Home and Design '07

Take care of Mother Earth or she'll summon El Niño to flood your basement.

by Brian Hickey

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Published: Feb 21, 2007

Deep down inside, you're a good person. (Most of you, anyway.) And as part of that deep-down goodness, you realized long ago that if you don't take care of Mother Earth, then Mother Earth won't take care of you. In fact, she'll be so pissed that she'll summon El Niño to flood your basement, warm your globe to the point that homeless polar bears roam the Parkway and unapologetically charge you $3.17 for a gallon of gas.

This is why you want to take care of the environment.

And this is why Version 2.007 of City Paper's Home and Design issue is all about green building.

No, it's not like walls of lettuce (that'd get pretty gnarly come the end of July). More like how local home buyers, sellers, builders and providers not only accept the fact that they need to incorporate environmentally friendly steps into the millennia-old process of creating shelters, but are actually doing so. Though the issue isn't exactly new, most folks haven't gotten the full tutorial on sustainability.

That's where we come in.

On the following pages, you'll learn how to find a green builder, along with a litany of ways you can make your domestic life easier on globie. Also, our writers embedded themselves with people who 1) are wrestling with the blueprints of the green home they'll soon start building in Fairmount, 2) have started retrofitting North Philly row homes to be more environmentally conscious, and 3) are already living in the state's lone pair of certified-green properties. There's also a piece about what local businesses can do to help.

That there's so much green activity in town is a good thing, especially since environmental themes are being thrust into the mayoral-issue mix. But we all can, and should, do more. Even if the only reason you're interested is to boost your property value, there's room for you on the bandwagon.

 

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