Skip to main content

So What are YOU doing blog-ette?



Well I'm glad you asked. The question should really be what are we doing. We, the design team; we, the environmentalists; we, the students; we, the community; and we, the pioneers.

To bring about change you can listen to the inspirational quotes about how one person can make a difference, or how it is the efforts of only a few that change the world, yadda yadda yadda. Well, the problem is that those quotes don't mention scale. Because while the 'Environmental' building field is still considered small, I know that there are over 20,000 LEED certified buildings in the USA alone. Which means there are probably and equal number of projects that just couldn't afford to go through with the LEED certification process. And there are surely a few thousand buildings already living and communing off-grid.

Then to think, when we had our last design team charette here at Willow, we hosted almost 40 people to work through design, production, philosophical, curriculum and other issues that we are facing before even breaking ground. And if there are 50,000 other projects in the United States, each with at least 40 people on their teams- that's 2 million people talking about and living the 'green building movement'.

The problem with all of those inspirational quotes is that quite frankly, they're not true.

Not to burst the optimism bubble- because in this field,
a LOT relies on hope- but for something that requires a shift in the way our entire society thinks, a select few cannot work alone. We have to be so omnipresent that all the LEED, regenerative design, integrative design, passive solar concepts, and other mumbo jumbo you hear us 'building hippies' talking about just becomes business as usual. My goal for working in this field is not to be the best and foremost green designer- but to be the most excellent designer, and oh hey this building will have no electric bill and have runoff water that feeds my gardens so I don't have to water anything.

It's a different design for a futuristic home because it actually relies on something so much simpler: nature. But think about it; anything made by nature grows, serves a purpose, creates no trash during its lifetime, then dies and rejuvenates it's environment by adding nutrients to the soil. Why can't human homes follow those same ideals?

Here at the Willow Site, none of the design plans are top secret- because they want their model to eventually be replicable in public schools. It inspires me to think that a girl like me, growing up in middle-class suburbia and attending only public schools could one day be guaranteed a healthy, safe education from my own school like the children at Willow get to thrive in for most of their school careers.

Right now, our building site is recovering farmland. It has huge crates full of stones that were saved from previous projects. There are some young, poision-ivy suffocated trees and US Route 206 in the views. So now we know what we'd like to accomplish. We have seen some of the terrible things we have done. But now-



Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Eating Garbage

Garbage is Beautiful. And let me tell you why. In 2010, the EPA estimated the US produced over 240 million tons of municipal solid waste. That is over four pounds of garbage, per person, per day. We travel through our day throwing things ‘away’. But where do they go? Does your trash go to a landfill, incinerator, or Waste to Energy Plant? Currently in NJ, thirteen counties have solid waste landfills and five counties have resource recovery facilities (incinerators). Of the five counties with resource recovery facilities, three also have landfills to receive waste that cannot be burnt. Eight counties have awarded waste disposal contracts and require that all waste be sent to one facility for disposal. The remaining thirteen counties have a free market system and transporters may send waste out of the county or state. The majority of us don’t know information like this, and don’t care as long as we don’t have to look at it. But if we were forced to look at the garb...
Post a Comment
Read more

Covid, baby

Working in the sustainability field has been turned on its head during the Coronavirus pandemic. I went on a short hiatus to become a Mom (Elliott was born in March of 2020 only a few days before lockdown in NJ), and when I resurfaced, our approach needed to be different, here are some examples: Typically, the balance between ample fresh air within a building and energy use would result in driving the building toward lower energy use. Now, the ability to increase the outdoor air is desirable and is carrying more importance as a design consideration. We almost always pursued green cleaning operations and maintenance plans with our projects, however the Green Seal certified (or other healthy for people) cleaning products do not disinfect to the level desired for Covid- forcing teams to decide between abandoning their healthy cleaning policies and safety. Everything is packaged and sealed, and wrapped again. Cafes stopped allowing refillable coffee cups, towns that had plastic ba...
Post a Comment
Read more

Breaking News- Renewable Energy can STILL power our planet!

Yesterday, The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released an exciting report about the potential of Renewables and the world energy market. Over 120 world experts produced a scientific document over 1,000 pages long that provides a solution to 'business as usual' carbon emissions. They believe that we could meet the globe's energy needs with 80% renewable energies by mid-century . This would be a socially, politically, and physically strenuous task. If we eliminate all the complications and shift our paradigm, we still have issues like that which Ramon Pichs, Co-Chair of the Working Group III, added: “The report shows that it is not the availability of the resource, but the public policies that will either expand or constrain renewable energy development over the coming decades. Developing countries have an important stake in this future—this is where most of the 1.4 billion people without access to electricity live yet also where some of the best conditi...
Post a Comment
Read more