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Sustainable Living Audio Book – Learn From Looking – Chapter 4: Part 4
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The author of Learn from Looking, Charlie Szoradi, has given us authorization to share the written content and drawings from his book with our readers. This is one of many segments that focuses on the overall theme of sustainable design and overall sustainable living.
Book Topic: Sustainable Living
Learn from Looking is about critical thinking and reaching a sustainable future more cost-effectively than ever imagined. The book's subtitle "How Observation Inspires Innovation" speaks to the core aspect of the content, given that the author, Charlie Szoradi, is an architect and inventor who has traveled extensively around the world over multiple decades and built businesses that range from energy saving lighting to indoor agriculture systems. Mr. Szoradi shares insights on "green" clean-technology that are increasingly key for sustainability, profitable businesses, healthy living, and raising intellectually curious children in a pre and post Covid-19 world. We give Learn from Looking five out of five green stars! Note that the audio book comes with the E-book for only $15 together. Click here to Order the Audio Book on Sustainable Living
Sample content from Learn from Looking:
Sustainable ROI: Seven Insights and Actions
The percentage increase in global population since the first Earth Day in 1970 is surprising. A few friends and colleagues thought that the increase was between 10 and 25 percent. The perception is far from the reality. Global population has doubled with an increase of almost 100 percent in just forty-five years. American home and business owners can take steps with cost-effective return on investments (ROI) for lifestyle improvements and profit benefits while also reducing our impact on the environment. We can individually lead by example to build American energy independence, energy security, and sustainability while the governments of the world try to do their part. Here are seven points that I have identified through research to add perspective and inspire action.
Insight #1: Population
Global population has increased from 3.6 billion to over seven billion in 2015. This is an unprecedented lift, given that up until the midnineteenth century, the global population was under one billion.
Action #1: Imagine what would happen to your house if visiting family members stayed indefinitely after Thanksgiving or an Independence Day party. Ask your spouse or a friend what little things might get damaged or depleted by doubling the residents of your home. Damage may start with spilled glasses of wine or running out of paper towels and then extend to jammed garbage disposals or running out of hot water for morning showers. You may accept that we would statistically break and deplete some things within our homes. The same realization applies to our ecosystem by the sheer stress from an increasingly crowded “house party.” Stop debating the climate science and start focusing on the small actions that you can take to yield a cost-effective and positive impact.
Insight #2: Water
Water is integral to life, and fresh water is only 2.5 percent of water on earth. Within the 2.5 percent, 68.7 percent of it is in glaciers, 30.1 percent is groundwater, and only 1.2 percent is actually on the surface.With population increases projected to nine billion by 2050, we may run out of drinking and irrigation water before we run out of fossil fuels. The massive High Plains Ogallala aquifer covers 174,000 square miles across eight states, holds over 978 trillion gallons of water, and supplies 30 percent of US irrigation. We pump the Jurassic reservoirs faster than fresh water can replenish it. Over the past century, the average hundred-foot reservoir depth has dropped by ten to fifty feet. A cheeseburger requires between 660 and 1,300 gallons of water to produce depending on its size versus vegetables that yield six times more protein for the same water. Beans, lentils, peas, and so on, win with only five gallons of water per gram of protein, followed by chicken at nine gallons/gram, while beef requires about thirty gallons/gram of protein. We eat about 171 pounds of meat a year, which is three times the international average and twice the recommendation for good health.
Action #2: Make or order a salad for lunch, go for “meatless Mondays,” buy a high-performance showerhead, and for business owners, use faucet timers in bathrooms, dual-flush toilets, waterless urinals, draught-tolerant landscaping versus sprinkler-intensive planting. Whenever possible, buy locally grown food or grow vegetables in your backyard or on the roof of your office. When we transport food across the country in massive truckloads every day, the water within the food goes with it. This disrupts the water cycle. In regards to water quality in local communities, we need to conserve forests near any body of water. These areas are natural biofilters called riparian zones, and they help reduce polluted surface runoff. We often take small streams and wetlands for granted, but they are key spokes on the total wheel of fresh water. Imagine the potential water pollution from the construction of an office park or the daily runoff from a large parking lot at a shopping mall.
Insight #3: Paper
America uses 25 percent of the world’s paper with only 5 percent of the population. The digital revolution has not reduced paper at expected levels, and 95 percent of business documents are still stored on paper. New York’s largest export out of the Port of NY is waste paper. We use over 700 pounds of paper each year per capita, and we currently only recycle about 45 percent. The average American attorney uses one ton (2,000 pounds) of paper every year. Recycling one ton of paper saves 682.5 gallons of oil, 7,000 gallons of water, and 3.3 cubic yards of landfill space.
Action #3: Buy a microfiber cloth to use at home for big spills versus paper towels, and at work, set up paper recycling programs, print less, and print on double sides. If offices increased two-sided photocopying from 20 percent to 60 percent, we could save the equivalent of about fifteen million trees.
Insight #4: Transportation
America uses 25 percent of the world’s energy with only 5 percent of the population. Transportation is 28 percent, and personal vehicles account for 60 percent. America is home to one-third of the world’s automobiles. Transportation is a hidden energy cost of products and single-passenger commuting is a key place to explore cost-effective savings.
Action #4: Buy local and American-made products to reduce the transportation energy and also create more American jobs. Consider public transportation or ride sharing for one or more weekdays. The ROI is excellent, given fuel savings and reduced wear. Business owners can also offer incentives for staff and use sustainability to attract employees and customers.
Insight #5: Energy
Our homes and buildings use over 40 percent of US energy. Cost-effective energy savings are right overhead.
Action #5: Add extra insulation in your attic to save energy at a terrific ROI. Look up and change the lights at home and at work. Energy-efficient lighting, such as LED technology, is the low-hanging fruit of energy cost reduction with ROI over 33 percent in many cases and multiple-decade longevity. Energy reduction is typically more cost-effective than renewable energy production. Saving energy and money is easier than making more power from alternative sources. Solar panels may have a ten-year payback, while lighting, insulation, or upgrades to heating and air-conditioning may have a payback in less than half the time. Plus, new zero-dollar upfront cost financing yields cash-flow positive results from the start. Technology and financing have improved so dramatically since the first Earth Day that home and business owners are empowered with “energy intelligence” at entirely new levels.
Insight #6: Agriculture
With population increases, farm-ready arable soil is depleting around the globe at such high rates that experts believe by 2050 we will need to produce 70 percent more food than 2015 levels. Natural methods of agriculture actually have the best crop yields and guarantee healthy soil for years to come. Healthy soil takes about a thousand years to develop. When farmers use methods such as herbicides, synthetic fertilizers, and tilling, and they grow only one crop each year, they eventually destroy arable soil.
Action #6: For soil preservation, personal solutions include food composting, backyard and rooftop gardens, and buying locally grown food. At the corporate business level, developers and real estate investors may not realize that building on arable land has long-term negative impacts on our food supply. Individuals that invest in real estate investment trust (REIT) companies, or mutual funds focused on real estate, most likely do not think that their investment may negatively impact soil for about a thousand years. Farmers can use more natural methods such as crop rotations, natural pest eliminators (e.g., birds and bats), managed grazing, multicrop systems, as well as new innovations in urban farming, hydroponics, and aquaponics. The “hydro” and “aqua” systems have the added benefit of water conservation and fish protein production. The final chapter of this book highlights an innovation in aquaponics that also ties in urban farming through LED light technology.
Insight #7: Suburbanization
Suburban sprawl, which has resulted from global population increases, has a negative impact on water, transportation, energy, and fertile soil. Major loss to biodiversity (animal and plant life) and arable farmland will negatively affect the environment and human health while also stressing infrastructures.
Action #7: Instead of building on undeveloped land, we can rethink the city and more proactively refurbish abandoned buildings and houses.
