My OperaEco perspectives
Friday, May 9, 2008 2:25:22 AM
An eco home (like the ones built by BCIL) looks at every material as living. All materials are living things in a manner of speaking. Because they live so much longer than you and I, we think they are ``inert``, ``dead`` things. An eco home looks at a building as an energy system -- consciously you think of what you use for walls, floors and roofs as materials. And BCIL also believes in mainstreaming sustainability. Mr. Hariharan, CEO of BCIL says: “Use of bricks means depletion of rich, fertile topsoil; use of sand means killing river near your town for sand is brought from only such river beds; use of clay tiles and blocks means use of energy as much as 600 deg. C to 1200 deg. C [in case of ceramic tiles]. One teak door means a full-grown, over 50-years-old forest tree. Use of steel and cement means that you are destroying some other land far away from you, to create your own home. So what are the options? You can make building blocks out of the earth you excavate for building your house. These are called compressed, stabilized earth blocks. You can use plantation timber coming from man-made forests, under certification from authentic international and national bodies. You can use treated and pressed bamboo for floors in rich and warm colours -- this is a fast-growing grass species and so is renewable. You can reduce use of steel and concrete with clever design engineering. You can avoid use of chemical-based paints that pollute rivers and ecology in areas where they are manufactured - instead use non-toxic paints. Use earth plastering in a way they are built to last. There are many different ways. We are not, however, saying you can eliminate completely use of materials; obviously that is not possible. There are then excellent options today for lighting where you save on energy and so save on use of coal that our power sector needs for generating electricity. You can achieve all this at about the same cost as these conventional materials that the world has used for the last 50-60 years. For a thousand years before that, the world used eco-friendly ways to build!
