| cheapbag214s |
 Posted: Tue 8:52, 06 Aug 2013 Post subject: A re-used urban building |
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| get excited about a new whiz-bang building with some great technological innovation. Those kinds of projects get profiled in industry magazines and at conferences. But that's only part of the picture. Where is it built? New urban buildings have a smaller carbon and watershed footprint than new rural buildings. What was torn down? A re-used urban building (or part of one) almost always has a smaller carbon footprint than a high-efficiency new building. When you take into account embodied energy, it can take 40-70 years for the new efficient building to catch up with a moderately retrofitted old one.What's an emerging trend that you think will shake up the sustainability world?Quantifying the value of ecosystem services.Many regions are realizing that rural and working lands are important to their watershed management. For instance, absorption of peak rainfall in upstream areas is critical to the health of farms and habitat downstream, to the adequacy of existing flood infrastructure, and to our water supply and |
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