Celebrating Earth Day with Interiors

Did you celebrate Earth Day on April 22nd? Did you do anything to make your home interior environmentally friendly? Here are some questions to ask yourself when considering a home improvement project or purchase.

1. Have you switched all your incandescent bulbs out for compact fluorescent light bulbs? If not, next time you are in your local hardware store, pick some up. You will have them ready when that next light bulb burns out.
2. Do you really need your heat or air set at the same temperature when you are out of the home or sleeping? Consider installing a programmable thermostat? It will save you money and help save the earth.
3. Is air flowing into your home under doors and windows? Plug them up! Air leaks allow air and heat to sneak outside, making it more difficult for us to control the air in our home. In turn, this makes the air conditioner or furnace work harder. It ends up costing you more money and wasting precious resources.
4. Buy local products. Products made overseas require tons and tons of fuel.
5. Buy items with post-consumer recycled content. This can range from clothes to fabrics, plastic containers to furniture, even coffee mugs.
6. Do you reuse? Reusing ensures less waste goes into landfills. Can you reuse that old piece of furniture? Can you reuse paint you already have in your basement? How about shopping at a thrift or antique store? It’s amazing what your mind can come up with when given the opportunity to save money and make something beautiful for your home!
7. Buy Energy Star Appliances. Replace old appliances with Energy Star models when they break. Your appliances will run more efficiently and can save you money in the long run. Remember to unplug your small appliances when they are not in use because they can still suck up energy.
8. Don’t forget to ask the experts. Decide if buying a sustainable product is an option for you before you buy anything for your home. If so, just ask the expert for more information. I bet you learn something interesting.

Celebrate Earth Day all 365 days in your home! How have you made the Earth better today?

Embodied Energy – What Is It and What Does It Represent In My Home?

Simply put, embodied energy is the amount of total energy a tangible article houses. Energy, in this terminology, represents physical exertion, production, environmental growth effort, shipping, crating, recycling, and anything else that requires a form of effort to produce an object. The smallest of objects to the largest of buildings all contain embodied energy.

Heck, even the sweater I am wearing right now has embodied. It’s wool, so the energy used to feed a sheep, sheer the sheep, box the raw wool, ship it, mill the wool, spin to production fiber, ship again, dye the yarns, weave the sweater, ship the sweater, stock the sweater, my gas to get to the store, the department stores energy necessary to sell the sweater, bag the sweater, drive the sweater home and finally remove the tags and wear the sweater. Phew! Please notice I stopped here and I could go into what energy is needed to dry clean the sweater!

So in short, embodied energy of the total of all types of energy. This is such an important attribute to be aware of as an interior designer because it provides clarification and weight to all the decisions being made for an interior. All of a sudden, deciding on the arm chairs shipping from Grand Rapids, Michigan to Detroit became a better choice over the chairs shipping from Spain – at least in regards to the embodied energy attributes.

Having awareness of embodied energy not only assists you in making wise purchasing choices; it can also help guide you in what to do with the sweater when you are ready to pass it on. I believe when you remove yourself from your own reality for a second and put yourself in the shoes of an object (I know, odd concept), you can have clarity and really start to think about your purchases differently. As Americans we are consumers, but what if we all just made the conscience decision to consume less. Think about the overall impact you could have on embodied energy.

One of the best examples I like to use for reduced embodied energy are vegetables. Think about the energy difference between a cucumber bought at the grocery store versus one grown in your backyard… its an interesting concept.

What easy steps can you take to reduce the embodied energy surrounding you?