Out of EcoHouse

It's been almost a year since I started this blog.

Friday evening I checked out of the EcoHouse and moved in to my summer home, where I'll be living with two other Macalester students and my boyfriend. It was bitter sweet, saying goodbye to everyone. But I know that this is going to be a fantastic summer, and next semester will be a fantastic experience. I'll be studying abroad in Paris, France, interning with the Ministère d'Ecologie, Energie, et Development Durable. Essentially, this is the department of Ecology, Energy, and Sustainable Development. I'm incredibly excited for this opportunity.

When we left the house, we left it spotlessly clean (thank you very much Julia). Everything put away, everything empty of our things, I realized that the EcoHouse is just a house. It's the people inside of it that make it special, that make the experience unique. We are the ones who make the house sustainable, not just the bits of plaster and steel that hold the house together.

I'm very excited for next year's house. I believe that they will continue to add to this house and give back even more than we did.

After moving in to my new house, I realized it was void of many essential things, such as soap. I decided to make a target run. Off of the shelves, I pulled the familiar things that I've gotten used to buying. 7th generation products, biodegradable soap, and then... a swiffer. I'm not entirely clear on the eco-friendliness of a swiffer, but it's likely questionable at best. For example you're using a disposable sheet to sweep, which doesn't necessarily biodegrade and therefore adds to the mountains of waste we bury every year. But you can use it to mop the floor with a wet pad, which therefore uses far less water than actual mopping... But this isn't my house (I'm only living here for the summer) and I needed an easy way to clean, so I excused this purchase.

Am I going to keep up my ecofriendly habits? I certainly hope so. But I haven't set up a compost pile yet (there isn't a good place in this yard for a chicken wire one, and I can't afford a plastic one. I cringe every time I throw out an egg shell. Taking short showers and turning off lights is just common sense, I have to pay my own utilities now.

This is going to be a challenging summer for my sustainable habits. But I think it will add a new flavor to this blog, one that has been pretty preachy, will now be a lot more about my successes and failures.

Hello Spring!

Ice cream TRUCKS? Why don't you go ahead and make petroleum sprinkles?? Let's go ahead and applaud this guy!

Hello Spring!

Spring Break

So for Spring Break I went back to Cleveland. I drove, which is cheaper and I think somewhat better for the environment than flying but I'm feeling guilty for the carbon all the same. I love avoiding Chicago by driving through the heart of Illinois because there are fewer tolls and it is so much prettier! There are a lot of wind farms. For about 20 minutes along 1-39, turbines dominate the landscape. I took lots of pictures and will post them to this blog once Mickey returns and I can borrow his camera cord.

Things have changed slightly since I last wrote about being sustainable at home. Not to say that my parents have had a huge change of heart and are now doing everything I do. I wouldn't expect that at all. While they're still not composting, they have decided to sell my mother's minivan in exchange for a new Prius. While hybrids are only a bandaid on the sustainability issue of cars, they are still preferable to traditional automobiles. I am very proud of my parents for that decision. It's also a big deal that they're selling the minivan. My mother had been considering getting a prius and keeping the minivan for when she needed to haul something or make a trip to college, but my argument that it is cheaper to simply rent a minivan for the few times she needs it took hold. My parents will continue to be a two car family!! Also, I was suprised to find one morning that my dad hadn't left for work, his car was still in the garage. After searching the house for him and finding that he was, in fact, gone, I texted to ask where he was. He'd taken the train to work.

!!

My heart soars like a hawk. My father is now one of the few people in Shaker Heights actually using the rapid in the way that the original developers of the city intended. It's cheaper than continually filling the car with gas and paying for speeding tickets (which apparently accompany owning a 6 gear manual Acura TL S-style that drives like a dream).


Cleveland itself is also a lot more sustainable than I'd previously given it credit. Over the summer I learned that the city was in the process of setting up an urban farm, and this break I learned that they have a Carshare program very similar to the Twin Cities' Hour Car. Check it out: http://www.mycitywheels.com/ Programs like this are great for people who can't afford a car, but need to use one occasionally when public transportation isn't enough. 


Who knows, with so much sustainable development occurring in Cleveland, I may end up returning there after college! Well. Maybe.

Majora Carter

Yesterday I had the amazing opportunity to go hear Majora Carter speak at the U of M campus. If you aren't familiar with who she is, she is a grass roots activist working to revitalize the South Bronx. She works with (who she calls) "America's most expensive citizens," those who are on welfare, who are repeatedly in and out of prison, and who are highly dependent on government aid. She is working to create "green collar jobs." She has built beautiful parks, is building a green way, bringing green roofs to the Bronx, and helping it to recover from the decades of waste and abuse it has received from the state of New York. She believes very strongly that you don't need to move out of your neighborhood to live in a better one, and helps people to make that possible. If you would like to know more about her efforts, visit www.majoracartergroup.com

Us

Last Friday was Founder's Day, and as such, all of us got dressed up for the dance. Mickey and I had to sing and were heading out when we realized that it was a photo opportunity. So here it is for all of you who actually follow this blog! The 2010 - 2011 EcoHouse!!

 From left to right: Maars, Julia, Meg (Me!), and Mickey

A True EcoHouse

Just thought I would share this other EcoHouse I found on the internet today:
True EcoHouse 

If you have the time and the stamina, I dare you to build your own!

Another semester

Falling back into EcoHouse life is like falling back into a chair cushion I haven't sat upon in a while. It feels right and it's comfortable, yet some of the familiarity is lost. There is a moment of trying to remember all of the things I do differently here than I do with my parents. I know where things are, yet I'm looking for things that are from my other home. The light hits the house differently, and rooms are dimmer and strange times. New objects and items have found their way into EcoHouse since I left. There is a piano where there once was a chair, and that chair where there once was a different chair, now in a place where there once was no chair at all. Posters have been changed and lamps have been moved. There is a rug spread on the floor, with flowers and swirls of different colors, reminding me of the hippies from the 60's who once attempted our same lifestyle. Mickey made thermally insulated curtains that now hang keeping the cold out from our giant leaky window.

Suddenly I stand upon the precipice of the last half of my year in the EcoHouse. In March new students will apply and be accepted and it will be our turn to decide what we leave behind and move on. And that's the thing about sustainability. The house must go on, and it will go on without us. The future iterations of this house will build upon what we leave behind. 

Over winter break a statistics student did a survey comparing the energy usage of the Japan house to the EcoHouse. Not surprisingly, this house uses about half the energy. What was incredibly surprising was that our iteration of the EcoHouse has used about twice as much energy as any house before us. SHOCK!! We thought we'd been doing so well! 

Well, we were. Sort of. Our habits are strong, and we're good about minimizing our energy usage, but we (I) made one crucial mistake. We turned on the dehumidifier. I had read online that if you dry clothes in the basement you should have a dehumidifier running. Apparently this is only really true in the summer, and still should only be done while the clothes are drying. Fairly new dehumidifiers are moisture sensing and will turn on when needed, but the old (energy sucking) one in the EcoHouse basement was not quite so fancy. And BOY did it use energy. Since we turned it off, our neutral (mid day, refrigerator fan off, nothing running) energy usage is about .25 - .30 kW (according to our TED). With it on, our average was about .70 - .90 kW. Needless to say, it's off now. 


I'm sure after a comparison of next semester's data our house will be redeemed.