There are five green construction methods that you can easily adopt include buy locally, use energy efficient appliances and devices, use recycled and recyclable materials, make your home eco-friendly and then maintain what you’ve built so you don’t have to use more resources to replace what you built.
Now, honey bees are in trouble. They need your help more than ever. Without honeybees pollinating US agricultural crops our food supply will be in trouble. “Colony collapse disorder” has decimated entire populations of honeybees. Thankfully some people are concerned enough to educate the public and help the bees.
What are VOCs and what can we do to avoid having them in our homes? VOCs are Volatile Organic Compounds, and no, this is not the type of “good” organic we want in our Texas Organic Home. VOCs are pollutants in our homes and can effect the indoor air quality of our homes. The resulting poor indoor air quality can have both short and long term ill health effects.
My yard meets the criteria for Austin’s Award Winning Green Garden Program yet I am not a City of Austin water customer so I can’t share my yard in that venue. The City of Leander gets the water from the same place, Lake Travis but we buy it from Leander, not Austin. Part of being a Texas Organic Home is to have a green yard. By green I do not mean a huge, water hungry synthetic yard but a water conserving, sensible and beautiful yard that is safe for humans, pets and wildlife due to lack of synthetic chemicals.
With record setting high heat, drought, and lake levels getting lower and lower it seems that xeriscaping would be all the rage in Central & South Texas but it’s not. Who started the fad of growing these expansive water hogging St. Augustine (“carpet” grass) lawns anyway? I have yet to know the full history behind
Sometimes new green jargon is a lot for the newly green to feel comfortable with. Net zero is a term with many definitions but all run in a similar vein. In a nutshell, net zero means no overall energy consumption or “net zero” and zero annual carbon emissions. In other words, even though some energy is used, the energy is from renewable energy sources and no energy is purchased from the grid or external energy producers because the home produces as much energy as it consumes.
Austin, Texas will soon be having the 2009 Cool House Tour. This year there are twelve projects that will be on the tour. Homes were chosen for the tour based on their being examples of green building.
An Invasive Plant Workshop will be held at the Austin Nature & Science Center by the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center and the City of Austin Parks and Recreation Dept. Saturday, May 30th, 2009 from 9:00am to 4:00pm at the Austin Nature & Science Center in Austin, Texas.