Month: September 2021

          Reduce, Reuse, Recycle is the mantra of those who aim to change our practices to a more sustainable way of life. We generally consider these practices as applied to our coffee cups, cardboard boxes and other small household items. But in light of all the new green technologies, how does this apply to our homes? Is it better to build a new home with solar panels, geothermal power and green roof rather than reuse an older home in need of renovations? Two factors led me to consider these questions more deeply, with the first being my participation in Furman’s Greenbelt Community, which has me not only focused on how I can individually alter my impact on our environment, but also how I might make a larger difference as an advocate for changes in the larger community. The second factor is my family’s recent move to Spartanburg and our decision to make a difference in our new community through real estate investing, with an ultimate goal of providing housing for families facing homelessness. As we began to meet other people involved in real estate, it came to our attention that Spartanburg city prefers to demolish older homes and sell the lots rather than sell the home to someone willing to restore it. This seemed wasteful to me, but I had no idea which practice was more sustainable — restoration of the old or building newer, greener homes.

 

          Before addressing the environmental impact, one factor that must be considered in this discussion is the loss of history. Take this beautiful historic home in Spartanburg, Bon Haven, built in 1884 with many architectural details not seen in today’s modern homes (Image 1). Although a couple offered to purchase the home and restore it to its historic beauty, the city opted to allow its demolition. This home and its history were lost to us in September of 2017. But maybe the impact on the environment of a home that was built a century before green technologies began to be widely applied in construction has too much of a negative impact to warrant its saving?

 

 Image 1: Bon Haven built in 1884 and approved for demolition February of 2017

 

          This is the question that I sought to answer as I began to read about new construction vs restoration. Does the practice of reusing for environmental sustainability not apply to homes? As I suspected, studies have been done to gather data to answer this question. Since I have seen much celebration of new “green” homes built with technologies aimed at sustainability, I assumed building a green home would be better for the environment than restoring an older home. While some appreciation is shown for beautiful restorations, I have never seen the environmental community celebrate these restorations like seen with net zero new builds. But the data tells us we should actually advocate for and celebrate each time an old home or building is restored to be reused. A 2012 study of this issue showed that the benefits of reusing older homes and buildings outweighed the environmental benefits of newer more energy efficient construction. The impact of the newer technologies takes 10-80 years to overcome the negative impact of the new construction. The study determined that if the city of Portland restored rather than demolished buildings over the next 10 years, it would lead to a reduction of 231,000 metric tons of carbon. 

 

          Living in the Greenbelt community, I have the opportunity to experience green technologies that allow me to leave a smaller footprint on my environment. The use of thermal hot water and solar lighting allows me to enjoy a hot shower and study late into the night without the worries of how this energy use will negatively impact the future of our environment. Thankfully, the Furman community recognized the importance of applying the principle of reusing as they prepared this more sustainable living accommodation. Our housing was built in the 1970s (Image 2) and retrofitted with the new green technologies! Sustainability advocates need to look at all aspects of environmental impact-sometimes new and trendy is not the most sustainable practice. We may be able to preserve history while also using the amazing technologies developed to lessen our footprint. 

 

Image 2: The cabin and the cottage in Furman’s Greenbelt Community

 

Sources:

https://www.countryliving.com/life/news/a42776/south-carolina-bon-haven-mansion-to-be-demolished/

https://www.buildings.com/articles/31503/new-construction-vs-renovation-which-greener

https://www.wspa.com/news/bon-haven-demolished-in-spartanburg/

 

Numerous resources exist on sustainable living, methods and tips on reducing waste and shrinking your footprint on the earth, but not enough focus is put on incentivizing people to actually engage in these methods.  This disconnect poses the greatest issue to the adoption of clean energy, eco-friendly technology, and protection of the environment.  To create a large lifestyle change in the general public is a tall task, thus the onus must be placed on every individual as a moral duty even when no one else is watching.  The ethics of sustainable living should no longer be seen as a personal choice certain individuals make, but a moral obligation for all.  In the same way we have the duty to not pollute common discourse with slurs or epithets, we maintain a similar responsibility to not pollute or waste the physical world around us.  As with all duty ethics, where to draw the line of a personal duty is the fundamental issue; en masse burning of fossil fuels clearly is destructive and thus not morally permissible when other energy alternatives exist, but should the same energy be applied to a person to adopt low-flow faucets and take shorter showers?  This issue requires at least an article unto itself, but the purpose of this piece is simply to convince the reader of their duty to the environment.  

In David Wallace-Well’s piece “The Uninhabitable Earth,” he dissects the numerous ways climate change will, to be frank, screw us all in tremendous fashion.  He directly engages eight consequences from climate change which, as the name of the piece suggests, make the earth uninhabitable.  In addition to well-known effects such as sea-level rise, he points out the ocean will also become more poisonous as acid levels grow, “fry fish populations directly,” killing sea life which cannot adapt and causing illness and death for the coastal populations, which constitutes nearly half of the global population.  Peter Singer’s One World Now introduces the question of which nations hold the greatest responsibility to amend the atmosphere.  This national perspective, and similar ones about which companies are at fault, distracts from the greater issue that it is up to every individual to enact change in their life.  Countries (democracies at the very least) and companies follow the actions of their civilians and customers.  Clearly, there is little an average American citizen can do about the burning of fossil fuels in China, and thus the discussion of how to ensure the actions of another country do not doom us all is perfectly worthwhile.  What we have more direct control over however is what occurs in our lives.  Product choice and how a person lives their life is decided entirely or nearly entirely by that person.  

From a utilitarian perspective, living an unsustainable lifestyle deprives future generations, if not yourself, of future happiness for short-term enjoyment.  John Stuart Mill recognized this when formalizing his perspective on utilitarianism–the existence of higher and lower pleasures recognizes some forms of pleasure are more valuable than others.  In the case of sustainability, this would be akin to short term pleasure one gets when finding a cheap purchase made through immoral and unsustainable means, juxtaposed with the long term satisfaction of a more durable product, and one that leaves the user feeling as though they have contributed to very continuation of human society.  Blue Zones are areas of the world with a much higher life expectancy than average, and of the common traits among the five recognized Blue Zones is some life purpose.  This suggests humans long to feel as if they are part of something greater, something which gives them motivation beyond themselves to get out of bed every morning, and what greater sense of purpose exists than the continuation of mankind?

For the first few hundred thousand years of human existence, the primary struggle was scarcity of resources, and in under a hundred years that has flipped to now become the struggle of surplus.  Little thought was given to the ethics surrounding waste and environmental degradation as those were limited in scale by technology, and thus it has not been ingrained in every person with the same vigor as other ethical issues, or even as a moral issue at all.  We are quickly realizing the negative ramifications of this lackadaisical attitude and without a sharp mental adjustment of most of the world, this will likely be the only time we are able to make such a mistake.

 

 

Wallace-Wells, David. “The Uninhabitable Earth.” (July 10, 2017). New York Magazine. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-too-hot-for-humans.html 

 

Singer, Peter. One World: The Ethics of Globalization. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002. Print.

 

Mill, John Stuart. Utilitarianism. London, Parker, son, and Bourn, 1863. Web.. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <lccn.loc.gov/11015966>.