First of all, the only two cars I have ever owned were bought used. I like to think that this is environmentally sound in the fact that I am trying to use the car to its fullest before it is sent to a scrap yard somewhere. Along with this I pride myself in taking very good care of my car including regular tune-ups and check-ups. The EPA suggests maintaining your vehicle according to the instruction manual will increase your fuel efficiency and decrease your carbon emissions.

Like being tuned up regularly, it is a good idea to keep your car tidy. I am a bit of a neat freak anyway but a well-organized car is more important than you think. The fewer things you have in your car, the more fuel efficient it is because your vehicle doesn’t have to carry around as much weight and work as hard to get you where you’re going.

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For starters, let’s take a look at the materials that go into brick: clay and water. That’s it. No complex chemicals, no exotic compounds, no imported components. At the end of its life, a brick is effectively just a manufactured clay stone with a special shape. It breaks down into earth since it comes from earth. Clay mining is comparatively benign, compared to ore mining for metals, which requires far more material to be extracted and processed to produce the finished product. Clay is not a resource that is in short supply, which makes it a more attractive material to use, as well.

The main reason brick isn’t an even greener building material is that it takes a lot of energy to make a brick. However, the extra energy is relative. An Australian government website comparing wood siding to brick veneer shows that exterior walls with the same backing construction with brick have about three times as much embodied energy per unit of wall area. (A timber board clad wall takes 188 MJ per square meter; brick veneer requires 561 MJ per square meter.) The tradeoff is in durability and maintenance. Brick is much lower maintenance than other materials. Most brick will last for generations with only some minor tuckpointing to repair joints.

A 100-year old building is considered old by North American standards. While a wood sided building will have been repainted many times and have had repairs and replacement of parts that have broken down over that period, the brick on a brick building of the same vintage will be little changed from the day it was first laid in place. Durability is another hallmark of green building, and a brick building that is properly designed and constructed and maintained can last for centuries.

A list of the benefits of brick comes from the Sustainability Resources website of the Denver Chapter of the AIA:

• Durability: Brick is resistant to damage from wind and water, and does not need additional finishes.
• Compressive Strength: Brick can carry heavy loads, but it is often used as a veneer over a separate structural system because of cost. Many brick manufacturers provide larger brick sizes to be used in a single wythe (layer) for load bearing.
• Acoustical Performance: Brick’s mass makes it good for reducing sound transmission; however, its hard surface reflects sound.
• Chemical Makeup: Brick’s raw materials are chemically inert; consequently, they will not contribute to indoor air pollution.
• Fire-Protection: Brick is nonflammable and makes an excellent fire barrier.

Brick and other masonry products are heavy and dense. While this makes them durable building materials, it also makes transporting them an energy-intensive process. The best way to deal with this is to use locally produced brick. In regions where brick is widely used, sources within a couple hundred miles should be easy to find. If brick is not widely used in your area, it is probably less appropriate to use, and the transportation energy required to obtain it should be considered.

Brick is also a recyclable material. Old brick walls can be carefully demolished and a high percentage of the individual bricks can be salvaged and re-used. The character and quality of good recycled brick can be very appealing, and good recycled brick sometimes even commands a higher price than some kinds of new brick. Depending on the market and the region you are in, recycled brick may or may not be readily available. But the energy from deconstruction and cleaning old brick is almost certainly less than that needed for making new brick, so extending the material life in this way is a great way to save the embodied energy and extend the life of this material.

Image Source: Wikipedia

Many of us own a car for the convenience of using it a couple times a week: to go to the grocery, to go to a concert across town, to get to a dentist appointment early in the morning, or to get out of town for a weekend. Wouldn’t it be easy if you could walk a block and pick up a shared car whenever you need it, and never worry about the upkeep?. This concept is called a car-sharing or car co-op program. You pay a monthly fee, based on your expected use, to employ the service. With the service, the company maintains and services the vehicles, fills ‘em up, takes care of insurance, clean them out, and reserves a parking spot for you when you’re done. This saves you lots of time, money, stress, and reduces the number of bills you have to pay. Here is why it’s important, the car is useful to you on the days you need it, and it is useful to others in the alternate time slots. In some cites these car-sharing programs are even employing fleets of hybrids only. And it is still affordable!
Let me break it down for you. Following are some insight as to why this system benefits you, the community, and the environment.

Individual benefits:

• The tank is always full = time saver
• No insurance bills to pay = less bills in the mail
• A parking spot is always reserved at the end of your day = time saver
• Your car is always well maintained = money and time saver
• Lower theft risk= lower blood pressure, money saver
• No scraping snow off the windshield in the wee small hours of the morning = time saver
• No more waiting in lines at the car wash = time saver
• No more looming responsibility of getting that darn oil changed= time saver, lower blood pressure

Community Benefits:

• Traffic ease: Drivers are only on the street when they need to be; therefore convenience is no longer a scapegoat.
• Fewer cars on the street = less street space required for parking spots: Imagine if every city street had one more lane because we didn’t request it for parking?
• Less parking lots = greater allowance for green space, bicycle lots…healthy public space
• Community members are sharing with each other, which raises the overall “feel-good” factor.

Environmental Benefits:

• There is a lower demand for individually owned cars which results in fewer cars manufactured annually and more cars maintained.
• As vehicles are serviced more frequently and monitored with precision, they will last longer, be safer to drive, and maintain optimal gas mileage.
• If we all participate is a car sharing program and reduce the number of cars on the streets, you might wonder what would happen to the (American) car industry. The car industry could instead switch to a service based supply of cars, parts, and maintenance. Ex: Ford would directly deal with Zip Car. This form of business will keep older cars running well, and reduce our impact of the dead end system where they sell/ we buy-and the relationship is over.
• When the current fleet of cars is bumped down to the 2nd or 3rd tier fleet in 5 or 10 years the affordability will increase, and again, these cars will still be leading a healthy life.

So choose your path. Saving time is money in your pocket, driving less is always better, and sharing makes you feel good.

Here are a couple of Car-Share programs in the US:

Bi-Coastal: http://www.flexcar.com/

Bi-Coastal: http://www.zipcar.com/

Bay Area: http://www.citycarshare.org/

Chicago: http://www.igocars.org/

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With the recent snow that much of the midwest and northeast US has had in the past week, now can be a good time to take a look at your roof to see how well your house is doing in terms of energy performance. An article from Home Energy Magazine gives a good set of guidelines about reading the snow on your roof to see how well your attic insulation is working.

Don't just look at your roof once, and decide everything is okay, though. With freshly fallen snow, it's likely that everyone has a good blanket of snow on the roof. Photo Credit: Don Hynek, HomeEnergy.orgWhat will be telling is how quickly it melts over the next few days, and the patterns that show up. Local comparisons can also be informative. In addition to looking at your own roof, look at the neighboring houses and see what the snow patterns on them are showing. If your roof has more snow on it than your neighbor's does, it is likely that you have a better insulated attic. But if everyone else's house has a nice cap of snow on it, and your house is a display for roof shingles, then you need to get up in that attic and get some additional insulation up there.

Extensive icicles can also be a sign that your attic is insufficiently insulated and you are wasting heat. Even more, icicles can be an indicator of ice dams forming on the roof, which can cause damage to the roof and exterior walls of the house. "An ice dam is a ridge of ice that forms at the edge of a roof and prevents melting snow from draining off the roof. Because the water has no place to go, it backs up behind this ridge of ice and can leak into the home. These leaks can damage walls, ceilings, insulation and other areas."

Factors like the orientation (a south facing roof will clear faster than one that is oriented to the north), weather (a bright, sunny day can melt off the snow, especially from south facing roofs), and local environment (surrounding trees, local wind, etc.) can all contribute to how the snow sits on the roof. This is not a foolproof method, and these other factors can influence what you see.

If you are getting energy aware, this can be an easy first step in figuring out how well your house is performing. If you want to go a bit further, the US Department of Energy has a Do It Yourself Home Energy Audit that offers a few more ways for examining your home and finding other steps you can take to further improve your home energy efficiency.

Links:
HomeEnergy.org
USDOE Home Energy Audit