Building

How to Screw the Environment with your house:

"Sustainability? What's that? "

Ok, an explanation.

The best way to Screw the Environment when engaged with a new build, is to use materials which cannot be replaced.

Every ounce of brick, wood, concrete and mortar has to be manufactured before you can use it. The building industry is a massive user of natural resources and a lot of it gets wasted, the average figure is 20%.

So by using non-renewable materials and using them in a slap dash manner, you can cost your self 10-20% more than you need to spend on a new build easily and waste lots of natural resources.

Use cement too, it accounts for 3.8% of Global co2 emissions.

Build for the future?

Even better, you can build in a way that takes no account of the environmental impact of the property itself. Will it be easy to heat? To light? Have you taken advantage of natural light or built with heating in mind?

Ignoring all these things will dramatically increase both the cost of building and maintaining the property but will also give you the biggest environmental footprint possible for the job.

Biggest impact.

Maximise your environmental impact by failing to consider the following things when building:

  • Insulate, insulate, insulate!
  • Design in features that reduce water use at source
  • Specify natural materials especially where the price difference is small
  • Design in site waste management systems
  • Design in as much natural daylight (with consideration for solar gain) to reduce the reliance on electric lighting and to improve the well-being of the occupants.

To name but a few.

You have been warned.

(New feature so digg away!)

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