The Darkside Of Building New 'Green' Homes
18 September 2006 - 1:00pm
The waste generated from demolition, and the large floor space of many new eco-mansions, is an environmentally unfriendly result of the new green home trend.
"Tearing down perfectly good homes to build environmentally friendly ones can create more harm than good. Every year 136 million tons of waste from demolished houses makes its way into landfills worldwide."
"And what are people building once they’ve torn down an existing house? In America, the average size of a home has grown 50 percent in the past 30 years, despite the fact that families have shrunk. And when you see a 7,000-square-foot "green" house built for two people, the notion of its sustainability becomes ridiculous."
Full Story:
Green Without Envy
Source:
LA Weekly, September 13, 2006
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It's Only Green if You Can Walk to It
The article makes an excellent point about the waste of materials involved in many "green" houses. Many of them are also utterly inaccessible by walking or transit, necessitating a huge, non-green, expenditure of transportation energy. There's a lot of greenwashing going on in this field.