At our small office, the quest for carbon neutrality continues, and what a complex task it’s proving to be! We’d agreed that the first and most obvious step would be to calculate our current footprint. This would give us a baseline against which to measure our progress over the remainder of the year. Hiring a consulting firm to come in and do the job seemed costly, so we decided to do as much research as we could to come up with a baseline ourselves. This is proving to be easier said than done. [Read more…]
ALL IN A DAY’S WORK: The Road to Carbon Freedom, Part 1
Recently, in the wake of the COP21 meetings and the publication of the Paris Agreement on climate change, we posted a few ideas about reducing carbon impacts in this “post-Paris” era. At the top of that list was the suggestion to read “How Bad Are Bananas? The Carbon Footprint of Everything” by Mike Berners-Lee. The book contains lots of excellent advice on how to contribute to the health of the planet. Freshly inspired by its message, my coworkers and I agreed to set out on a new adventure in sustainability: we would try to become a carbon-neutral workplace in 2016. [Read more…]
Canada’s EnerGuide: the energy cost of your home
What is the true energy cost of your home? How do you go about calculating it? If you’re trying to cut your carbon footprint in planning a building project, where do you find reliable information?
Whether you’re a prospective home buyer, planning a renovation, or work in the construction or realty sectors, here’s something you definitely should know about. Canada’s new EnerGuide system is a wide-reaching initiative by the federal government. It will provide the world’s most accurate system for determining the energy efficiency of a home. A report by a trained third-party inspector can now provide the total annual consumption and greenhouse gas emissions of any house. It’s high time that such considerations become integrated in a meaningful way to the construction and real estate industries. More info at:
http://www.nrcan.gc.ca/en…/efficiency/housing/new-homes/5035
MOVING BEYOND PARIS: When less is more
Now that COP21 is over and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change has been written, what’s next? John Kerry suggests that there’s potential for economic growth in the development of new technologies to mitigate climate change. I prefer to see the potential for moral growth by all of us – individuals, corporations, and nations alike – if we abandon this model of growth as a value to be pursued. [Read more…]
In Their Own Words: A Builder Speaks
For our second installment on the topic of the Client/Designer/Builder relationship, we asked our frequent collaborator Tavis Griffith of Griffith Homes to weigh in on the subject. Here’s a summary of the comments of Tavis and his administrator, Kim Rodriguez: [Read more…]
A Matter of Trust: the dangers of DIY
In our culture, a lot of value is placed on the DIY ethic, in which it seems we’ve empowered everyone to do just about anything. The result is that people aren’t always prepared to value expert opinion, but instead engage with experts as minimally as they can. This is due partly to the widespread idea that all opinions have equal validity – especially when it comes to the world of design. [Read more…]
