Green Building Cookbook is for people who are:

• seriously considering green building in the Cuyahoga Bioregion (the Greater Cleveland, Ohio area);
• planning to build residential living spaces, not commercial or industrial spaces (though building them green is just as important);
• interested in rehabbing their existing living space or building new;
• homeowners, architects, builders, contractors, developers, and/or building officials.

Green Building Cookbook:

• takes seriously the fact that every bioregion has different conditions; we must learn the makeup of our bioregion so we build what is consistent with the possibilities and limitations our bioregion gives us (the Cuyahoga River once burned with all the debris on its surface; green building respects what the river and the terrain that surrounds it gives us and develops with its integrity being part of the plan). See Bioregion.
• reports in-depth on the experiences of those who have accomplished green building at some level in this bioregion (what is working and what is not working so well; measure the steps taken and plan the miles yet to go).
• tries to extrapolate from those experiences green building recipes that can be shaped into green building menus appropriate for both the persons building and for this ecoregion. We hope that you will find our use of recipes and menus a friendly way to organize yourself into green building.

And, Green Building Cookbook

welcomes the insights and experiences of those who live outside our bioregion. As this site develops, we look forward to sharing our experience with others around the country, indeed, around the world, for it is good stewardship of bioregions all across the globe that will help us make this earth a fit place for our children and grandchildren.

So, what is green building?

Green building is in its infancy. There is a long way to go before we can honestly say we have produced truly environmentally friendly homes. The goal of green or sustainable building is to locate, create and use building materials and systems that produce the least side affects for the environment from the time they are mined, cut or manufactured to the time they are dismantled and discarded. These buildings should be as energy efficient as possible and provide a healthy indoor environment for the residents. The early pioneers who settled in the Midwest prairies building log and/or sod homes were closer to true greenbuilders than we are today, at least on the first goal of green building. Just about everything they used would in time deteriorate and return to the earth.

Modern science and chemistry have permitted us to create all manner of new building materials, but much of it is not environmentally compatible and can do harm to the indoor environment and the health of occupants as well. Most of it is not biodegradeable and only some of it is recyclable. Architect William McDonough, who is one of the key leaders in the whole greenbuilding movement contends that we are in need of and are on the edge of a new industrial revolution in which a whole new generation of building materials and building systems will be produced that are not in conflict with the environment. He and a British scientist have formed a company to do just that and there are beginning to be signs of these new products appearing on the horizon.

Persons and organizations attempting green built homes have been using building materials made of recycled products, but when many of these recycled materials are no longer useful they will go into a landfill because they cannot be recycled a second time (e.g., there is a carpet made of PET plastic bottles and it is an even better fibre than that used in conventional carpeting, but it will ultimately end up in a landfill).

But there are signs on the horizon that McDonough is right. There are a growing number of carpet companies that are producing carpet for commercial use that can be recycled over and over again. Both the base material and the fibers can be completely recycled. To aid this effort, some of these companies are not selling their carpet to customers, but are leasing it so they will be sure to get it back. In several European countries, manufacturers of all manner of goods are now required to take back all the products they produce when they have outlived their useful life. It is generating some wonderful creativity, as they seek to make deconstruction of systems and materials as economically attractive as creating them.

Many green builders are now using countertops made of straw and bonding agents that do not outgas harmful chemicals and there is a plentiful supply of straw. When it is finished its useful life, it could be ground up again and/or left to disintegrate into the soil.

We have learned how to build more efficiently so we do not have as much waste or use as much energy. But we are still using nonrenewable resources such as oil and gas. Now we hear that fuel cells are being developed that use nitrogen, one of the most common elements in our universe. Strategies for using the energy of the sun and the wind are being continually studied and experimented with because as long as the earth is habitable it will have sun and wind.

So…right now we are probably in our “recycling period” and we have a long way to go to really claim serious success on this front, but we are just around the corner from McDonough’s new industrial revolution. When we figure out how to make money at it and help generate economies with it, it will probably be seriously on its way into our lives.

In the meantime, green built homes are being generated every day on the cutting edge of this new revolution. We have not arrived, but we can proudly declare that we are on the road. Join us if you are just beginning, let us share your experience if you are further down the road than most of us.

Author/researcher

This site has been created by Jim LaRue, formerly President of The HouseMender, Inc.(he is now retired and his business is closed), a home improvement advisory company that troubleshot residential structures and provided training and workshops for homeowners, contractors, builders and building officials in the Greater Cleveland area.

Jim has rehabbed many homes in the inner-city, was one of the partners in creating the first green home in Cleveland, and was on the staff of the Housing Resource Center (a demonstration house in Cleveland that persons could visit to see how a house is rehabbed and to learn about indoor air quality, energy efficiency and accessibility). For many years he appeared on WEWS-TV’s Morning Exchange, sharing his experience with viewers all over this bioregion.

For several years he served as residential consultant for The Cleveland Green Building Coalition, providing on-site and phone consultations regarding green building with homeowners, architects, builders and contractors. Jim has consulted on-site in hundreds of homes all over this five county area, so he has an excellent understanding of the housing stock and the regional conditions that shape the development of that housing stock.

In his retirement, Jim plans on sharing the many greenbuilding stories that he has helped nurture or discovers in this bioregion as interest in this kind of building continues to grow.

Website Designer

The designer of this site is Al Wasco, Assistant Professor of Visual Communication & Design at Cuyahoga Community College—Western Campus. His website Interactive Design Forum provides news and inspiration for designers and design educators.

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