Homes Ready to Roll
There is a completely new way of building homes that is more cost effective and offers many benefits to manufacturers, material suppliers, production builders, developers and even school districts. Many buyers would have a negative image of this new construction method if it were labeled mobile homes, but that is essentially what it is.
Mobile home manufacturing has taken on a new identity: It is now called off-site or factory-built buildings, and they come as a "kit of parts" offered in varying degrees to augment either existing buildings or to be used as components in new construction with other construction methods like ICF (insulated concrete forms), Butler building (metal &mdash red iron or moment-resistant frames) or tilt up concrete.
Also referred to as "manufactured" homes, the majority are built to a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development code that industry experts say makes "a well-built" house. Previously called "prefab" or "modular" or "manufactured" housing, housing experts say the industry is poised for new growth as architects explore fresh designs and more people associate the housing style with higher standards and higher performance.
Factory-built housing is touting environmental benefits and a fresh look as well to win a new generation of buyers as the industry continues to fight the "mobile home" image of cheap design and the slowing of conventional ("stick-built") housing.
The environmental benefits translate to lower costs of construction for home buyers and better profits for builders &mdash not to mention the added value of predictable costs generated by long-term material contracts from suppliers from the world marketplace. Building components with gigs and ordering from suppliers through long-term contracts for materials lowers costs, eliminates much of the construction waste that is so environmentally costly and allows developers to target market home pricing in a given region. These factors help to ensure salability by meeting feasibility studies for the development.
The most important marketing issue in this new construction paradigm is that factory-built products look and act just like stick-built buildings. The factory housing manufacturers are also able to use software that converts conventional designs into their manufacturing components, thus allowing for low-rise (three-story) buildings.
These components are then shipped JIT (just in time) to the developer's site and assembled or installed in under a week. Hence, a three-bedroom home could take less than three days to complete using non-skilled labor. The components can come pre-drilled for electric wiring, or with the wiring already installed, thus needing only to be connected on site. Plumbing openings can be pre-cut as are the doors and windows.
The century-old manufactured-housing industry still competes with prices estimated at 20% to 25% lower than conventional on site and faster move-in time. JIT as the slab cures and the curbs and streets are installed allows a developer to bring his project to market six weeks to six months earlier.
Large developments usually include a school or many levels of schooling/education. School districts partnering with developers can add square footage to school districts at a much lower price than a school district could facilitate using their own resources.
In 2006, nearly 8% of the 107,000 new single-family houses built in California were produced in off-site factories; about 1.4 million Californians live in 658,000 manufactured homes. It is estimated that nearly 70% of manufactured houses are now put on regular home lots.
September 2007 Builder Architect Edition Issue
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Nation's Largest Residential Green Building Event Makes History!
With the proliferation of green and lifestyle-related conferences, trade shows and expos attended on a more regular basis nationally, few stand out. Either for their presentations, settings, venue, decorations or production logistics, many conclude without having made a difference or delivering a major market transformational message. Last year's West Coast Green, held in San Francisco on Sept. 29, 2006, was a rare exception. This was a conference many other shows will soon model; a real trendsetter.
The West Coast Green Conference & Expo announced attendance exceeding industry records, an amazing feat for a first-year enterprise, while 96% of all garbage produced at the event was successfully diverted to compost and recycling. But the waste management aspect wasn't the only leading-edge attribute of the producers.
From the herbal soap and moisturizers in both the women's and men's rooms, to the nagging environmental questions and famous-name quotes scattered around to the napping room for speakers to the action hub, this was a conference that is sure to be modeled throughout the trade show industry. Robert Kennedy's speech mesmerized the audience in the plenary room, as well as stopped traffic on the expo floor. The big-screen transmission to the expo floor was a flying success, allowing both vendors and attendees a chance to hear and see the speeches.
The conference, held at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco, drew 126 presenters, 256 exhibitors and over 8,900 registrations. With the average event producing 100- 200 cubic yards of landfill waste in a matter of days, West Coast Green's mere 6 cubic yards of garbage for over 8,900 registrants has event-goers across the country asking how they did it. Of course, this waste management effort was facilitated by the progressive cooperation of the San Francisco Department of the Environment, which participated in the production of the show.
To compensate for electricity use, 20 metric tons of carbon dioxide were offset through restoring temperate rainforests on Canada's West Coast. To compensate for the environmental impact of the show's 3,000 pounds of printed marketing material, West Coast Green further contracted with www.zerofootprint.net, a program that planted 15 trees and restored 16,000 gallons of water via a watershed restoration project in Canada's Rouge River. All food sold at this inaugural event was certified organic and served with biodegradable plates, knives, forks, cups and spoons. Garbage stations were staffed by hundreds of volunteers who helped sort waste into the appropriate receptacles: compost, recyclables and landfill trash.
A conference like no other: In addition to its success as a carbon-neutral event, West Coast Green drew a record-breaking public response with over 8,900 registrations, making it the largest residential green building event in history. Focused on the emerging residential efforts by the USGBC and forward-thinking builders and contractors, this show focused where past commercial green shows left off. Records show attendees from every U.S. state as well as Canada, New Zealand, China, Poland, Russia, Spain, the Philippines and the United Kingdom.
To complement the event's "green" approach, the show's producers programmed its 126 presentations around what they termed a "living-system" design. This provided attendees with a large, comfortable "nap room" to unwind in, a "conversation cafe" for discussing new ideas and an "action hub" for groups to form and collaborate on the ideas they generated during the show. "Track hosts" took notes at every presentation and posted their summaries in the conversation cafe for participants to review. An army of pumped-up conference "volunteers" helped direct traffic, fill empty seats in presentation rooms and make sure the proper waste was deposited in the proper receptacle. All carbon offsets were independently verified and conformed to the ISO 14064 standards.
"It's a very effective approach," said Racquel Palmese, managing editor of Green Technology Magazine, when discussing the living system design. "I especially would like to see the conversation cafe used in more of these events."
"The idea is to tie everything together," said Christi Graham, executive producer for the event. "Our goal was to equally serve intellectual, inspirational and entrepreneurial pursuits of our attendees. This meant that equally important were the tasks of generating business for exhibitors, awareness for the public and momentum in the green building market. We designed the experience of attending to stimulate our attendees to make solid connections and take immediate action. Tapping into the brilliant potential of each person attending was what ultimately created such a powerful and wildly successful event."
August 2007 Builder Architect Edition Issue
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More Accessible Bio-Diesel
One of the impediments that has faced the green building industry from its inception is the availability and convenience of green building materials. While big box retailers and specialty lumber companies have carried some larger volume materials on a regional basis, the more specialized small volume products have gone begging for convenient access by installers.
With the booming of the green building marketplace has come a parallel growth in specialty retailers catering to consumers seeking knowledgeable sales people to tell them about the benefits of environmentally preferable purchasing. Not only do these retailers supply committed
enviro-friendly sales people and green products but they also serve as a clearing house and local activist center to "spread the word" about new developments in the field and connections to various tradespeople.
A new development for these retailers was recently endorsed by a San Francisco area retailer and it won't be long before other enviro-home improvement retailers say "Why not?" Green Fusion Design Center of San Anselmo recently aligned themselves with a local bio-diesel producer, LC Biofuels, LLC, of Richmond, CA, who installed a bio-diesel pump in front of their store for its customers.
It was a simple, no-brainer decision, according to the owner, Greg Snowden: "We sell other green products. Why not offer bio-diesel?" Locally produced and delivered and in great demand by locals, and selling above the median price of distillate, the fill-ups have been brisk. Contractors coming to load up on bamboo flooring or non-VOC paints also fill up their construction trucks while shopping and chatting. Best of all, LC Biofuels offers all California licensed building contractors a $0.30 discount per gallon, which should drive more business to the Green Fusion Design Center.
ONLY WITH SOFTWARE
The logistics of the bio-diesel enterprise are the most interesting and could only be accomplished with the aid of computers.
The San Anselmo Town Council placed restrictive times for vehicles to refuel. Homeowners who supported the dispensing of an environmentally friendly product also didn't want excessive traffic and feared the louder noise of commercial trucks at all hours of the night.
Prospective purchasers of B-D have to register on LCBiofuels' website to become a Biodiesel User Group member to receive a pump access card that will turn on the pump. Green Fusion Design didn't want to deal with the pump, nor ringing up the sales on the cash register and then separating the revenue, filing the taxes, etc. Through the use of the member access card, purchasers are restricted to certain times of the day to refuel.
Oversize commercial trucks can only refuel between certain hours of the morning, which keeps big trucks from clogging the parking lot restricting store customer access. Other customers have the convenience of fueling seven days a week 11 hours a day, stopping at 6 p.m.
Lance McCardle of LC Biofuels says that the whole project went relatively smoothly getting it passed with the Town Council, building permits, etc.
There was a potential to market the B-D under two different plans: One would allow the store to set the retail price and buy the B-D at a set price; the other was the plan that made the most sense for GFDC, i.e., getting a rebate on all gallons sold, without having to process the sales.
The installation of the pump and above-ground storage tank was logistically and (actually took seven months start to finish) challenging, but LC knows how important it is to bring clean burning, domestically produced bio-diesel to conscious consumers so perseverance won out in the end.
While the price at the pump for this bio-diesel is higher than the median price of distillate for the area, LC Biofuels delivers a premium B-D using canola oil as their feedstock. Canola oil delivers higher performance and is more cost effective to brew than McDiesel (fryer fat/oil) and more dependable as a supply feedstock than fryer oil.
Lance McCardle can be reached at lance@lcbiofules.com, or visit lcbiofules.com for more information.
Greg Snowden can be reached at greg@greenfusiondesigncenter.com, or visit greenfusiondesigncenter.com for more information.
May 2007 Builder Architect Edition Issue
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Sustainable Community of Treasure Island
San Francisco has been in the throes of a green revolution for approximately 10 years. Vying for the greenest city with Chicago by creating a Department of the Environment, sponsoring a written Green Plan, developing an alternative energy policy and now creating a mini-sustainable- city on Treasure Island.
Considered prime real estate, this island in the Bay represents the ultimate opportunity to create a vibrant live-work community that is more than just a housing development.
Originally constructed in 1938 to host the Golden Gate International Exposition, celebrating the engineering marvels of the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges and acknowledging the ascendancy of California and San Francisco as an economic, political and cultural force, Treasure Island is once again poised to become a one-of-a-kind destination and incubator for bold ideas of what the future of this region holds. The decommissioned naval air station was recently handed over to the city of San Francisco, which is working with a spirited developer and design team to outline a vision for a coherent, diverse, sustainable, public-spirited urban community. The plan's specific design solutions address the challenge of access to an island community in a congested region that demands innovative, efficient and sustainable solutions. Features include:
- A complex and thoroughly articulated urban design and architectural plan, illustrating relationships between buildings, public space, transportation, views and natural factors.
- A compact, transit-oriented community with 3,500-5,500 housing units, 600 hotel rooms and 200,000 square feet of retail/ commercial, providing a threshold community size that supports ferry service, neighborhood retail, community services and public amenities.
- A commitment to sustainability un- paralleled in the Bay Area, including a climate-responsive urban form, transit- first agenda, detailed renewable energy proposals, an innovative green-building agenda, organic farming and a constructed wetlands providing stormwater retention and wildlife habitat.
- A series of major, new public open spaces, including 260 acres of wetlands, parks and playgrounds, serving as public frame- work and resident amenity.
Every aspect of the proposed design facilitates convenient access by foot, bicycle and transit, reducing private auto trips on and off the island. The dense, integrated development pattern facilitates walking and cycling for on-island trips, and access to ferry and bus service for commuting. Hotel and retail uses are clustered around the ferry quay, with 40 percent of the proposed housing units located within a five-minute walk of the ferry terminal and 84 percent within a 10-minute walk. Streets are designed to support a range of travel modes at moderate-to-low speeds, and a system of pedestrian oriented tertiary streets radiate from the terminal area into the surrounding districts. Parking is clustered in key blocks, allowing convenient access by car without sacrificing the island's pedestrian character.
November 2006 Builder Architect Edition Issue
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Advantages of Bio-Fuel Producing Communities
Many communities have assets that aren't immediately apparent to them as assets.
When industry comes looking for a home or a site to build their businesses they have certain basic requirements. Space, in the form of buildings, land and juxtaposition to infrastructure assets like energy (cheap), housing, a labor pool, transportation corridors, rail and highway access, storage tanks and facilities and a political attitude that welcomes their contribution to the general welfare of the community.
Devastated rural communities have many of these assets that are of value in attracting commercial enterprises and these assets spill over into many cross-pollinating prosperity factors like Main Street business repopulation. When there is a resident work force, they have needs for meals, and motels and bars and ... so the downtown area prospers. Property appreciates, homes get built, families grow and the school system undergoes a renaissance like the remainder of the town's infrastructure. The concept of eco-industrial farming applies here: "The waste of one process becomes the feedstock of another process until there is no waste."
One example of this concept might be the following. The heat produced from the biodiesel processing can be employed in the manufacture of ICFs. Insulated Concrete Forms are becoming ever more popular in the construction of homes. Highly hurricane and tornado resistant, impervious to termites and mold, the growth of ICFs will continue. ICFs are made with expanded polystyrene, and heat is necessary to expand the EPS granules into the forms that make ICFs. If the heat is readily available and inexpensive, the location of an ICF plant near a bio-fuel plant is very attractive.
Rice and wheat straw, typically grown in the winter to suppress soil erosion could be bundled, compressed and sold to structural insulated panel manufacturers for inner core insulation. This process also requires heat. Made into blocks and glued to an outer hard paper coating, these straw blocks are structurally strong and obtain high R-insulation values.
Talking with townspeople and town councils, as well as the Farm Bureau personnel in rural America, would cause one to wonder why they wouldn't endorse any economic enterprises that could help transform their downtowns. A partnership between towns and their farmers would enjoy benefits to all parties. It seems it would be easy for the towns to use the properties they have accumulated through process of tax liens, and defaults on loans to encourage enterprise to locate there. Empty buildings, rail sidings, storage tanks and bins could all be used as a resource to accommodate new industry based on the above mentioned possibilities. Farmers agree to commit a certain percentage of their food crops to oil production, the townships agree to use assets to house and transport products made, and soon you have a win-win- win joint venture where everybody prospers and people enjoy living there.
Local delivery to fueling stations along major cross-country highway routes may actually transform our dependency on foreign oil, and maybe those truckers will actually start eating tofu burgers along with their bio-fuels.
A big question to be answered somewhere downstream is if the introduction of sustainable agriculture would bring value to the biodiesel equation. The U.S. is not only dependent on foreign oil for transportation, but also for fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides, growth hormones, weed control, etc. If the farm machinery ran on biodiesel, could the introduction of sustainable agriculture lower our dependency on fossil-based chemicals as well? Many vintners have proven that it is cost-effective to raise grapes in a sustainable manner. We'll see how big Agriculture takes this challenge in the coming years.
April 2006 Builder Architect Edition Issue
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The Case for Crop-Based Biodiesel
(Continued from our previous issue)
Almost any organic material or material that contains carbon and hydrogen can be a major component of biofuel. Biomass is found everywhere and mostly not considered valuable. With some feed stock it may be necessary to use enzymes that break down the original composition in order to make biodiesel.
However, if it can be ground, powdered, pulverized or pressed, or if it can be fermented (carbohydrates) or putrefied (protein), it is a potential fuel source. If it can be fermented, it can produce any number of gases, mostly methane, but also fair amounts of propane, butane and ethane.
Some biofuels offer more advantages than others. We'll be making the case here for crop-based biodiesel.
Ethanol and methanol are volatile, and that represents certain extra expense in production facilities. Being volatile means it can explode or burn, and that makes for very expensive permitting, OSHA regulations, and preventive process and handling equipment. A small typical ethanol (produced from fermenting sugar crops, corn, sugar beats, etc.) plant or methanol produced from capturing the gases of fermentation and condensing them can cost 10 times the capital costs and many times the operational costs of a biodiesel plant.
Because of this extra cost of capitalization, fewer local plants can be built and the cost advantages of ethanol/ methanol biofuels are marginally less because of the cost of transporting the fuel to where it is to be used. Producing alcohol-based fuels is important because it cuts petroleum use for autos and allows that same oil percentage to be used for plastics, paints, resins, asphalt and those products where there is no bio-based cost competitive substitute at this time.
ANIMAL-BASED BIODIESEL
Biodiesel made from animal materials (fat) or from restaurant frying oil is more expensive to formulate and is more costly to convert vehicles to use. In Plainview, TX, there are 6 million cows within a 150-mile radius, 3 packing plants (read: slaughter) that process 25,000 cows a day. There is an enormous supply of animal fat and many of these processing plants are actually using some of those resources to heat and operate their processing facilities. Kudos to them.
Meanwhile, Willie Nelson and the Farm Aid gang are promoting vegetable fat from the local McDonald's. Entrepreneurs driving around, doing collections incur extraneous costs, but the effort is still utilizing an otherwise wasted waste product.
Animal and vegetable fats used for biodiesel must have a costlier formulation process, involving antigelling agents and centrifugal filtering, and vehicles must have a warming device to keep the fuel flowing in colder temperatures. There are many local efforts to utilize this valuable resource, which has brought added visibility to the fuel's potential, and had an added positive side effect in appreciating the value of many older diesel-powered vehicles.
Crop-based biodiesel has advantages that help the aforementioned farm communities more directly than McDiesel fat can.
THE CASE FOR CROP-BASED BIODIESEL - A MARKET- BASED SOLUTION
Between Memphis, TN, and Santa Rosa, NM, on I-40, 28,000 truckers run their trucks every day using the fueling stations and eating their hamburgers. Along side I-40 are numerous little towns that grow the crops that feed and potentially fuel the nation, if they decided to make that a priority. BUT production of biodiesel in these small towns is not that simple; hid- den agendas, politics and greed may get in the way of true market transformation. Instead of a town's population doing what's best for the common good, many may want to prosper individually. The one thing constant from one rural farm community to the next is the farmers, and more importantly, the farm bureaus - who support and coordinate the farmers.
Rural America could supply approximately 20 percent of that fuel demand. B-20 is a 20 percent blend of biodiesel and regular (or distillate) diesel. Under the latest energy bill, there are tax incentives for the production and blending of biodiesel.
Next month, vertical integration.
March 2006 Builder Architect Edition Issue
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Advantages of Vertical Integration in Bio-Fuel Producing Rural Communities
First in a Four-Part Series
We recently traveled across America, on both the old route 66 and variations of 66, and many of what used to be country highways before they were replaced by super interstates. Through towns like Muleshoe, TX, and Augusta or Batesville, AR, the sight was, to say the least, sobering. Small towns (2,500 plus) across America are suffering constant population drain. Main Street is a run of closed signs, torn awnings, rusty signs and roofs, vacant decaying buildings and the once proud homes stand with their naked roofs and broken windows. About the only remnants of a once proud mid-America are the churches, which are still maintained.
The few towns that are doing well, such as Plainview, TX, are doing so at the expense of other towns for 100 miles in every direction. And in many of these towns the economic base may be dependent on one business entity - and thus the town is owned by that corporation.
The potential solution for the mid-America population flight is biodiesel and biomass energy conversion.
There has been talk about the concept of bio-fuels as a weapon against the oil cartel. We use "cartel" because in effect the U.S. is hooked on oil - more specifically, we are hooked on transportation fuel. There are 2 million big rig trucks in the United States, owned by 500,000 trucking companies. These cost about $185 thousand per tractor, burn approximately 300 gallons per 12-hour loaded- haul day, get about 5 miles per gallon and by necessity are running (working) 24/7.
Bio-fuel is a large category that includes ethanol, methanol, biodiesel and syngas, which are all capable of being produced from many sources of organics such as animal fat rendered from poultry processing, peat powder, paunch, animal and humanure, rice and wheat chafe, rice and wheat, or canola, safflower, sunflower, jojoba, castor beans, rape seed, etc.
Biodiesel is particularly attractive to motor owners and operators for the following reasons:
- Diesel engines can run on a 100 percent diet of biodiesel and can return to conventional petroleum diesel if a supply of biodiesel is disrupted.
- Biodiesel in a 20 percent to 40 percent blend (B-20 and B-40) with distillate diesel cleans fuel lines and tanks.
- Biodiesel is an "oxygenating" fuel that produces a cleaner burn, leading to a cleaner engine, longer lubricant life, extended engine life and greater economy of operation.
- Biodiesel blends provide transportation engines with increased torque for adequate fuel mileage and can lower exhaust emissions by up to 70 percent.
- Stationary engines such as well and water pumps run at a constant speed can benefit from operating on 100 percent biodiesel.
- Engines running on B-20 are better lubricated than those running on 100 percent distillate, even though distillates have lubricating oil added.
- Converting an engine to run on crop-based vegetable-oil biodiesel requires only a low cost refitting of fuel lines and increased fuel filter changes until the solvent properties of the biodiesel has effectively cleaned the fuel system. Potentially much less than engines converted to McDiesel or animal fat-based fuels.
- Crop-based diesel can be produced by local farm co-ops up to 15,000,000 gallons per year, (42,000 gallons a day +/-). These plants require about 315,000 gallons of oil (derived from 200 tons per day of crop seed), a figure practical for local farmers to provide by committing perhaps 30 percent of their single-year crop for conversion to bio-fuel. Some farmers may be able to raise a second (winter) crop fit only for fuel conversion.
- Producing less than 15,000,000 gallons per year qualifies for a subsidy of $0.60 per gallon until December 2008.
Next month, the case for crop based biodiesel.
February 2006 Builder Architect Edition Issue
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Assessing Our Ecological Footprint
The race for sustainability will be won or lost in cities, where urban design influences over 70 percent of people's Ecological Footprint.
Finally making the connection between first and second costs is what powered the idea of sustainable design and construction into the forefront of the construction industry. Capital costs, or first costs of green building, were perceived to outweigh the expected lower cost of traditional building in both design and materials. Second costs, or building operational costs, were only understood fully when studies were done on some early green buildings that proved that over time high-performance buildings were very much cheaper to operate and gave a substantial ROI in a relatively short period of time, at the then much cheaper energy costs. Studies also proved that higher productivity from employees in these buildings was an added value to high-performance design.
Empirical data became the selling point of "why a green building." Earnest Callenbach, a Berkeley, CA, progressive thinker, first proposed the concept of an "ecological footprint." The footprint was a term of relative measurement to qualify the amount of earth's surface required to house, feed, cloth, transport and dispose of waste created of a society, person or nation. Using his concept the current demand by earth's people requires almost six planets to supply the needs of its population.
In a quest for indicators of how well a given society is faring or healing, the ecological footprint is a measurement tool with new devotees. But first some facts to better under- stand the concept and how it will help power healthy cities into the standard of planning, development and construction.
What is an EF? It is a tangible management and communications tool that measures how much nature we have, how much we use and who uses what. It represents the amount of biological productive land and water a population (an individual, a city or country or all of humanity) requires to provide the resources it consumes and to absorb its waste using prevailing technology.
The human economy is embedded in the biosphere and is entirely dependent on its ecological services. In consuming nature's products and services, people have an impact on the Earth. But since nature has the ability to renew, it can cope with human demand as long as this demand stays within the regenerative capacity of the biosphere.
Ecological Footprint accounting documents the extent to which human economies stay within the regenerative capacity of the planet, and who uses which portion of this capacity.
Such biophysical resource accounting is possible because resources and waste flows can be tracked, and most of these flows can be associated with the biologically productive areas required to maintain them. The Ecological Footprint of a population is the area of biologically productive land and sea required to produce the resources this population consumes, and to assimilate the wastes it generates, given prevailing technology. Since people use resources from all over the world and pollute far away places with their waste, the Ecological Footprint includes these areas, wherever they happen to be located on the planet.
By measuring the overall supply of and human demand on the Earth's regenerative capacity, the Ecological Footprint provides an indispensable tool for tracking progress, setting targets and driving policies for sustainability.
The average human's EF is 2.2 global hectares (5.5 acres), while there are only 1.8 hectares (4.5 acres) of biologically productive land and sea area per person available on the planet. This overuse is called "overshoot." It is possible to exceed ecological limits for a while, but this "deficit spending" leads to the destruction of ecological assets on which our economy depends, such as depleted ground water, collapsing fisheries, empty oceans and CO 2 accumulation in the atmosphere.
Ecological Footprint comparisons of human demand on nature with nature's regenerative capacity are updated each year. Recent calculations, published in WWF's Living Planet Report, show that the average Australian required more than 7.7 global average hectares (or 19 acres) to provide for his or her consumption. The average Italian lived on a footprint less than half that size (3.8 global hectares or 9 acres). The aver- age Mexican occupies 2.5 global hectares (6 acres), the average Indian lives on 0.8 global hectares (2 acres). Average demand globally is 2.2 hectares per person (5.4 acres).
Maintenance of biodiversity also depends on the 1.8 hectares per person available. Comparison of supply and demand shows that humanity's Ecological Footprint exceeds the Earth's bio-capacity by more than 20 percent (2.2ha/1.8ha = 1.2). In other words, it now takes one year and more than two months to regenerate the resources humanity consumes in one year.
The Ecological Footprint can be applied at scales from single products to households, organizations, cities, regions, nations and humanity as a whole.
Expressed in hectares (1 hectare = 2.5 acres) the average U.S. citizen needs 24 acres or 9.5 hectares to provide for consumption and disposal.
How can cities use the EF? A footprint assessment computes a community's demand on nature in specific, understandable terms, using official government data. Cities can asses their sustainability performance, set realistic targets, monitor projects and programs, communicate successes and, by comparing scenarios, identify implications of policy choices. More than 100 cities around the world have already used the EF to manage their ecological assets and move towards sustainability.
In writing their master plan for including growth and development, cities and counties will now have a supportive and acceptable tool with which to measure and compare the effects and efficiencies of various development directions. Hopefully the redevelopment of the Gulf Coast will be a great opportunity to put this data to work.
The Global Footprint Network (www.footprintnetwork.org) is responsible for gaining profiles in many countries throughout the world. Their mission is to support the shift toward a sustainable economy by advancing the EF as a measurement and management tool that makes reality of global limits central to decision-making throughout the world.
Calculate your own Ecological Footprint at www.ecofoot.org.
January 2006 Builder Architect Edition Issue
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