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5 Easy Ways to Go Green this Spring

This spring, forget DIY. It's time to GIY!! Green building guru John D. Wagner shares with us 5 easy ways to Green It Yourself when faced with this season's remodeling projects. Here's the lineup:

1.       Choose renewable natural resources 

• When possible, choose renewable natural resources for your home improvement projects. Whether you are building a deck, or a backyard gazebo, select materials that to help reduce your carbon footprint.

2.       Take on a GIY – or “Green-it-yourself” Project

• Consider adding an outdoor living area like a pergola, gazebo or deck to help bring the outdoors inside and increase the “square footage” of your home.
• Use sustainable materials to create an eco-friendly garden and grow your own food.  Raised bed gardens are another way people can be eco-friendly by using sustainable materials to create a space in which to grow their own food.
• Choose natural materials for sidings, interior trims and wraps and as beams.   Truly sustainable materials like Western Red Cedar look great and add warmth to interiors when used for ceilings, posts and beams and trim.

3.       Create energy efficiencies

• Adding or updating something as simple as weather stripping is an easy and effective way to prevent waste and ensure you aren’t losing heating or cooling to the outdoors.

4. Find out the life-cycle of the products you are using to identify authentic, green products

• A lifecycle analysis considers the impact on the environment from all phases of a product’s life and assesses impacts from the time materials are harvested through manufacture, transportation, storage, use, recovery, reuse and disposal to identify the most sustainable products.
• Truly green products minimize environmental impacts from the very beginning to the end of product life.

5. When building or remodeling look for products that are made from natural materials instead of man-made products

• Western Red Cedar is the most green and sustainable building material when it comes to building products and provides great value because it combines durability, natural beauty and sustainability.
• Durability and sustainability will help improve the quality of your home as well as decrease your environmental footprint.

 Mr. Wagner's most recent book, Green Remodeling, is available at all Lowes and Home Depot stores.

Tagged : remodeling, green, ecological, GIY