During our first major home remodeling project, our elderly neighbor Joe would come over to see how things were going. Joe came of age during the Great Depression so occasionally he would stoop down, pick up a nail, and hand it to my husband, silently imploring, “waste not, want not” and reminding us of a time when resources were conserved and every nail was considered valuable.

Today we see giant dumpsters parked outside houses with ongoing remodeling projects, full of waste destined for the landfill. Construction contractors tell us it takes too much time to deconstruct a house piece by piece, salvaging some materials for reuse. Time is money, and the labor required to salvage materials is too expensive to be worth it. But is it really too expensive?

Beginning Phase IV of our current house remodeling effort, I decided to run some numbers on our small scale recycling and reuse effort. In a half a day, all the demolition was done and the 2x4s laid in two unruly piles in the remodel space. I set to work with my gloves, safety glasses, hammer and crowbar and restored to usable condition about 28 pieces of stud length lumber and a few shorter pieces. It took about 2 hours, working fairly leisurely, and you can listen to music or talk during the work. Deeply imbedded nails may be removed using a cat’s paw tool or else marked with a red crayon so the framing carpenter will see them and avoid cutting into them and dulling their saw blade or causing a dangerous kick back. For hard-to-remove and headless nails, like the one picture to the right, put the shaft of the nail tight in the claw and bend it sideways, moving the claw up the shaft as the nail comes out.

So what did I save for my 2 hours of labor? The cost of the studs and the cost of disposal are the two biggest things. I also saved a trip to the store, a trip to the dump, and hauling materials out of the house and back in. I did the right thing for the environment, keeping reusable materials out of the landfill and keeping a 28-stud tree standing in the forest.

At my local home improvement store, standard and better 2×4 studs (96 inches that still need to be cut down to stud length) are roughly $2 each with tax. Tipping fees at the dump are $100 a ton. So my 28 studs would cost about $56 dollars to buy new. The 28 studs and nails weighed about 250 lbs. so besides the trip to the transfer station I save about $12.50 in tipping fees.

In total, I saved over $68, paying me $34 per hour for my work cleaning up the studs. You could even afford to pay your teen or tween $10 an hour to do the work and still come out ahead. So next time you or your contractor think salvaging building materials isn’t worth it, think again.

Number of studs reclaimed: 28
Number of hours spent reclaiming studs: 2
Replacement cost of studs: $56
Tipping fees saved: $12.50
Total savings: $68.50
Hourly wage for reclamation work: $34+
Other savings: trip to store; trip to dump; trees left standing; landfill space; mill work
 

Judi Radloff, Kirkland, WA
Green Irene Eco-Consultant
www.GreenIrene.com/EastsideJudi
judi.eastside@greenirene.com 

Two summers ago, Jack Johnson was performing in my city and asked the concert promoters and concert venue what they were doing to lessen the environmental footprint of the event.  To answer Jack’s question, the venue changed how they were pouring drinks and entered into an agreement with a local recycling facility to handle all recyclables from the venue.  They also created The Green Team. 

A couple of the suppliers at the venue agreed to sponsor The Green Team. The venue bought a bunch of safety vests (yes, the really visible and hideous yellow ones!) and grabbers.  They also bought a bunch of recycling cans and signs.  Then they went out looking for people to volunteer.

I’ve been a member of the Green Team for the past couple of years.  We get into the concerts free and we get a voucher for food at the concession stands. We go out with our grabbers and vests before the concert, during the breaks between bands and for a few minutes after the concert.  The idea is to educate attendees through our presence. We split up and make our way around the venue, being visible and friendly.  We also use our grabbers to rescue recyclables from the regular garbage bins.  Once the music starts, we take our seats and have fun watching the concert. 

I’ve gotten really good at the art of using the grabber.  I can scoop up a half-filled plastic cup, empty it and put it in the recycle bin in a second or two – all without touching anything. 

Now this may sound like a demeaning waste of time.  It’s not.  Every member of the team gets a number of high-fives or hugs during every concert.  We also have people asking us how they can be members of the Green Team.  One guy asked me if he could use the grabber just once – I had to take it back when all of his friends wanted to use it too.  Last summer, someone had to be escorted from the venue because he was a fake Green Team-er – complete with the vest and grabber. 

I’ve also noticed that we are finding fewer and fewer recyclables in the wrong bin. Other venues in the area are catching on – it’s a great public relations move. Once you consider the sponsorships, I’m pretty sure that the costs of our vests, grabbers, tickets and meals are more than covered.  It has made a number of the visiting artists very happy to be performing here.

Last night, I got to listen to Incubus (they were completely amazing), hang out with friends and took several hundred cups, bottles and cans out of landfills. 

This is an idea that can be taken to your community.  Ask local venues what they’re doing and share the story of the Green Team at Usana Amphitheater in Salt Lake City, Utah.   Maybe you can start your own Green Team, in partnership with the venue. 

Leslie Proctor, Salt Lake City, Utah
Green Consultant
http://www.greenirene.com/slcleslie
leslie.slc@greenirene.com 

Most people don’t think twice about their water bill until they start watering their lawn in the summer.  Compared to other utilities water is very inexpensive for the end consumer compared to their natural gas bill in the winter, or their electric bill in the summer due to running the air all the time.

When it comes to our fresh water from the tap have you ever thought of just how much time, money and energy it takes to deliver that water to you?  Just running your kitchen tap for five minutes can cause your local water treatment plant to use enough energy to light a bulb for 8 hours!

Last year we decided to take a look at our water usage in our home.  First stop, faucets.  We noticed our faucets were running 2 gpm (gallons per minute) or higher.  We swapped those out with 1½ gpm aerators.  Next, the toilet. It is an older model with that runs 4 gpf (gallons per flush), but we never thought about replacing the toilet. Quite honestly, when a toilet breaks it’s usually a trip to the local hardware store and $20 later it’s fixed.

Instead of replacing we decided to give some products a try.  We used the Green Irene Fill Cycle Diverter and the Toilet Tank Bank.  I also had an adjustable flapper that I had purchased previously but never installed.  After installing these toilet items, our toilet now flushes and refills faster than I ever thought possible.

We didn’t replace the showerhead at that time; we couldn’t decide what model to go with.  The next month our water bill came and I couldn’t believe it.  With just $20 and a commitment to ourselves to use our water smarter in our home, we reduced our consumption and waste water by an entire unit!  That’s 800 gallons!  This was during non-watering months so it was probably the best data we could ask for in our test. 

This is just an example of how all the little things add up around your home. On average, over the past year our utility bills are a combined 20% lower just by implementing some Green Irene tactics on top of what we considered already “Green.”

Chris Hughes, Minneapolis, MN
Green Consultant
http://www.greenirene.com/MNgreenteam
MN.greenteam@greenirene.com

With everyone jumping on the eco-bandwagon these days, people ask me why I’m qualified to be a local Green Irene Eco-Consultant and an expert in this field. I tell them that living lightly on Earth is not just a job or business for me. Living sustainably is truly my passion, and my life. I majored in Environmental Studies in college, and have worked for several environmental companies – currently Southwest Windpower, a major manufacturer of small wind turbines (residential sized and smaller). The home I bought 3 years ago just outside Flagstaff, Arizona, is entirely off-grid (solar power). My family (consisting of my husband, 3 dogs, 3 cats, and me) lives by the sun and hope to soon add a wind generator to supplement our system during the winter when the days are shorter. We cook outside most of the time, using our solar oven whenever possible.

Buying a Solar Home

Life in Flagstaff, AZ isn’t easy. Wages are low, jobs are scarce, and products and services (particularly housing) are overpriced. When my husband and I moved to Flagstaff almost four years ago, we felt lucky to find an apartment complex that would accept us with our two cats and one large dog. After a year of being badly cramped and crowded, our dog, Houdini, couldn’t take it any more… he is the one who convinced us to look for a house. An actual house. With a yard.

The house search was challenging. We looked at a dozen homes, and the only ones even remotely close to what we could afford were complete dumps. One night I was online doing yet another home search and by chance I checked the “other area” box instead of just in-Flagstaff areas. We were excited to see that the one home that came up that we hadn’t already seen, was off-grid. No power lines, all solar power, more than an acre of land, and I immediately called up our realtor and asked her to get us an appointment to see this house.

It was perfect for us – with my education in Environmental Studies, I had always wanted to have solar power. This place had it already, and remarkably, was within our price range. There was even a kennel for Houdini and a spare room for the office! It was very clean with new white carpet in the living room and bedrooms. There were neighbors, but not so close everyone knows everyone else’s business. These private properties were completely surrounded by the Coconino National Forest, very secluded and quiet, yet only 5 miles to the grocery store and gas station. It wasn’t that large, and it was a manufactured home, but we decided that was okay. The power system was old and outdated, with only four 80-watt solar panels, four deep cycle batteries, and an old inverter. We had no clue what we were getting ourselves into, but the dream of living off-grid convinced us we could handle anything.

Just when we were getting ready to make an offer on the house, the seller dropped the price by $30,000, making it a more comfortable buy for us. We made our offer a bit lower than originally planned, and were thrilled when we were told that the seller had accepted. Closing was difficult as the seller was out of state and traveling. Getting the paperwork back and forth was a nightmare.

We finally got to move in on Christmas Day, 2006. This was also the day it started snowing. It snowed. And snowed. And snowed….. Our first taste of living a secluded life on an unmaintained, 4-wheel drive Forest Service Road. Keeping that new white carpet clean and white while we moved in … well, that was another challenge. What were they thinking when they put in WHITE carpet? We actually began to wonder why we started our house search so late in the year, but realized we would not have gotten the deal we got if we had started in the spring or summer. We survived our first challenge – the road – next came learning how to live off-grid! Stay tuned to learn how two folks relatively new to renewable energy survived our first year in our home! (Read Part 2 of this story)

Jo Starr
Eco~Consultant
Green Starr Makeovers
www.greenirene.com/1301
GreenStarr.Flagstaff@greenirene.com

While many aspects and principles presented in a Green Home Makeover are portable (i.e. can be carried with you from place to place), some of the biggest energy and water conservation measures are fixed to the place you are living. If you rent rather than own your home, you may feel limited by what you can do to improve the energy efficiency of your home.

A blog post by Roger Valdez from The Daily Score, a blog by the Sightline Institute in Seattle, WA, offers a suggestion for renters who are comfortable negotiating with their landlords.

The following is an excerpt from the article that explains what a green lease is. Green Irene eco-consultants can also promote this idea to potential landlord clients who are landlords. They may already have experience with this idea if they have commercial property as well where the Green Lease idea is already being used.

Excerpt:

Investing in energy efficiency can reduce greenhouse gas emissions even while saving money on energy bills. It seems like a no-brainer. Yet the one-third of northwesterners who live in rental housing actively avoid investing in energy efficiency. And their landlords also resist efficiency investments. What’s going on?

When it comes to rental housing, there’s a big market failure in energy efficiency. It’s a problem of “split incentives,” owners don’t make efficiency investments because it’s the renters who pay the energy bills. And renters don’t make investments in property they don’t own. The result is housing that wastes energy and costs more than it should.

One solution takes advantage of the lease or rental agreement: “green leases” enable owners to spend money on efficiency improvements and recoup their costs by raising rent by the same amount as the realized energy savings, minus a smaller agreed on amount which gets passed on to the renter. In other words, if an efficiency investment to the renter’s unit generates $100 of monthly energy savings, the rent might go up $80 per month. Although the rent increases, the tenant’s total housing bill goes down by $20. It’s a win for both parties. The tenant would start saving money right away, and over time the landlord would recoup his initial investment (and even make money), through the higher rents. Plus, the tenant would be using less energy.

A typical example might be a refrigerator replacement. A tenant has little economic incentive to buy a new efficient (and more expensive) refrigerator because he’s unlikely to be around long enough to recoup the extra upfront expense through reduced energy bills. And a landlord might think she’s better off buying the cheapest model she can find because she’s not paying the bills for the fridge’s operations. A green lease might fix this problem by allowing the landlord to increase rent enough to pay for a more expensive and efficient model, but because of the lower energy bills, the tenant would actually save money even after the rent increase.

The challenge with green leases is creating a practical financing arrangement that doesn’t saddle landlords with too many headaches and generates sufficient savings in a short enough time that the owner could pay back the bank, or herself, for the upfront cost of making the investment in the first place. So in order to know if an investment makes sense, both landlords and tenants will need a trustworthy assessment of the potential savings (this is where Green Irene comes in).

Green leases are already used in the US and Canadian commercial real estate rental sectors, but they are not sweeping apartment rentals. The legal complexities can make green leases challenging and uncertain. And both landlords and tenants dislike uncertainty.

The key is to generate a discussion with the landlord and check on how much can be saved on efficiency upgrades so that the viability can be assessed right away.

If you want to learn more, please contact Judi Radloff at judi.eastside@greenirene.com or visit her website at www.greenirene.com/eastsidejudi

Those of us who live in the Cincinnati-Dayton area have the unfortunate distinction of living with some of the worst air quality in the country. Moreover, I have been told by friends who were born and raised here that the area is considered an “allergy alley.” So, short of moving, what can we do?

Changing behaviors that contribute to carbon output will have an aggregate affect on air quality and climate change. Many of the tips and tools resulting from a Green Home Makeover for your home or small business will help you identify areas in which you can make a difference. The EZ Bulb Swap Out is one of the most effective actions you can take to make a change (less electricity used=less coal burned). Plus, you gain the economic benefit of energy savings on your monthly electric bill.

Additionally, you can change the quality of your indoor air by decreasing the number of toxic chemicals you use in cleaning and personal care. Your local Green Irene Eco-Consultant can help you identify the toxins and recommend effective alternatives.

With U.S. households accounting for 38% of carbon emissions, it’s not just industry that needs to change. Rather, we should take action into our own hands immediately to improve the conditions inside and out. Think about that the next time you step outside for “fresh” air or plug in the “spring breeze” indoors.

If you’re interested in learning more and Going Green with Green Irene in Cincinnati, Ohio, contact:

Ellen Hall

http://www.greenirene.com/CincyDaytonEllen

ellen.cincydayton@greenirene.com

513-932-7304