Being Green – The Long View

Hi Folks!

Happy Friday!!  The basis for this week’s ‘Being Green‘ post comes in part from a couple of articles I read recently on the  ED+C magazine website.  The first, titled, ‘An Ethical Equation’ was quite surprising to me and begins with the following:

“According to a recent study by the University of Wisconsin, a developer could have saved more than $300,000 and spared the atmosphere more than 850 tons of CO2 (1,885,500 pounds) had he used an organic solvent-borne air barrier rather than a water-based product.”

The article is quite comprehensive and worth reading, but at its heart the author Ulf Wolf suggests that when considering a ‘green’ product or service that one considers everything related to the material or procedure’s ‘carbon footprint’.  Sometimes this may seem like a simple matter, but as demonstrated in the article, such answers are not always simple.

In a conversation I had with a friend recently she mentioned that while incandescent bulbs generate more heat than light, this may be a good thing in cold climates.  Such regions tend to have much longer daylight hours in the summer and therefore more natural light, while shorter daylight hours in winter create more need for artificial lighting but also for heating the space.  Therefore, according to her argument, one might spend less on electricity for lighting by using CFL or LED lighting, but this would be more than offset by an increase in other heating costs.  I don’t know what information she had to support this argument, but it’s something I hadn’t considered until she mentioned it.

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