It's Easy Being Green

If you’re looking to become more self-sustaining, growing and preserving your own food is an excellent way to achieve that goal.  Not only is it probably one of the easiest ways to achieve your sustainability, it is also one of the cheapest.  For some reason, I had always imagined home canning to be a bygone era but reaching back I could vividly remember one of my Mom’s old high school friends canning her own jams and jellies frequently when I visited.  Maybe I thought, it’s not that far out of vogue.

As Homestead Hottie and I looked for more and more ways to make our life more green and self-sustaining, food preservation seemed to be a logical next step following our entry into growing some of our own food.  Home food preservation does take time but the end results are so worth it and will save you a ton of money in the long run.  You won’t have to rely on a run to the grocery store for a canned good but simply walk into your kitchen pantry.  Check out this video as I show you how we turned a bumper crop of green tomatoes into a half-dozen quart jars of our own, homemade pasta sauce.

If you didn’t catch my post on how to ripen or use all those end of season green tomatoes,  click here.

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It’s Saturday and still dark out which means it’s time for me to gear up and get ready to make my last rounds of deliveries for the week today.  Before I take off, I like to check my email and peruse the scheduled happenings of the day.  One event I’m sad I’m going to miss is the launch of the new Nissan Leaf this afternoon.

In a bid of creative social marketing, the folks at Nissan will be streaming live the delivery of their first electric car to one lucky customer.  What better of a way to build hype around a green product than to involve the rest of the world at the same time.  I’ve followed the Leaf from conception to pre-order and am now excited to see the thing finally hitting the streets of our nation.  Homestead Hottie even has her eye on one now so maybe there will be a Leaf in our near future.

We need more of this kind of ingenuity and excitement around products that will help us maintain a sustainable life here on Mother Earth.  I’m hoping more U.S. companies will get on the wagon and start planning for our future, not only to save our world but to put our workers and our country as a whole back on track to lead the world by example and thus bring back prosperity.

If you’d like to join in the Nissan Leaf Event today (scheduled for 1:30 PST), than click this link.

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I’ve heard of the “House of Bamboo” but now I’m amazed to hear about a bamboo bicycle.  I recently ran across the folks over at Organic Bikes whose slogan is “Rethink your ride”.  Well, rethink they have as they are creating bicycle frames out of bamboo, an easily renewable resource!  According to their website they’re also making biodegradable water bottles and organic bike clothing and accessories.

Organic Bike's "Dylan" model. It's their first bamboo bike!

Organic bikes claims the bamboo is so strong that it makes a great frame and is actually more comfortable to ride than a standard alloy metal one.  They do say that the frame isn’t entirely made from bamboo and that there is some alloy metal involved in the construction of your bike but that it is 100% recycled alloy.

This, I think, is a pretty cool concept.   While I didn’t think riding your bicycle could get much more green, Organic Bikes has gone and proven me wrong.  If you’d like a chance to enter their contest to win a bamboo bike, click this link.

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If you haven’t already read my brief review on a new book profiling modern architecture and alternative energy, click here.

A new book profiling 10 modern homes and how they're built with alternative energy useage in mind

Lori Ryker, author of Off The Grid: Modern Homes + Alternative Energy, grew up in Texas and has lived several places around the world. She now lives in Livingston, Montana and teaches at Montana State University’s School of Architecture and is a partner of Ryker/Nave Design. I recently had the opportunity to ask Ryker some questions about her new book and her thoughts on the future of sustainable living.

Q: What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about living off the grid?
A: That someone else should take the first step, that alternative energy is something of the future.

Q: You discuss how you think living off the grid brings people closer to where we live, making us more involved in how we live. Why do you think it’s important for more people to be connected to where and how they live?
A: Understanding where we live in the world and the reality of what it takes to live in that place (without the support of mechanical/big energy that creates a pseudo-environment) helps us take responsibility for the place in which we live, and the planet in general. Understanding the conditions of where we live help us make healthier and more responsible choices for environmental conditions such as clean water, air and landscapes; local food sources including plants and animals. Peter Berg coined a phrase in the 1970’s called bioregionalism, which addresses how we live in a place with particular identifiable physical and environmental features that then influence the use and consumption of local foods, materials and native plants, among other things. In the same way, living responsibly with alternative energy requires the knowledge and understanding of regions, bioregions and particular places so that we most efficiently employ the natural resource, such as sun or wind. Such a quality of life also makes us more grounded and invested in ourselves and the world.

Q: Have you found that a lot of people don’t think modern architecture and green features like off the grid living can be combined together?
A: No. I find that most people believe this relationship is normal. However, even three to five years ago this was not the case. There has been a strong and successful popular media push in the past few years to dispel the perception that living off the grid means living in the back-woods somewhere.

Q: You say the book is all about great living in great architecture. These homes certainly aren’t like the earth ships of the 60’s and 70’s are they?
A: No, but every once in a while I drive by an earth ship style place and think to myself, they are still quite sophisticated in their energy use and ability to connect people to the place in which they live, even if they do not appeal to everyone. I would argue that earth ships are also a “style” of architecture. An architect or designer could use the same materials and strategies of an earth ship today and arrive at a vastly different form of expression.

Q: You talk a lot about resource extraction and what you call “dirty energy”. What do you think it will take for people to understand how big of an environmental impact their home has?
A: A completely different way of evaluating home construction and energy use. Such as how bank loans are made, or how homes are taxed, how a builder accounts for the construction of the home and the materials used. In the meantime, we need alternative energy to become more affordable, better methods of measurement of an individual’s energy use and means to control particular components of energy use. Such as being able to separate out use of heating and cooling from media, not simply unplugging. We need more accountability. Simple things such as timers on lights and showers that are already in use in other parts of the world. These strategies remind us that the Earth is not limitless.

Keep checking back for the second half of my Q&A with Lori Ryker coming up later this week.  That’s when I’ll also post the details behind how to enter the contest to win a copy of Lori’s book.  You can get an early entry now by subscribing to my RSS Feed and then posting a comment on this article.

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There’s a lot of talk these days centering around living life on Earth a bit greener than we have been. Green living, alternative energy and sustainability are all buzz words surrounding the movement to live more in harmony with our environment. Some might question though whether that movement can really be partnered with the construction of a new home utilizing modern architectural designs.

A new book profiling 10 modern homes and how they're built with alternative energy useage in mind

Lori Ryker’s book titled Off The Grid: Modern Homes + Alternative Energy shows that you really can live in a beautifully designed, modern home while reducing your demand for energy. The 160-page glossy, hard-backed book profiles ten homes around the globe and shows how they’ve overcome complete dependence on the grid and leave a smaller footprint on the Earth.

Through example and illustrations, Ryker shows how each technology from geothermal heat pumps, wind turbines and solar arrays, can be integrated into the beauty and design of a modern home. The homes profiled in the book aren’t straw bale homes or Earthships. They range in size from small to large and sparse to intricately decorated. If you’re embarking on a journey to build a new modern house and have considered making it more green, Ryker’s book might be just the ticket to turning your visions into reality.

Stop by later in the week for a Q&A chat with Ryker and I’ll also tell you how you can have a shot at winning a copy of her new book.

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If you’re not an avid 60 Minutes watcher or missed Sunday night’s episode, you missed a great interview and profile of Alice Waters, the so-called mother of the slow food movement.  Shamefully, I have a couple of books with forwards by Alice Waters but didn’t know who she was until last night.

Alice is a staunch advocate of local farmer’s markets and stands strong in support of sustainable agriculture.  Her L.A. based restaurants, including the world reknowned Chez Panisse, utilize price fixed menus that change daily as farm fresh produce becomes available and goes out of season.  She’s also spearheaded the planting of a vegetable garden outside San Francisco’s city hall, a new classroom program that gets kids outside into a garden teaching them how to grow their own fresh and sustainable food and how to cook it and recently a call to plant a victory garden outside the White House.  You too can sign the petition to the Obamas by clicking that link.

If you didn’t get to see the story, I recommend you click this link and watch it now:

Alice Waters’ Crusade for Better Food

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I caught an interesting program on The Science Channel the other day while I was at work, called Invention Nation. The show profiles some pretty cool inventions and developments in the green movement while the three hosts take a veggie-fueled trip across the country to get an up-close look at each one. While I don’t think the production quality or the hosts do the idea much justice, it’s nice to see various aspects of sustainable living shaping up across America, despite the reefer-infused hippie bus theme the show portrays.  Come on, green is more mainstream than that! This one episode got my attention because they were making stops in the Flagstaff area, visiting a LEED certified home. The house, being built in Bellemont just 10 miles west of Flagstaff, is one of only four platinum-certified homes in the U.S.

So what makes this house so green? The list is a long one and amazes me that they’ve packed so many environmentally responsible features into one home. The show focused on the “brain” of the house, an automated control system that essentially runs the place. A weather station installed outside the home monitors all weather conditions and relays them into a computer. That computer automatically opens and closes windows, adjusting the interior temperature with the outside temperature. The system also keeps the interior humidity at a healthy range. Aside from just the way the home feels, the system also tracks water and power useage, providing the homeowner a full rundown of just how much they’re using in the way of resources. The power monitors also look at the power output of the solar system, generating a little more than 7 kW hours of power and a wind turbine harvesting the almost regular northern Arizona wind, generating 2kW.

The Bellemont home is not connected to any water service. Instead it harvests all of its water from the sky through 40,000 gallons of collection tanks. The home’s designers say that’s enough for 2 years of potable water and irrigation uses. It doesn’t matter whether it’s rain or snowmelt, it all eventually finds its way into a collection tank where it’s stores and purified. The computer monitors just how full the collection tanks are. A newly planted apple orchard at the home is watered thanks to the home’s grey water system.

The eco-friendly house produces zero emissions. It’s zero energy and zero carbon emissions and produces more energy than the home itself uses. The extra electricity is fed onto the local power grid where the home actually earns energy credit for the power it produces. The home is outfitted with all Energy Star appliances and lighting. In fact, the house has such a high Energy Star rating that it exceeds IECC 2007 requirements by over 75%. When it comes to heating and cooling, a solar hot water system feeds an in-floor radiant heat system throughout the house. It’s also designed with thermal massing and passive solar design to reap the rewards of the Arizona sunshine during the cold winter months. Sewage from the home is treated with a UV alternative septic system which designers say is the first to be installed in the state of Arizona.

I think this home is truly remarkable and inspiring for the sustainable living movement. As the idea catches on and more and more homes are built with the ideas being demonstrated in the LEED Pilot Home, I think green construction will become more cost effective and mainstream. It shows people that what seems difficult could be really very easy. It would be easy for many to live green if their home was outfitted that way from get-go!

The house was designed by Architectural and Environmental Associates. Carl Ramsey, the company’s owner, seems truly committed to green and sustainable design.

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