FROM THE TAILGATE
Sage advice from the trenches
By Ron Jones
Harvesting New Opportunities
One of the most encouraging trends in our culture can be found in the increased awareness and actions of producing and consuming more locally grown food. There are expanding numbers of people from all age groups and walks of life who have turned their attention away from foods produced by industrial agriculture, which may have to travel for days or even weeks before they find their way onto supermarket shelves, and instead are making the effort to locate sources of nutrition that originate closer to home.
Many of these same people have reconnected with growing at least some of their own food themselves. Not only do they have greater control of the cost of what they eat, but by doing so they are helping to better assure the freshness and high quality of the conditions in which their food was grown and processed. They also know whether their food has been produced with the use of artifi cial fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, and other chemicals.
For those of us who have been involved in the green building movement for any length of time, this return to basics—to self suffi ciency—which is part of a larger shift in the direction of personal responsibility and balanced living, comes as no great surprise. We have been seeing it mirrored in the way people have begun to reject inflated size in favor of quality of space as it relates to their built environments, in all the places where they live, work, and play.
More and more we are being introduced to projects ranging from single homes to entire communities (Detroit comes to mind instantly) where ordinary citizens, the public sector, and those who provide shelter are taking time to look at what the opportunities are on any given site for the residents to produce a portion of what they consume.
In many ways this phenomenon is not so different from taking the necessary steps to produce on site at least part of the power load of a residence or commercial building, or to implement systems designed to harvest rainwater and put it to a variety of uses before it leaves the property. It is also illustrated at the most fundamental level by the desires of increasing numbers of people to reduce their personal and professional waste streams.
All of these things are indeed “folds in the same cloth,” and they provide each of us a variety of ways in which we can individually and collectively make a difference. It is our hope that we are delivering meaningful, useful information that will enable building professionals and their customers to make conscious decisions that will enhance the quality of their lives and simultaneously help the built environment and the natural world to harmonize.
64
03.201
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76