Economy Friendly Eco-friendly

Economy Friendly Eco-friendly, what?  No, you read it right.  Economy Friendly Eco-friendly is my almost catchy label for one of the biggest factors impeding our fight against climate change.  See, there are some politicians and economists alike that are concerned with economic consequences that would result by eliminating heavy green house gas polluting industries and processes.  While our scientists around the world are conversely contemplating what will happen if we do nothing.  The complexity of our environmental problem could never be overstated.  First, it's clear we have to come up with new manufacturing processes or products that don't produce mass amounts of greenhouse gas pollution.   We've already developed some of these solutions but we have a long way to go before we can eliminate the greenhouse gas pollution created from manufacturing things like steel or concrete, or consuming fossil fuels like oil and coal.  Assuming huge strides are made and we come up with replacements for all these heavy polluters, we then need to make sure the roll out of these new processes or products doesn't hurt the U.S. or world economies in a significant way.   A lot of things need to happen in order for us to begin to begin reversing climate change.  Things like wind and solar power, electric motors, green friendly building materials, repurposed furniture, and other green ideas will have to be most prominent if we have any chance to undo what we've done.  Thanks for reading!

The Road to a Non-toxic Home

Sixty years ago the world went through what some people refer to as the chemical age.  Toxic chemicals emerged on the scene being used for almost everything including things like pesticides, household & industrial cleaners, and even in our food.  Over time we learned much about the affects of these chemicals to our health and to the well being of our environment.  Many chemicals have been eliminated all together because they created so much harm.  We’ve discovered things like VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds) are pretty harmful to our health.  You probably heard about formaldehyde in recent news, the latest toxic chemical to be scrutinized.  We once thought that chemicals like formaldehyde were ok if they were hidden under a layer of plywood or particleboard.  We’ve realized that even though these toxins are with in a sealed surface, they can still omit into the air because of things like off gassing.  Changes in the temperature and humidity can actually draw toxins into your home’s air.  Many air quality experts say that a home’s indoor air quality can actually be three times worse than the air quality outside.  Asthma and other breathing issues have been dramatically rising over the last few decades.  Air Purification systems have been developed all over the world to help combat this problem.  Medical experts have continuously connected indoor air quality to breathing problems like asthma and COPD.  Creating a non-toxic home is the only way to completely ensure you are getting the best air quality possible.  How? Non-toxic kitchen cabinets and bathroom vanities are very important because they are in areas of higher humidity susceptible to off gassing.  Non-toxic paint is also a great way to ensure toxins aren’t seeping into your home’s air from the walls.  Non-toxic flooring is also available in all types and make sure any wall coverings or reclaimed wood is non-toxic.  Believe it or not but there is non-toxic furniture on the market, considering the proximity to us and our kids a non-toxic couch sounds pretty important.  We could be headed toward a non-toxic world, I hope it can help reverse asthma and COPD statistics.  Thanks for reading!

Clean Power Plan - The Third View

I'm going to start this out by telling you that I nor the Paper Blog have any political affiliation or do we care to share our political philosophy.  It is the environment we're focused on and we feel we have a pretty good way of combating climate change in our specialty, green building materials and eco-friendly remodeling.  With that being said, I'm going to share my thoughts about the current Clean Power Plan.  Now, I only know the basics of the plan that include carbon emissions reduction guidelines for U.S. coal power plants.  Simple enough, a plan that forces power plants to reduce their carbon emissions or I guess they'll be breaking a law.  Newsflash everybody, large corporations in this country break U.S. laws everyday, ok not sure where I was going with that.  Back to the Clean Power Plan, the opposition to this bill is up in arms stating that the plan will raise electricity costs, hurt our economy, etc etc.  I think we can all understand both sides of this argument.  Yes, we would love to reduce emissions from heavy polluting coal power plants.   No, we don't want consumer's electrical costs to go up or our fragile economy to be impacted.  This old song and dance, how about we sing a different tune.   In my mind we need to be more focused on finding actual solutions to the problems.  Problems like how can we effectively create and distribute electricity without causing emissions or other environmental consequences?  How can we manufacture our most prominent goods, building materials and other products without causing emissions, deforestation, or land destruction from mining?  How can we eliminate landfills and nuclear waste?  We have a lot more questions than answers when it comes to solving our environmental problems.  I vote for a plan that sets deadlines to finding solutions to these problems and  I commend those eco-pioneers in green building materials for doing their part!  Thanks for reading.