Green Options

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I recently came across an online game called “Design Your Dream Home” on the Green Is Universal website. I was shocked by what I found and how bad the game really was. I prefer to focus on the positive aspects of green building, but this strikes me as so misguided that I could not let it pass unremarked.

Whoever designed this game has no understanding of real green building in any meaningful sense. Instead of providing any insight or education about green building, the game reduces design of a green house to nothing more than a couple of mouse clicks. “Choose the climate construction materials and energy sources and see how green you can be.” The oversimplification this presents is a huge disservice to visitors to the site who play the game.

Tuesday, April 22 is Earth Day, and we thought that a couple special posts would be appropriate on this date.  Building has an enormous impact on the Earth, and green building offers the opportunity to lessen or eliminate many of those effects. Today, in a series of articles titled Elements of Building, we take a look at how Water, Energy and Materials each factor in to building operation and building design.

In addition to discussing green building, let us also take this opportunity to remind you of all the other Green Options blogs in the network and invite you to take a minute to look at some of the other writers and their Earth Day thoughts:

Ypsilanti, Michigan is in the outlying suburbs of Detroit and is, itself, a city with a long automotive heritage going back to the Tucker Torpedo and Kaiser Motors and extending to a present day Ford assembly plant and the last Hudson dealership in the country and an Automotive Heritage Museum. But now, a local couple have embarked on a different direction towards automobiles, encouraging drivers to embrace a new mindset with a website called DriveSlowly, which they are unveiling for Earth Day.

Despite our hopes and best plans, sometimes we still have to drive. And while that high-end, high-performance hybrid remains out of our budget, we’d still like to do better with the vehicles we have. One way to accomplish that is by just driving a bit more slowly.

Green Building Elements has a few more interesting and useful websites added to its blogroll for you to check out for more information about green building and design.  If you have come across a particularly useful or interesting site with a strong emphasis on green building and sustainable design, drop us a note about it at the address on our contacts and info page and let us know about it.

Here are some quick reviews of some sites you may want to take a look at, too.

This local blog first came to my attention via an article in the local paper about a University of Michigan medical student and his daughter who are operating a blog together that is encouraging people to eat vegetarian meals one day a week (on Wednesdays). The Vegetarian Wednesday blog began just this past summer. Originally founded by Josh Mugele and his daughter Eleanor, there are now a few other writers

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The World at Home: A Household Guide to Building was produced by the Citizens Environmental Coalition, a non-profit environmental advocacy group based in Albany, NY. This is something between a book review and a website review, because this book is actually a 100 page PDF that is free for download. It is filled with good information about greening your house, particularly for remodeling or new construction. While it [...]

Some blogs start out from a small beginning premise and expand their scope and scale as they go on. Early posts on The Ramsay Home Project were just progress photos documenting the construction of a new home for a young, newlywed couple who wanted to build "an eco-friendly nest in the heart of Canada's oil capital: Calgary, Alberta."

But it appears that their interests grew, and as part of their investigation of

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From the people at WGBH in Boston, the same people who produce The World, Antiques Roadshow, American Experience, Nova and popular children's programming such as Postcards from Buster and Zoom come the latest in children's entertainment: Meet the Greens an online interactive experience that introduces kids to green living. Each month, the website will introduce a new episode and new content for kids

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