What Is 'Green' Really?

Teetorbilt

Is it ethanol which costs only 15% less to produce but only provides 90% of the 'bang'?

Electric cars that use mostly fossil fuels to recharge them?

Fabricated wood products? Recycled plastics products?

Bamboo "the new 'green' product" grows round and hollow. It has to be stripped, squared, fired and laminated, all processes that require ENERGY from mostly fossil fuels. GREEN? Solid wood flooring is more green.

What is 'Green' really?

It's building the most energy efficient homes with recyclable products. It's about not clearing that lot, let's try to save as many trees as we can.

GREEN is innovative building. Take Galveston, TX as an example. Wiped out in 1900. What did they do? Built the same slab sided structures with overhangs that they had before. Then comes 1915 and they had rebuilt the same as before, same thing happens. Along comes Ike and hits the same style structures. I'm sure that most will do it again as it seems to be the only way that we know how to build anything or all that the 'codes' will allow. It's the perfect time to 'smarten up' here. Watch it NOT happen.

See my signature.

__________________
You can't solve you're problems with the same level of thinking that created the problems.

Albert Einstein

SCB

How about the new synthetic sod.
It's pretty green.
You don't have to water it to make it grow.
You just have to wash it!!!
And when it starts to look a little worn...
Just tear it out, throw it in the landfill, and install some new synthetic turff!!!
Now thats pretty green.
LOL
Cracks me up they call it a green product.
Is anything really greener than real grass?

MALCO.New.York

Mud huts and reusing WITHOUT recycling is the only TRUE GREEN.

Ethanol requires more energy input for processing than it yields in output.

The type of wood used in ANY floor does NOT make it green.

Electric cars KILL humans and wildlife (battery processing and Acid rain from the coal burning plant that generates the electrons).

Green as we are Educated by the Media and Marketing is a TOTAL crock.

These Certification Programs and Groups. GARBAGE.

Car - bon Cre -- dits? (spaced so no further web hits can be generated by my typing) Something that Al GaWhore has touted and Marketed. Why? Not for a damn Nobel but because HIS Corporation is the one who COLLECTS the Money for the "offset".

You want Green. Have NO utility hookup. Crate less trash (literally). Carpool or ride a bike.


Soap Box over.

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Something to One may be Nothing to another!

Ultimate Wisdom---------
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OW-cnizLDEE

mickeyco

Green is the color of the extra money people are paying for a sham. Not only is ethanol crap it's driving the price of food, across the board, through the roof. The answer is treadmills that charge batteries.



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Some people climb mountains. I take out the trash. But we both do it for the same reason.

wackman

brilliant.

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"I only bother remembering things that I can't easily look up." Albert Einstein

Cdat

Green is just another chump ripoff. Some people will fall for it so they can feel all good inside.

Mike Finley

Green is pretty easy to define - it's any building practice that a customer is excited about untill they find out how much more it costs.

SethHoldren

LOL

Exactly.

You know, there is some real truth behind this comment.

And I'm inclined to agree completely. But here's the problem:

Taking this kind of mindset on the whole "green" thing can feel like reality in a world of looney toons.

But I know plenty of folks who are completely skewed in the other direction, who do things like pour old diesel fuel into neighborhood creeks and just completely waste and destroy everything because they think the green movement is a con.

Wasteful green is just as bad as regular old wasteful. But that doesn't make being wantonly wasteful and destructive OK.

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Dave R

Green is what I make from taking advantage of the fads that idiots want when they insist on jumping on every band wagon they hear about.

mickeyco

No chit, I saw one of those house flipping shows a while back (they all seem to have disappeared), a couple of self righteous idealist that were going to rebuild the house "green" when they got the prices all of a sudden those things weren't so important to the overall theme, I can't remember how it all worked out but I think they ended up scrapping the solar panel idea, but offering the new homeowner an incentive to install them or some crap. What I do remember is that it was in California and they didn't put in air conditioning and nobody wanted the house.

I believe Al Gore is the best example of "green", he spent a lot money he scammed with his "global warming" crap, on his huge mansion that uses more energy than many, many average homes and now that he has gone "green" it uses even more.

Now I'll give you the mickeyco version of green, I grew up in what would be considered ultra poor by today's standards (I never felt we were poor). Indoor plumbing was a luxury (got it in the 60's, house was built in the 1800's), no TV we had a radio, you didn't open the fridge to look around to see if you were interested in eating something (God help you if the old man caught you doing that), you knew what you were getting before hand, you didn't go directly from heat to AC and back again (later years, first house had no AC, heat was from a stove and fire places), showers were quick (7 people, one bathroom), you wore a sweater in the house in winter, you didn't wash 1 pair of jeans, the lights were off when you weren't in the room, you walked, road your bicycle or skate boarded a lot. Our utility bills, my utility bills now, were/are about half what the neighbors are and it's not a burden. I saw my first pair of new jeans at about ten or eleven, we recycled long before it became a fad, not for the money, but because it was wasteful not to.



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Some people climb mountains. I take out the trash. But we both do it for the same reason.

MALCO.New.York

That about sums up what REAL Green is. Reduce and reuse. Recycling, at this point, is NOT Green. (Except glass and Aluminum.)

__________________
Something to One may be Nothing to another!

Ultimate Wisdom---------
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OW-cnizLDEE

airborneSGT

Man made structures used to take advantage of the environment they were built in. With the advent of "cheap" energy we did a complete 180 on taking advantage of what nature had so perfectly created. The average sizes of homes increased and energy usage did as well. Only now with new global powers on the rise and a high demand on cheap fossil fuels that may be rapidly dwindling are people concerned with green living.

Money is certainly a great motivator for many people. The savings aspects that can be had by "green building" I think are what people will recognize the most.

When I finally build my own place it will likely be built with the many left over materials I can find/source and hopefully be as close to self sustaining as possible. I plan on having my own garden in place of any typical lawn also. That and or a hobby farm setup so I can grow some of my food.

You would be amazed at the amount of materials simply tossed on a lot of commercial projects. Had I place and means to transport them (sometimes I work out of state) I could easily have framed something close to 1200sf or so and rocked it. In a lot of condos I would work in they would also toss out all the new fixtures and put much nicer ones in. Habitat for Humanity re-store is a great place to find deals on things for the house.

Some food for thought:

http://www.designboom.com/contemporary/tiny_houses.html
http://www.littlediggs.com/
http://earthship.net/

BattleRidge

its a hype and a selling point to mostly ignorant people like neon in the 80s

SethHoldren

Dismissing every green initiative as hype is a mistake.

I think mickeyco has it right:

Some lazy wasteful behavior was, and still is, wasteful.

Consumers get lazy-minded and just want a green sticker to ease their conscience.

And marketers get greedy and hype their products to profit from the lazy consumer rush.

But that doesn't mean there isn't real innovation taking place. As intelligent business people we sort the false hype from the real innovation and make smart decisions.

Just because hype exists, by completely dismissing the whole green sector we are being as lazy as the hype-sters, aren't we?

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MALCO.New.York

Sounds familiar and CORRECT!!!

__________________
Something to One may be Nothing to another!

Ultimate Wisdom---------
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OW-cnizLDEE

woodchuck2

I am a firm beleiver in recycling but we know most of it never gets recycled. I used to watch the local town come around once a week and pick up everyones recyclables that were all washed and sorted, they would then go to the landfill and dump it all in the main trash compactor that would be sent to the burn plant to make electricity. So what is the point in recycling? Everyone is wasting water, time, manpower and fuel just to dump it in a hopper destined for the burn plant like the extra power it makes offsets the expense. After i saw what was going on i dont bother recycling my trash. I do however recycle all metals since it pays decent $$$.

MALCO.New.York

"Pre-Washing" recyclables is a waste. The goods are going to get washed again. Not a very "Green" practice.

__________________
Something to One may be Nothing to another!

Ultimate Wisdom---------
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OW-cnizLDEE

dirtdiggler pt2

"Green" is a sub-"niche" (for lack of better words) directed at a particular demographic/market

imo

Cdat

We send a massive amount of stuff out to be recycled. Our local plastics contractor could not handle any more. We went to check him out because his bottle neck was slowing us down. His entire parking lot was filled with stuff and working 24 hours a day, seven days a week, he couldn't keep up. He was actually paying someone else to truck it to the local landfill and he was still swamped. So much for recycling.

buckleyclan

I'll start off by saying, I'm no tree-hugger. Far from it. However, there is alot of room for improvement in the construction industry when it comes to waste and energy efficiency. We waste LOTS. And it usually goes to a landfill. If you take some time to look around, there are genuine recycling venues that utilitze these products we would otherwise 'dump'. For example: Biomass fuel plants, which have ever increasing production requirements at the Fed and sometimes State level, can take all lumber, trees, etc as ground, clean fuel and use it to produce energy. Greener energy than fossil fuel.
And you can sometimes get paid for the wood/fuel. I did.
Another idea is grinding up drywall to use as soil amendment. Gypsum is definitely safe, even in agriculture applications, and can be placed up to 2 tons per acre. That is alot of diverted waste. About 2/3 of residential construction waste is in wood and drywall.
Not only do you reduce landfills, but you help the environment too. And it doesn't have to cost more necessarily.
I get my cardboard removed for free since the recycler gets paid for it from mfrs. I get paid for steel. I pay only $34/ton to recycle the drywall which is the exact same rate the dump charges in tipping fee. I get my concrete crushed at the local paving outfit, which is then reused as AB for road constrution. It costs the same as sending it to the dump--just to take up space.
Energy efficiency is also key. We help the environment and we help the home/business owner with lower energy costs. Win-win.
Ground source heat pumps, tankless H2O heaters, more insulation, Energy Star appliances, attic ventillation, etc.
Like I said before, I don't own Birkenstocks, but I do like to think that being a good steward and saving money is a sound business decision.
It's also nice that the public is on the "green" bandwagon and are more likely to partake of my services since I have always done business this way. It's not faddish to do the right thing.