Governments are expanding financial incentives to reduce emissions. The US government is offering some homeowners an energy-efficient mortgage option, which can help you finance efficiency improvements, save on utility bills and even increase how much home you can afford. An EEM expands the amount you can borrow when you invest in efficiency upgrades. If you qualify, … Read more
Here is an article by Morgan Caraway recently published in www.motherearthnews.comMy wife, Mary Jane, and I built our first earthbag home in 2009, after being inspired by the Mother Earth News book Earthbag Building. Our circular house was 20 feet in diameter and incorporated a bottle wall and reclaimed French doors. The build took us … Read more
Weltevree, a Dutch company, is manufacturing and selling a prefabricated root cellar that can be dug into the ground and used almost immediately. They call it a GroundFridge, and it sells for between about $12,000 and $18,000 USD. I like the idea but not the price. They say that it holds about as much as … Read more
John Root is a longtime solar pioneer and this is his journey to powering an off-grid hot tub at 6,000 feet in the Sierra Nevada mountains: “I’ve been living on- and off-grid for 40 years. I started out building hot-air solar collectors and designing root cellars with sunspaces on top. For those designs, I fed … Read more
Located in the heart of Vancouver, BC, the 55-acre VanDusen Botanical Garden is renowned for its beauty and for leadership in plant conservation, biodiversity and sustainability. Opened in 1975, their mission is to inspire understanding of the vital importance of plants to all life. The design team of Busby Perkins + Will and landscape architect … Read more
A community of roughly 80 homes in the high desert of northern New Mexico has hosted an ongoing experiment in sustainable construction for half a century. Michael Reynolds, founder and architect of “Earthships,” invokes the idea of Noah loading his boat with everything needed to survive. The community itself they call the “Greater World”. Tourists … Read more