I DON’T MEAN TO SUGGEST that we deserve all kinds of credit just for recycling our flourescent light bulbs. Really, it should be standard practice to go the extra mile and take the old tubes to one of several conveniently located household hazardous waste depots provided by the city. But I’m making a big deal out of it to give ourselves positive reinforcement, so that we keep on doing it. Sometimes at the end of a long week of work, you can’t be bothered to start separating the trash and take it to different locations. But if we don’t make the extra effort, then we’re personally responsible for poisoning our own water table with mercury. Note that even though we are employing a lighting technology that consumes less fossil fuels, it is still problematic because it produces hazardous waste. This can only be a temporary solution; ultimately, we need to transition all of our activities to nature-neutral ones. But for now, we’ll half-step and take responsibility for our part. In the photo on the right, Peter is obviously removing the old tubes, and in the one on the left, a jedi knight employed by the city is deftly swinging several light sabres at once, obscuring his secret identity.
AS I ALLUDED TO IN OUR previous blog entry The Healthiest Housing in the World, earth may be the best possible material for building walls with, but it doesn’t mean that that’s all you can use it for. If the modern mud building movement was born in the temperate rainforests of rural Oregon, then the capital of urban earthen architecture is the state’s most populous city, Portland. Country homes made from Cascadia Cob have been built out in the woods for the last twenty-five years, and mud structures on city streets have existed for half of that time. Obviously, land comes at a great premium in the city centre, and almost all properties are already occupied by brick buildings. It’s hard to find an empty space to squeeze a new house into, and then once you find your narrow little plot of land, it’s even harder to justify constructing something on it that has at least eighteen-inch-thick walls. Not to mention that in those days, when next to no building officials had even heard of earthen homes, it was hard to get them to sign off on the engineering. So a new initiative started up around building benches out of earth.
IN THIS BLOG ENTRY, we’re going to look at architecture that is ecological in the extreme. When we present you with examples of super-sustainability, we don’t mean to suggest that you should run right out and tear down your own home and build another one in its place made out of more ecological materials. Because of all of the energy that’s embedded in the house, and the difficulty inherent in disassembling it and recycling its component parts, it may or not make sense to do all that. But we’re presenting you with what’s possible when constructing wall systems, because these materials could be used to build outbuildings, or other structures in your yard that could add enormously to your experience of it. So pick up your passports, and prepare to head out on an audiovisual journey all around the earth, to see the healthiest homes made out of the very earth itself.
IS OUR SAFETY PROGRAM UP TO SNUFF? In the province of Ontario, the landscaping trade falls under the jurisdiction of the Farm Safety Association. Yesterday, Janet Bewers of the FSA came by our offices to do an annual inspection, to make sure that we’ve got the right stuff. She inspected our premises and pointed out how we can be even better; and she gave us great marks, saying that we passed the test with flying colours — and that those flying colours are shades of green! It’s very important to us that we have healthy working environments, so we’re very happy that Janet likes what she sees.
AS WE BEGIN TO BUILD our own living wall systems here at Green Apple headquarters, Peter sent me out on a field trip to check out the two existing vertical gardens in the GTA. I snapped up these photographs yesterday at the Robertson Building in downtown Toronto, and at the Guelph-Humber College building in the west end. My mission was to get up close and personal with these green walls, and document their construction details. These is a real dearth of this kind of information out there on the web; there are no small amount of flashy photographs of finished walls, but very little in the way of practical schematics for D-I-Y wall builders. So I’m uploading these image files up to the blog, so that the next wanna-be bio-wall builder that comes along will have an easier time of it. And if you do decide to go ahead and build one by yourself, send us some photos and a testimonial, so we can take part in your eco-joy!
