Geo Answers: Sustainability – Part 6: Durability and Reliability
How long something continues to work properly and efficiently is practically synonymous with the concept of sustainability. Using durable shopping bags instead of one-use paper or plastic is a simple example of this concept. The more use we get out of things generally...
The NW Green Home Tour: New Social Equity Projects
No matter at what scale you examine the impacts of Climate Change, the people with the least resources are impacted the most while contributing the least to the problems involved. It's not hard to understand this dynamic. The more impoverished a person is, the more...
Geo Answers: Sustainability – Part 5: Operational Emissions
Generally, calculations of the impacts of using a machine only take operational emissions into account. As we have seen so far in this series, these negative effects are only part of the sustainability equation. However, given a durable application like heating your...
Geo Answers: Sustainability – Part 4: Installation Impact
When installing any important, durable system in your home, such as a heating solution, it is important to consider that there are environmental impacts associated with this as well. The largest concern is, usually, the resulting waste products that have to be dealt...
Geo Answers: Sustainability – Part 3: Embodied Carbon
Often, when we think about the energy we use, we only consider the energy it takes to run our tools, appliances and devices. However, when examining the sustainability of a product, we need to also include all the energy that went into making and transporting it to...
Geo Answers: Sustainability – Part 2: Environmental Impacts
The products we use impact the environment at every stage: from manufacture to use to dealing with the 'waste' at the end of that usefulness. Manufacturing, in most cases, means extracting and harvesting raw materials followed by refining those resources so that they...