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The Philosophy of Sustainable Design

The Philosophy of Sustainable Design, by Jason McLennan is unique in “green” books about architecture and building design in that it really gets to the philosophy behind sustainable practices, and not just a list of “dos” or “don’ts.” I appreciate that. McLennan is teaching us to fish.

With sixteen chapters and five appendices, the book is very complete. It is also very readable. Sometimes books like this are, frankly, a bit dry and technical. They can tend to be “thick”, as I call them, meaning you need to read a paragraph, stop and reread it again to really comprehend what the author is trying to say. But not so with The Philosophy of Sustainable Design. This book is extremely comprehensive in its approach and its way of thinking.

From the philosophy to the evolution through the principles of sustainable design, McLennan talks about biomimicry (how learning from natural systems and processes can benefit our lives) and the cycle of life (the seven generations principle) and how these all fit together into a whole. All are viewed in a context of respect. Respect for nature, respect for place, respect for people, respect for our grandkids.

“Sustainability deals with all aspects of society,” McLennan writes. If there is one principle in this book that comes through loud and clear, it’s that everything is connected. No one action or process can be done in a vacuum. It WILL affect something, somewhere. “We are not exempt in any way from this overarching interconnectedness principle. And yet, curiously and arrogantly, we act like we are.”

While McLennan talks in depth (and in an interesting style) about sustainable principles, he briefly touches on the concept of how we are disconnected from place. The idea that we have air-conditioned homes and offices that we commute to and from in air-conditioned cars, shows how we have lost our sense of place; we have increasingly relied on science and technology to solve all our problems. In relating this to global warming, he posits that our culture says, “what does it matter how hot it gets if you have an air conditioner?” For me, this is evident in our loss of the front porch and resulting demise of neighborhoods (see my “The Front Porch and the Garden” post). There are some simple principles we need to return to.

All told, this is a great read. It’s not thick, but it is substantial. The Philosophy of Sustainable Design is a “must read” book for anyone wanting to walk the talk.

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Transportation Options

Lately I’ve been exploring transportation options. I’ve largely been a car driver for most of my life and a recreational bicyclist. But almost a year ago, I took the Business Commute Challenge held annually here in Eugene and last month took the Bike Commute Challenge. The first challenge, I “discovered” our local bus system; the second one I did something I’ve done for a while: biked.

But this all really started last fall in my Sustainable Building Advisor class I took through the NEEI. One speaker, a transportation specialist from Portland, Oregon, said something that resonated with me and stuck. You know how it is when a phrase or idea hits you right between the eyes and you have one of those “aha” moments? That’s what happened to me.

He stressed the issue of having two or more transportation options wherever we live or work. And that’s not to say the automobile is a bad option. It seems many times when we talk about transportation, the car is the evil method and everything else is better. Not necessarily.

CARS
Cars have been around for quite a while. And I think they’ll be around for quite a while more. It is true that the automobile has created a lot of the problems we have today (suburban sprawl, air pollution, CO2, etc), but I think the biggest thing the car has caused is complacency. It’s easy for us, we don’t really have to think or plan and for most of the developed world, it’s within our budgets.

But what my class speaker pointed out and what really stuck with me was how some people say when we advocate alternative forms of transportation, we’re trying to “legislate lifestyle”. How many of you have heard that? If we try to encourage bus transportation, we are accused of legislating lifestyle. When we push for more bike lanes or paths, we are trying to legislate lifestyle. But what he said gets to the heart of this: when we only provide one viable method of transportation (cars), we are by default, legislating a lifestyle.

If the option of taking the bus isn’t viable, I’ll drive. If biking isn’t safe, I’ll drive. So with planning policies and transportation policies that ONLY favor cars, we are legislating lifestyle by removing options.

THE BUS
So back to the Business Commute Challenge. I made a conscious decision to try the bus. I had preconceived ideas that it was much slower, inconvenient and was populated primarily by that “shady element” of our society. I wrote about that earlier.

Our local bus system, Lane Transit District, works quite well, is almost as fast as driving (especially when you factor in finding a place to park), is populated by very normal people and often full (my ride home the other day was standing room only).

I have a park and ride near my house (not within walking distance, unfortunately) and I get dropped off just a short walk from my office. Total bus time: 36 minutes; driving is about 15 to 20 minutes. Bus cost: $3 for a one-day pass; driving: $5 (assuming a 50¢ cost per mile). Plus I can meet people on the bus or have time to read a book. (I don’t recommend reading a book while driving).

MY BIKE
I’ve been a bike rider for a while. We have a wonderful bike lane/path system in Eugene, Oregon, my home town (NOTE: Eugene has the highest bike commuting percentage of any city our size or larger at 11%. Woo Hoo!). I’ve commuted to work often over the last couple of years, logging about 1,700 miles to date.

I’ll have to confess, I’ve been to date a fair weather cyclist. But now I have rain gear and rode home in the rain the other day. And it wasn’t that bad. What I do like about riding in Eugene is I can ride from the same park and ride (I live on a steep hill, whole other story) to my office in 30 minutes. Bike cost: virtually nothing. Added benefit: exercise, fresh air and my mental attitude when I arrive at work.

Part of the mental attitude is probably due to the fact the last half of my 6.5 mile ride is along the beautiful Willamette River on part of our amazing bike path system in Eugene. Riding in the cool, morning air, sunshine (sometimes), greeting people along the path with a “good morning” — all contribute to better mental health and fosters community. And it’s good physical exercise (I drop about 10 pounds each summer season when I ride).

OPTIONS
Which brings me back to options. I have three viable options to get to and from work. Sometimes I drive my car (I had a meeting in Salem the other day, so bike or bus weren’t good options). Sometimes I ride the bus. Sometimes I ride my bike. But I’ve found that now I have “discovered” some options, I take advantage of those choices.

My commuting tally for September 2010: Car: 8 days, Bus: 3 days and Bike 9 days.

Sounds pretty balanced to me. It was a good month.

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Just Take a Deep Breath – Part 2

So now you may be wondering about how I went from an LTD bus to a coffee cup? Well, aside from wanting to put in a shameless plug for my favorite coffee shop (Full City, thanks Michael for a great cup of coffee), there are two things I wanted to build on from my last post. Those are Margins and Perspective.

MARGINS
We don’t tend to build margins into our lives. We leave ourselves no margin for getting stuck behind that slow driver, no margin for a task taking a little longer than we had planned. And in doing so, we pressurize our lives.

thesimpleHOUSE is about “living a simple, sustainable lifestyle.” Pressurizing our lives makes things more complex. We rush here and there, often running late, blood pressure rising. The American Heart Association estimates about one third of the US adult population has high blood pressure. They say the cause in 90-95% of the cases isn’t known. I would submit it might be the lack of margins in our lives.

Slow down. Give yourself a little more time. Walk, ride the bus or a bike. I’m amazed at how much calmer I am when I bike or bus to my destination. And there are fringe benefits to all this.

When I walk or bike, I get exercise, which in turn, increases my healthiness. The Mayo Clinic has tips on walking for exercise. (I’m actually a little disturbed that we need instruction in walking…). When I ride the bus, I make new friends, have the opportunity to read a book (remember books?) and save $$ on gas and maintenance on my car. ALL reduce my carbon footprint.

PERSPECTIVE
The coffee cup actually is an example a friend of mine, Van Clements, uses. And I have reused this example many times.

We are seeing one side of the cup in this picture. Someone on the other side of that cup will see something else. There is no logo on the other side of the cup. How do I know? They shared that observation with me; and I listened. You see, that’s where perspective comes in. We have to be willing to listen to another’s perspective and realize they’re still looking at the same cup. We’re just getting a different perspective of that cup. It’s still the same cup for both of us and neither one of our perspectives is right or wrong; just different.

Right now, in our country, we are tearing ourselves apart because we are’t willing to listen to one another’s perspective. And I mean listen. We ultimately don’t have to agree (although I believe if we listened more, we’d find out we agree on more than we disagree on), but we absolutely need to listen. For our society and our culture to survive, this is critical.

If we truly listen to each other, find our common goals and start there, we can repair our society and our culture. I would submit most all of us want clean air, clean water, good health care, and the like. And there may be very different perspectives of getting there. And you know, either or both paths might actually work.

But until we are willing to see the “other side of the cup”, we won’t get anywhere except into a life without margins, with high blood pressure, disintegrating as a culture. I don’t want that, and I don’t think any of you do, either. For a truly simple, sustainable lifestyle, lets step back, take a deep breath, commit to giving ourselves some margin and be willing to hear one another’s view of that coffee cup.

For only then will we see the entire cup.

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Just Take a Deep Breath – Part 1

You may be wondering why I have a picture of a Eugene, Oregon EMX bus in a post about taking a deep breath? “Is Bill going to talk about air pollution, greenhouse gases, or our car-dependence?” Actually, none of the above.

I’ve talked before about how so many things are interconnected. Today I want to talk about how we over-schedule our lives and simply try and squeeze too much stuff into a day. Not the stuff like consumer stuff: shirts, tvs, cars. Stuff like: I need to deposit that check on my way to my whatever appointment and do that before my whatever appointment because I’m coming from another appointment across town. But in doing so, I don’t REALLY have enough time (and frankly, it could wait until afterwards anyway), so it makes me five minutes late.

Now most of us probably wouldn’t typically think five minutes late is a big deal. And, while I personally think it is (it’s disrespectful, for starters), there’s a bigger picture here I want to talk about. And that is our busy-ness in our lives. Which brings me back to the bus.

I was privileged to attend the Oregon Planning Institute’s 2010 conference this week in Eugene at the University of Oregon. I didn’t want to drive my car (parking sucks at the UO, plus it’s $8 a day if you can find a spot), I’m still more of a fair weather bicyclist (that’s changing), so I rode the bus ($3 for an all-day pass, about the same as the gallon of gas I’d burn going to and from).

About a year ago, I “discovered” the bus during the Business Commute Challenge. I realized it broke down ALL my misconceptions (no one rides the bus except hooligans, it’s inconvenient, takes along time, etc). Our local bus system (Lane Transit District) actually works quite well, a lot of “normal” people ride (and both buses yesterday were almost full), and it’s quite convenient from a time perspective.

And that’s my point: perspective. When I ride to work (and I do at times), it takes me about 30 minutes. If I drive, depending on traffic, it takes me 15 to 20 minutes. And here’s where we all need to take a deep breath. I can say “the bus doesn’t work for me because it takes TWICE as long as driving.” OR, I can say “the bus only take about an extra 10 to 15 minutes; and I can read a book. Or meet someone.” I choose the latter.

And I choose that largely because of the realization I had riding to the planning conference. First session started at 8 am. The way my schedule and transfer worked, I could arrive at about 7:30 or about 7:50. If I arrived at 7:50, I could get off the bus, walk briskly to my session, sit down and probably be ready to go by 8:00. BUT I chose to arrive at 7:30, walk calmly to my session (observing a dog barking at a squirrel he had treed), get a cup of coffee, and make a new friend with another person who had arrived early, too.

This is also something that is WAY bigger than just riding the bus and reducing my carbon footprint. I think so much of our current culture wars and political wrangling come from us simply not building enough “margin” into our lives. I have a LOT of thoughts on that and it’s those areas of margin I want to talk about in my next post.

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Hannah’s House Freedom Walk

Hannah’s House, a local faith-based recovery program had their Freedom Walk yesterday to help raise money for their very effective program.

You can visit their website to learn more about the work they do, but I just wanted to post how I’m personally glad they also care about our environment. The walk ended with food and snacks and as you can see by the enclosed photo, they separated compost, trash and recyclables. Kudos to Hannah’s House for caring for people and for our world.

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Save Ink and $$

My wife, Brenda, was looking through a magazine and came across an article on back to school stuff. Now, just a reminder, our kids are adults and out on their own; that’s why we’re wanting to downsize our house.

But this article intrigued her. It talked about a software program called EcoFont that saves 25% on the ink needed to print text. Some time ago, I talked about going paperless as much as possible. But sometimes, you do have to print. And when you do, this may be a great option. EcoFont leaves small voids in the text that don’t get filled with ink. This, in turn, saves the amount of ink you use (greener, because you’re consuming less and that saves all along the way from manufacture to product to disposal) and it saves you money.

You can download a basic font for free at their site. I did and printed out various sizes of text, from 10pt to 64pt just to see how it looked. And it looked fine for your basic text sizes (10pt and 12pt). At 14pt, you can start to see the holes and, as you can see from my picture with this post, at 64pt, it becomes a decorative font.

But most of our printing is text, and most is usually around 12pt font and this is where it shines. Based in the Netherlands, the software doesn’t appear to yet be available in the US. And it currently is only for Windows based computers running MS Office. So being a Mac guy, I’m a little disappointed. But they SAY, they’re working on other versions.

So, EcoFont, I’m waiting with anticipation! I just printed a sustainability report for a client and it was 20 copies with 24 pages, so it would have been nice to be able to print in a more responsible manner.

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my aha moment

A couple of weeks ago, Mutual of Omaha came through Eugene. Someone from their organization had wandered across our website and contacted me about recording my “aha moment”. I thought, “why not?”

So, on a warm, sunny August day, in an Airstream trailer in downtown Eugene, I spent a few minutes chatting with Jessica Henry and recording a snippet of what started stirring in me in late 2008. It was that “stirring” that led to the beginning of thesimpleHOUSE and our whole concept. You can watch my aha moment at

my aha moment

Let me know what you think. I’m usually fairly calm in front of people, but found myself a bit nervous with lights, camera and microphone. It was still a great experience, though and I’m glad I did it. It’s always good to tell your story and fremind yourself just what it was that brought you to the point you’re at.

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Gardening Eden

Gardening Eden, by Michael Abbaté is a book about creation care that, as the tag line says “will change your faith, your life, and our world.”

I was first introduced to Mike’s book by my son-in-law, who had climbed Mt. Hood with him. He told me a friend of his had this book coming out that he thought I’d enjoy. As one who has had a long-standing desire to care for creation, and one who has also had a long-standing faith, I was intrigued. I have read several books that combine the viewpoints of faith and environmentalism. Some have been kind of thick and academic, some spiritually “glossy” with little how-to substance.

What I appreciate about Mike’s book is it is written in a very conversational way. I’ve tried to keep this website written that way, because you are much more likely to actually read it if it’s not dry. I want you to read my posts and not doze off half way through. And Mike’s book does just that. It is an easy read, but not without substance. He arranges the book into two sections: “The Garden State”, where he sets the ground-work of where we’re at and kind of how we got here and “Becoming a Gardener”, where he gives some clear, distinct ways we can better care for this creation we have been entrusted with.

My favorite part of The Garden State can be summed up in two quotes from the book. “Gardening Eden was not Adam’s punishment; it was his purpose.” And, “God gives us this universe freely, wanting us to discover the joys of responsible stewardship, of moderation, and the freedom that comes with self-discipline and caring for a flock, of not squandering resources. And by doing these things, God tells us, we’ll better understand and appreciate Him.”

In Becoming a Gardener, Mike gives us 50 Gardening Tips on how we can better tend this garden we’ve been entrusted with. Food, Energy, Transportation, Home and General categories cover the 50 tips, many of which are very easy for us to do, we just often haven’t yet developed that habit. Mike gets us to stop and think a moment and in that, maybe shift our habits just a bit, and in doing so, we become a better gardener.

Through all this, and after I had read the book, I have had the opportunity to meet Mike and his wife Vicki. And I can tell you, they live these principles out. They truly practice what they preach. That’s refreshing. Thanks, Mike, for a good read.

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Toothbrushes and Running Water

I was talking to a friend a while back who was visiting his grandchildren in England. They asked him why he left the water running while he was brushing his teeth. This gave him pause to think about that. And this caused me to think about the times we leave the water running when we don’t really need to.
So this post tags onto my previous post about saving water.

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The Lawrence Street House – Sidewalks and Urbanite

Our lot is 60 x 150 feet. The 150 foot side has a fairly new sidewalk, but the 60 foot side on Lawrence Street, I think may have the original sidewalk from 1940. It’s worn, broken, heaving and needs to be replaced.


Now, we could chop it up, haul it to the dump and contribute to the roughly one third of the local waste stream that comes from construction debris or (and here’s where it gets good), we could reuse those chunks as part of our landscape plan.


It’s called “urbanite” and a good description can be found at http://tinyurl.com/yk4rmzr. So we’re working with our landscape architect on this and as Rex, from DLA’s office said “I built a patio at a previous house that way and really liked it. Saves disposal and hauling energy of the old plus new material extraction and hauling energy!”