just as good a job lighting your space. Turn off computers, TV's, IPod's, and all energy sucking devices when you are not really using them. Use "Energy Common Sense". The great thing about using energy common sense is that it also saves you money.

2. Reduce Water Consumption. Even Barney the dinosaur teaches the little children not to let the water run when they are brushing their teeth. He really is a "green" dinosaur and we can learn from his teachings just please don't sing those songs to me. It's pretty simple stuff. Don't let that water run when washing, brushing teeth or getting ready to take a shower. I don't think any researcher has yet to sneak into our bathrooms to measure how long we all let the water run before jumping into shower but my guess is that it can often be over 5 minutes of water down the drain before we even enter the shower. Then when we get in, how long do we just stand there and let the precious H2O wash down the drain? Maybe CSI Miami can figure out that answer but the bottom line is that we should be aware of where we run water unnecessarily and learn to reduce that waste. That includes watering the lawn, washing cars, taking showers, brushing teeth, washing clothes or dishes and all ways we use water. Water is more critical to life than oil will ever be so let's treat it that way. Mom was right, waste not want not.

3. Recycle. Most communities have recycling bins that we can use so this is a no brainer. Try to recycle glass, bottles and paper trash. The more we do it the better we become at it and the lower the cost for recycling companies. It might be a slight nuisance today but as recyclers get better it will become easier in the future and they will get better at separating materials for recycling.

4. Re-use. My grandfather taught me this one at an early age and it had very little to do with being green and had everything to do with being poor and thrifty. He actually had jars that he would keep old nails in after he had used them. Yes, he would actually pull them out of the wall and save them for future use. I asked him one time when I saw him do this why he didn't just throw the nail away and buy new ones from the hardware store. He replied, "Why would I want to spend money on something when I already have these?" Smart man. He reused everything and rarely wasted income on something when he could re-use something he already had. This is economic sustainability in action. Employing re-use as a daily practice will also save you lots of money throughout your life as well as use less materials.

5. Educate Yourself Green. There is an abundance of free information from the web regarding how to be more environmentally sustainable. It doesn't have to cost you anything other than time to read. Learn about sustainability, investigate simple things you can do in your home to be green and reduce waste, expenses, energy, chemicals, and other unnecessary and wasteful items. There is a lot of greenwashing and bogus information being passed around today regarding environmental issues so becoming educated on the topic can help you navigate through the green trash.

Hope this helps and have a happy earth day!