Natural walls, from Japan to home
As if there wasn’t enough to worry about, the EPA recently concluded that, due to chemicals in our homes, indoor environments are potentially up to 100 times more polluted than outdoors. Hence the proliferation of greener, nontoxic materials, including the so-called earth plasters—clay-based materials troweled onto walls to create a textured finish. One that recently caught our eye: Japanese Wall.
 Natural plasters, like American Clay (shown here), can be an eye-catching and air-sparing alternative for your walls |
Billed as a more Zen-like way to decorate your home and “re-examine the indoor quality of our buildings,” JWall (as the company nicknames itself) harkens back to Samurai-era Japan, when ceremonial structures were built using earth and straw. The updated JWall formula uses as its secret ingredient diatomaceous earth—a porous chalk-like rock which acts as a natural filter of formaldehydes, carcinogens and bad karma. You’ll be floating on clouds and talking about cherry blossoms in no time.
JWall (japanesewall.com) is akin to textured plaster, and applied the same way onto existing interior or exterior walls, with the claim that it is seriously DIY-friendly. Closer to home, and more easily available, is a product called American Clay (americanclay.com). Made from natural clays and pigments, plus recycled aggregates, the New Mexico-made material comes in a range of hues and is said to be dust-resistant and moisture-controlling—both plusses on the health front. It costs 80 cents to $1.35 per square foot and can be applied over existing drywall.
All greenness aside, the main thing we like about natural plasters? Their textured and, well, earthy look.—Lily Robertson and Erika Howsare
Take a break
Charlottesville City Council recently endorsed a bill to give tax breaks to the greenest among us. Here’s the deal: Energy-efficient houses can earn a 50 percent reduction in future real estate tax bills. So who qualifies for this windfall?
In order to be officially recognized as “green,” homes needs to be 30 percent more energy efficient than the state building code; you must provide 11 months’ worth of bills to prove your house’s efficiency. The question is, how many of us are realistically going to reach this exalted green status?
If your house was build recently, and to Energy Star specs, then congratulations—you’ve already won and are saving about $500 more per year on energy bills than the rest of us. If not, there are a couple of major steps you can take. One is to install more efficient appliances—look for the Energy Star label—which can reduce utility bills by a third.
Another is to reduce energy used for heating and cooling, which accounts for 56 percent of the energy used in our homes. The State Building Code claims that by weatherizing your home—insulating and double-glazing—you will increase efficiency by 30 percent and thus be officially qualified for Charlottesville’s tax break.
Such steps are substantial investments, of course, which presumably is a major reason behind City Council’s move to reward those who shell out up front. Half off real estate taxes is a big prize, but of course we’ll all win if local homes use less energy.—L.R.
Barrel forward
With spring happily looming, now’s the time to get ready to collect and store all that rainwater that (we dearly hope) will fall throughout the vernal months and into the summer. After all, as you may have heard, 2007 was a year of drought locally, so storing water for irrigating gardens and landscaping only makes sense.
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One source for rain barrels: local green-living practitioner Brian Buckley (who with partner Terry Lilley was featured in the July 2007 issue of ABODE). Buckley salvaged 100 50-gallon barrels from a North Carolina pickle company and converts them to rain collectors by adding spigots, overflow valves and filter screens. He’s selling them for $80 and will install them on a wooden stand for another $70. Give him a call at 296-3963.—E.H.
Green-eyed lady
I really want to see my carbon footprint get smaller, but when faced with a pile of paper to recycle, my thoughts tend to run a little something like, “How do I recycle paper again? Does brown paper go with glossy paper or newspaper? Or does newspaper go with white paper? Or is newspaper its own thing? Or is…” You get the point. So sometimes—not often, and I’m not proud when it happens—I end up throwing a piece of paper away because I can’t figure out what pile to put it in.
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It’s for the recycling-challenged (and everyone else) that local do-gooder Teri Kent maintains her website, Better World Betty, at http://betterworldbetty.com. (By the way, Kent also appears in these pages with some advice on greening your kitchen.) With the tagline “Green living made easier,” the website makes reducing Charlottesville’s collective carbon footprint easy by leaving the city with exactly zero excuses. Aside from helping with recycling basics, Kent offers everything from a directory of local businesses that swing green (for example, Terra Bella for your dry cleaning) to a blog of her sustainable living-related thoughts.
There’s also a search tool that allows visitors to plug in whatever it is they want to reuse or recycle; the site will then tell visitors where they can accomplish this goal locally. I’ve had an old PDA lying around the house for a while now, so I typed PDA into Better World Betty’s search feature and I know now that I can take the thing to Crutchfield and they will recycle it for me.—Nell Boeschenstein
The rap on wrap
Paper or plastic? Neither, right?
When it comes to your own kitchen, the default answer to food storage has been plastic. But remember, my green friends, plastic bags are made of a non-renewable resource, petroleum, and many require hazardous materials to make!
Solution: reuse, and avoid disposables.
Each week, you bring home plenty of containers from the store. Vegetables and loaves of bread likely come in plastic bags or containers: perfect candidates for storing snacks or sandwiches.
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My friend Adrienne, mother of two, reuses the bags inside cereal boxes. Another option: biodegradable unbleached wax paper. Integral Yoga sells sandwich bags made of silicon, rather than petroleum-based wax (Natural Value, $3.19). Also, don’t forget that aluminum is recyclable (treat it like a can). I found a brand at Rebecca’s made of 100 percent recycled aluminum, If You Care (no, that’s really the name).
If living plastic-free is your goal, consider glass bowls (Rebecca’s Frigoverre set, $21.99), stainless-steel containers (lifewithoutplastic.com, $14.95) or ceramics. Sigg’s nifty aluminum snack box is available at Blue Ridge Eco-Shop ($24.99).—Teri Kent
By the Numbers
2%
“86 percent of respondents believe that it costs more to build a green building—and not just by a little. Most of those said at least 6 percent more, and a large group said over 15 percent more! For comparison, data reported in past issues of Environmental Building News (EBN) suggests that an experienced team can deliver a green building for a 0–2 percent premium.”—from an EBN report on a 2007 survey by Building Design & Construction magazine