For most urbanites, an environmentally friendly house brings to mind solar panels and composting toilets. But a green house doesn’t have to be expensive, inconvenient, or overly crunchy.
Building green can be as simple facing your house to the south and planting deciduous trees out front. Greenness comes in little increments. Weather stripping your doors and reglazing your windows gives your home a greenish tinge. Bulking up on insulation or collecting rainwater for your lawn and garden brings you into the leafy range.
Choosing to remodel instead of building afresh makes you downright forest. Our houses are the most polluting things we own, especially if you include the waste from building them.
Building green means cutting down that waste and in the end, a green house saves money while helping to save the planet.
(Hosted by Christopher Lydon)
Guests:
David Johnston, from Boulder, Colorado-based “What’s Working,” a company teaching builders how to build green dwellings
and Marc Richmond Powers, from the “Green Builders Project” in Austin, Texas.