"Green buildings have captured the imagination of many in the mainstream, but for green professionals the time has come to stop designing for mere energy efficiency and start designing to regenerate and restore. And that means taking responsibility for what people do in buildings and communities after they are built." — www.greenmanifesto.org

Also from the website:

1. Communities are people, not buildings.
2. Communities will change when the people living in them change.
3. At least half of human impact on the planet comes from our lifestyles — the choices we make every day. Where, and how, we travel. What we eat. What we wear. The stuff we buy, and how we get rid of that stuff when we're done with it.
4. These lifestyle choices are not made in a vacuum. They are made in communities, and are indelibly influenced by community design and buildings.
5. The way we've designed our cities and buildings in the past has created a template for living that most people follow without much thought, and that template makes it very inconvenient to live sustainably.
6. Those of us who create and run the places we live in have tremendous influence to change this template, and and to make it easier for people to change their lifestyles.
7. Some of us have been pre-occupied with making buildings, streets, and infrastructure that use building materials, water, and energy in smarter ways. We call ourselves "green professionals." We call our movement the "green building movement." But we now recognize that the biggest problems are fundamentally social ones.
8. Since buildings and technology represent only half of the problem and half of the solution, clearly the present green building movement doesn't go far enough.
9. All across our cities, entrepreneurs and environmental groups are emerging with solutions to specific challenges of our unsustainable lifestyles — car-sharing companies, local food advocates, re-use innovators. But most of these green lifestyle initiatives are not joined up with the green building movement, or each other.
10. We urgently need an umbrella movement that will bring us all together to design, build, and operate truly sustainable communities with intent. The time has come to apply the vast ingenuity of the green building movement to making green lifestyles just as convenient as "grey lifestyles." The time has come to broaden our design teams, to bring green lifestyle experts to the table.
11. We cannot wait for someone else to bring us all together. We are the ones we have been waiting for.

Read more. Take the pledge. Participate.

One summer day a few years ago I was standing on the rim of the Grand Canyon expecting to look down and across at light and shadows melding with multicolored layers of bedrock, the whitewater from the Colorado River calmly glistening a mile below as it carves through rock and time itself... etc etc. Instead, I found my gaze drawn to a line of gray clouds blowing in from the west. They didn't look like rain clouds, and it wasn't long before I discovered it was smog carried on the wind all the way from Los Angeles. I did spend part of that day contemplating the vastness of nature and the power of time, but it was done through a haze of personal guilt. I had just come from a wedding in LA and was sightseeing my way back to Colorado. Part of that cloud was most certainly mine, just as the 3-D explosions of CO2 shown here engulfing most of the U.S. and beyond are collectively ours.

Text accompanying the video: "A new, high resolution, interactive map of United States carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels has found that the emissions aren't all where we thought. The maps and system, called Vulcan, show CO2 emissions at more than 100 times more detail than was available before. Until now, data on carbon dioxide emissions were reported, in the best cases, monthly at the level of an entire state grid. The Vulcan model examines CO2 emissions at local levels on an hourly basis. Purdue researchers say the maps are also more accurate than previous data because they are based on greenhouse gas emissions instead of estimates based on population in areas of the United States."

More at Purdue's website.

Last week was great for learning about positive approaches to solving our collective climate change problems. First, I attended the MassImpact: Cities and Climate Change symposium at MIT on Friday (March 28, 2008). Then I got to see Michael Singer present some of his work at the down2earth event in Boston on Saturday.

Pretty jam-packed.

Jaime Lerner lead the MassImpact event through a visual description of his understanding of the ways that urban livability and vitality are directly related to reducing environmental impact and creating regenerative built environments. Jaime's perspective is summed up in his statement, "Every city that has a good quality of life... is sustainable."

Here's Jaime speaking at last year's TED conference.

In Jaime's view, many policymakers and politicians don't have a very "generous" view of their cities. His goal is to bring the place and its inhabitants together into a joyful community. Jaime's commandments for great cities:

1. Use cars less
2. Separate your garbage
3. Live closer to work
4. Multi use all of the city — don't have parts of the city that are used only a small part of the time
5. Sustainability is the relationship between use and waste — don't waste things

Read more...

Down To Earth Building Bee (Vancouver, BC, Canada) had a shake test on a half-scale model of a cob structure done at the UBC Earthquake Engineering Research Facility. It happened a while ago, but they just posted video:

The model was of a circular structure with a shed roof, described as "about 6 ft diameter and 5 ft high"... not representative of houses in the developed world, but a start for more research. There was a small window on the rear, which is easy to miss in the video. (Fenestrations normally weaken a structure, so they're important to include.) There also doesn't appear to be a stemwall — highly recommended for cob buildings, and another likely point of seismic catastrophe.

Read more...

"Instead of waiting for green roofs to come to the Twin Cities [St. Paul and Minneapolis, Minnesota] as a product for mass consumption, RoofBloom was created to empower individuals with the knowledge and materials needed to install green roofs themselves. A collaboration between the Minnesota Green Roof Council and the Minnehaha Creek Watershed District, RoofBloom is taking action at a grass roots level, while focusing on improving the sustainability and effectiveness of green roof construction." — RoofBloom builds a green roof in 7 minutes

At their website, RoofBloom offers a downloadable 19-page booklet introducing their concept, Green Your Garage: Volume One. Excerpted:

Why small green roofs?

Garages and other small outbuildings may not seem like the place to start promoting green roof technologies. These are the smallest roofs in the watershed, and make up only a small fraction of total rooftop area. Garages are generally not heated or air conditioned, and cannot take advantage of the reduced energy demands that are provided by green roofs.

But garages are a great place to start:

• Even though green roofs have a proven record spanning several decades in other countries, they're still an unfamiliar idea to most Americans. Few people risk using unfamiliar technology on their homes; more homeowners are willing to experiment with green roofs on their garages.
• Garages and other outbuildings do represent a significant land use in urban areas. As an example, fifty thousand two-car garages, each with a 480-square foot roof, represent 24 million square feet of impermeable surface. That's 550 acres of green space.
• Garages in Minnesota generally have roofs sloped between 20 and 30%. This is shallow enough to support many different green roof systems. Many single family homes in our region feature roofs sloped at 50% or more, which is too steep for most green roof systems. Also, garage roofs are usually simpler and easier to roof, with fewer complicated valleys and penetrations.
• Garage roofs are visible. People will be able to see a green roof on a garage. This is in contrast to many commercial green roofs, which are often inaccessible and invisible to the public on top of a building. A garage with a green roof sends a clear message that green roof technology can be used economically on a wide range of building types.
• Once green roofs are established as a viable means of reducing roofing costs and energy use, all while protecting our watersheds, homeowners will find ways to use green roofs on their homes. For now, though, garages and other small outbuildings present an ideal place to demonstrate the possibilities of green roofs.

ADAM NIEMAN / SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

"Left: All the water in the world (1.4087 billion cubic kilometres of it) including sea water, ice, lakes, rivers, ground water, clouds, etc. Right: All the air in the atmosphere (5140 trillion tonnes of it) gathered into a ball at sea-level density. Shown on the same scale as the Earth."
— blog.phiffer.org

"Caption: Global water and air volume. Conceptual computer artwork of the total volume of water on Earth (left) and of air in the Earth's atmosphere (right) shown as spheres (blue and pink). The spheres show how finite water and air supplies are. The water sphere measures 1390 kilometres across and has a volume of 1.4 billion cubic kilometres. This includes all the water in the oceans, seas, ice caps, lakes and rivers as well as ground water, and that in the atmosphere. The air sphere measures 1999 kilometres across and weighs 5140 trillion tonnes. As the atmosphere extends from Earth it becomes less dense. Half of the air lies within the first 5 kilometres of the atmosphere."
— Science Photo Library

I'm in Ithaca, NY, this weekend at the third annual meeting of Natural Builders Northeast (NBNe), an association of professional natural building practitioners. Like the early days of the NESEA conference — another annual gathering of regional experts working to help the built environment move toward something more environmentally sane (and often a fair piece ahead of the curve) — it's a small, enthusiastic, well informed, and forward-looking group of smart, funny, concerned designers, builders, architects, engineers, and doers. It's inspiring to see the pool of knowledge and experience growing and maturing, hearing the softly exhaled expressions of new understandings as people learn from their peers. Punctuated with lots of laughter.

Meetings in previous years were held in northern Massachusetts and central Vermont. The location of next year's meeting is a decision coming up on the agenda. A website is under construction, and should be implemented shortly.

Self-guided tours of four projects by local NBNe members were available Friday afternoon for early arrivers, and the weekend gathering officially started with group visits to two more on Saturday morning. Afterward, a freewheeling technical conversation unfolded unabated from lunch until a break seemed in order not long before supper — careening from topics like the effect on thermal resistance by vapor and temperature gradients in straw bale walls, to the proper implementation of stone windowsills, to foundation details, and on and on.

After supper, a modified "pecha-kucha" slam session began: 15-minute open presentations for each person to talk about projects, tools, inspirations. Being an old fart, I left about 10:00, and based on past meetings, things are likely to carry on until the wee hours.

There's another day tomorrow.

Photos from the field trips follow:

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The title of this post is taken from a question we received about the source of recycled rubber used for a parking-bumper and speed-bump manufacturer. It motivated me to do some digging to get a better understanding of the scrap tire industry. As it turns out, it's actually kind of fascinating. The following is unverified single-pass research, and any thoughts, additions, or corrections are welcome.

The Rubber Manufacturers Association (RMA) provides a bunch of info on domestic scrap tires in a 2006 report titled Scrap Tire Markets in the United States. According to their data, in 2005 almost seven-eighths of domestic scrap tires were finding their way to end-use markets — about 259 million tires. Nearly seven-eighths, or 87%, is an exceptionally respectable rate of reuse. (The EPA estimated an 80.4% end-use market rate in 2003, two years earlier.) For comparison, a reclamation fact sheet from the The Aluminum Association shows that just 52% of aluminum cans were recycled in 2005 (down from a 1997 high of 66.5%).

The RMA estimate appears to be based on U.S.-manufactured tires only, however. Their report says that "about 299 million tires were generated in the U.S. in 2005" — seven-eighths of that number is right in the neighborhood of the number of scrap tires generated. It's not clear, however, that the scrap tire number excludes tires of non-domestic origin, which would change the figure some. A 2006 article in the Toledo Blade titled U.S. tire maker betting on China reported, "Nearly 102 million passenger tires were imported into the United States last year, estimates the Rubber Manufacturers Association. And although $7.7 billion worth of rubber tires and tubes were imported into the United States last year, only $2.8 billion worth were exported, according to the U.S. Census Bureau." It's a little frustrating that they switched from units to dollars in mid-stream, but we can derive that in 2005 we imported about 36% more new tires than we exported, and it appears that something over 25% of the tires sold in the U.S. came from somewhere else. (In 2005, anyway. In 2006, Tire Business magazine ran an article titled Off-shore tire influx deepens amid slumping domestic production that reported, "Every other replacement market passenger tire sold in the U.S. today is made outside the U.S. Three out of five replacement light truck tires sold in the U.S. are made elsewhere. Two out of three replacement medium truck tires sold in the U.S. are made outside the U.S.")

Read more...

Jerelyn Wilson — who has the inadequate title of "Outreach Director" for BuildingGreen — came down the hall and into my office a few minutes ago, bright-eyed and holding the current issue of YES! magazine in front of her, folded open. "Have you seen this?!" she asked, holding it out for me:

About that photo:

"Tsewang Norbu lives in the village of Digger across the 4,500 meters high Khardungla pass in the Leh District. He is twenty-eight years old, has five children and keeps goats.

He was selected by his community to be trained in the installation, repair and maintenance of solar photovoltaic units. All the solar units he installed were brought to the village by Yak and on the backs of people from the village. He was trained on the job: he installed fifty-nine units himself, taking three months to complete the work.

The units were installed in 1992. They are still working."

Photo by Barefoot Photographers of Tilonia
Copyright 2008 Barefoot College, Tilonia, India

(More pictures and words.)

Being around and working with people to whom not just an enthusiastic and positive world future, but an enthusiastic and positive here and now, matters, is inspiring and humbling. People who celebrate goodness, and strive for it.