A speech I gave at the Toastmaster club:
Topic: Why do I want to build a sustainable home.
Opening statement:
Do you want to spend the time you spend indoors in a place 2-1000 times more toxic than outdoors in downtown LA?
http://www.epa.gov/iaq/voc.html
Can we afford to take away the trees we love and need?
I say NO to both of these questions. I want to make my points clear to you in the following few minutes.
A few words to the actual problem followed by respective solutions.
Example 1: VOCs are bad for our bodies. We surround ourself with them all the time, voluntarily.
A new IKEA kitchen cabinet emits volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that are considered toxic for humans. To give you an Idea of the magnitude of VOCs being produced and handed to us I want to use this example. The wood furniture industry uses 2X the amount of VOCs than the Automotive industry. We spend a lot more time in our homes than our car.
https://engineering.purdue.edu/CMTI/Technology_Transfer/NESHAPP3.htm
The paint we put on our walls contains VOCs. The EPA puts paint in the top 5 environmental hazards. Paint can make the air you breath toxic.
http://www.aerias.org/DesktopModules/ArticleDetail.aspx?articleId=146
Close VOC:
These VOCs are harmful to our bodies, the more we inhale them, the more likely we are to get sick, get allergies, feel weak, get cancer, …. and more.
Example 2:
The next point I am trying to make is about energy used to build a home.
Most of the energy required to build a home is consumed during the production of the materials for the home. The sheet rock production, tree growing and lumber milling, transportation to the store and end consumer uses a lot of the energy. It is very important to select the right materials to build your house from. Let's take the Sheet rock example. Drywall production consumes almost 1% of all U.S. industrial energy consumption. One of the new products "EcoRock®" low-energy drywall uses virtually zero energy in their core, resulting in zero CO2 emissions production.
Close Energy:
We need to choose the type of house construction wisely, need to choose the type of material we use to build our home whisely to minimize the energy that is consumed during its production.
Concrete frame constructions use 17% more energy than wood frame constructions.
http://uwnews.org/article.asp?articleid=5360
http://www.californiagreensolutions.com/cgi-bin/gt/tpl.h,content=1538
Example 3:
We cannot grow forests fast enough to satisfy the housing construction market. One average US house (2300sq ft up from 1400sq ft 1970) requires 24 trees to grow for 34 years (0.5m trunk, 12m tall), we are building 1.8 million homes every year. ==> 43 Million trees a year for the US home construction alone.
Close Trees:
Straw bale homes are almost entirely made from a farming byproduct and therefore much more energy saving ==> sustainable.
Closing statement:
We need to give our children a world they have the chance to succeed in, live in and raise their children in. Using the energy we have wisely, using the resources we have responsibly is not an option, it is a must to be able to look our next generation straight in the eyes.
We do not allow torture in our prisons, why would we torture ourself by living in homes 2-1000 times more toxic than downtown LA?
Sustainable homes are not really an option, we must move our housing market into this direction.
Here are link to websites informing more about the subjects touched on in this presentation.
http://www.californiagreensolutions.com/
http://www.usgbc.org
http://strawbuilding.org/
Tree data:
I also figure that 10,000 board feet could be obtained from two trees that are 51 inches across and 76 feet long, or 24 trees that are 17" across and 35' long, or 100 trees that are 8.5" wide and 20' long. It would take about 110 years to grow two of the large trees, 34 years to grow 24 of the mid-sized trees, and 17 years to grow 100 of the small trees. http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/newton/askasci/1995/environ/ENV144.HTM
1.8 milion homes built every year, since 30 years.
http://uwnews.org/art icle.asp?articleid=5360
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