Eco Oriented Community
I have a passion for houses, building, and the environment. My Education is a B.Sc., an MA in Environmental Studies and Political Science, and I’m a LEED Accredited Professional. About my own personal “greenness:” Despite the fact that my son complains that I’m a hippy (I feel like I live with Alex P. Keaton) my greenness is of the practical, almost armchair kind. If it’s easy to do and within my price range, I’ll do it. Conservation in particular is one of the rules I live by — it’s probably why our house looks so dark at night! I’m not one to easily part with my money, so a green product has to be something that actually makes sense before I’ll consider buying it. (For instance, I don’t consider $250 per square foot wool carpet a good buy even if you can put it in your backyard compost when you’re finished with it!) We don’t live a green lifestyle: we’re not vegetarians, we drive two cars (one is a mini van, the other a Jetta Diesel) and we have three kids — all pretty much environmental no-nos. I am a walking contradiction — like most humans. I also have a blog on http://becgreen.ca/.
Starting October 1, 2012 there will be an Environmental Handling Fee (EHF) charged to a variety of new electronics purchased in Quebec. Quebec will join 7 other provinces which currently charge an environmental handling fee for safe disposal of electronic items. What is an environmental handling fee?: An environmental handling fee is indicated on receipts [...]
Two very green home courses will be held in Toronto in the next little while. The first one is a certified Passive House Training course, being held at Ryerson University in two phases: Phase one, July 31-Aug 4th, 2012 and Phase two, August 20th-23rd, 2012. Passive House certification seems to be gaining ground in Canada. [...]
Last week the National Conference for the Canada Green Building Council was held in Toronto. It was the perfect time for the Home Sweet Home Competition to launch, and what better place to do it than at the winner of last year’s home renovation award, The Rosedale House? There are two divisions of the Home [...]
I’ve written a lot about energy efficiency and how to achieve it in a logical way. Now Scotiabank, in conjunction with the Sustainable Housing Foundation, has launched an Energy Calculator that tells you which energy efficiency upgrades you can make that will give you the fastest and biggest payoff. I’ve already used it, and [...]
In 2007 we moved into a brand new house with the naive view that new was always better than old. My husband’s and my belief was that a new house would involve less time in maintenance, lower running costs, higher energy efficiency and overall fewer headaches. What happened over the course of the four years [...]
The Endeavour Centre located in Peterborough, ON is a not-for-profit hands-on education centre that teaches students how to build and renovate homes using more sustainable methods and materials than are currently in use. Students learn about building science in the classroom, then take their knowledge onto a building site to apply it. The people at [...]
When I was speaking with John Bell about the energy efficiency upgrades he made to his home, he didn’t even flinch when he told me he spent an additional $28,000 for the upgrades. That amount included solar panels, a more efficient furnace than what the building code calls for, a gray water system, a solar-operated [...]
For architects and builders concerned with a building’s energy efficiency, windows have always been a double-edged sword. On the one hand they offer views, natural light, and heat in the winter when the sun is shining. On the other hand, they’re holes in the building’s envelope allowing for heat transfer in the wrong direction and [...]
In October, 2010, I had the very fortunate opportunity to visit with Sylvia Cook, owner of Aerecura Rammed Earth Builders and owner of Ontario’s first rammed earth home, just after the beautiful walls had been finished. The roof, windows and main floor had yet to be installed, so it was a bit difficult to visualize [...]
EcoLogo is a pretty well-known third party certification amongst environmentalists and business to business purchasers. And, while it’s not as well-known as I thought among the general population, it is, at the very least, the largest eco-labelling standard in North America. In the previous article, I wrote about greenwashing and how third party labelling such [...]
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