If you’re going to build your green dream home, then make it as sustainable as possible. Sustainable design is design that eliminates as much negative environmental impact as possible, something all of us are interested in these days. Sustainable design achieves this goal through the use of renewable resources. Not to get too technical, but a renewable resource is one replenished by natural processes at a rate comparable or faster than its rate of consumption by people. That’s no easy feat in this day and time when almost every square foot of our planet has been has been subdued.
Natural renewable resources
In this category we can include geothermal power, fresh water, timber and bio mass,( which is living and recently dead biological matter that can be used for industrial production). These resources have to be very carefully managed so that their use doesn’t exceed the environments’ ability to reproduce them. I’ll define and go over these in a later article.
Rapidly renewable resources
These are resources that are very popular today because they are alternatives to traditional wood. They are plant-based nonwood materials with all of the benefits of wood but their production doesn’t damage our natural forests. Rapidly renewable resources renew rapidly, and that’s great. On the list is wheat, rice straw, sunflower hulls, sorghum stalks, strawbale, the kenaf plant, hemp, cork and bamboo. I’m sure there are more out there just waiting to be discovered. I’ll be covering some of these here and the rest in later articles.
Bamboo
Bamboo has the most applications; it’s been used in Asia for centuries from everything from irrigation to flooring. It grows very quickly,sometimes as much as two feet in one day, and some species produce material as hard as wood from oak trees. I’m beginning to see why it’s so very popular.
Wheat straw and sunflower hulls
These are annually renewable base materials and are byproducts as well as waste products from local farmers. Both are very environmentally friendly alternative building products; wheat straw and sunflower hulls are now used in the making of particle board and door core material. Can you imagine having your doors made from wheat straw, or your flooring composed of sunflower hulls? You’d really be the environmental talk of the town, and what an ice-breaker at the next Sierra Club meeting.
Cork
If you want your green dream home to be really sheik, consider cork flooring. Believe it or not cork doesn’t give off dangerous gasses and it’s hypoallergenic. Cork comes from cork oak trees that grow mainly in Portugal and Spain; these trees can live as long as 100 years and only the bark is harvested every ten years to make the cork that we know.
Sorghum
You may not have heard much about sorghum, (it’s a grain), but it too is a rising star on the environmental scene. It’s a rapidly renewable resource that’s now being used in the making of environmentally friendly cabnitry; the waste straw left over after the sorghum is harvested is the part that’s used. Sorghum plywood reduces waste and indoor air pollution-who knew?
I think it’s amazing how many products that have been thought to be waste all these years are now playing a huge role in saving our planet. The substances I’ve highlighted here are only a few, and I’ll be covering as many as I can in the future.
