Near where I live, there are many towns where people buy the old homes for the land, knock down the old house, and put up something new, and usually hideously large, in its place. Some of the houses, 1960’s era ranches for example, are not difficult to see go. But when people buy older houses and demolish them, my heart breaks a little.

But in all of the cases of tear downs, there is an enormous amount of waste that seems hard to justify.

Nancy Keates from the Wall Street Journal has written about the more eco-friendly option of unbuilding, something which they are doing to their Portland, OR home.

The Building Materials Association estimates that in the U.S., 315,000 to 360,000 tons per year of reused building materials are sold by reuse centers — not even 0.2% of the total waste from building activities each year.

Keates writes about how her house was painstakingly disassembled. Things that were going to be reused in the rebuild were separated out. Once that is done, “the Rebuilding Center will send in their deconstruction crew to take everything else apart. They will start with the hardwood floors, then take apart the windows, doors and even pipes — down to the house’s foundation.”

Doing this does end up costing more money than a traditional tear-down. The unbuilding at the Keates home took an additional 2 weeks and approximately $4000. Not adding to landfills, however, priceless.

For the past 20 years granite has enjoyed a relatively uncontested reign as the high end counter top surface of choice. Recently, however, new innovative products are popping up and causing people to rethink their choices.

When a material is found in apartment complexes and tract homes, “it’s been done to death,” said Ellen Hanson, an interior designer in New York.

The trend now, designers and suppliers said, is toward warmer and softer materials used centuries ago, like wood, copper and soapstone. For a more modern look, glass, composites and recycled materials are being used.

I wrote a few months back about recycled paper countertops, which I love.

(photo courtesy of NY Times)

Ice Stone is a newer product that is made from 100% recycled glass in a cement matrix, diverting hundreds of tons of glass from landfills each year. They operate out of a renovated, day-lit factory in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, creating U.S. jobs for workers in an eco-friendly, safe and respectful environment.

Sales of quartz composite surfaces, also known as engineered stone, by manufacturers like CaesarStone and Silestone, have steadily increased over the past five years. I am not overly fond of either of these products. To me it just doesn’t have the same cache as granite, soapstone, or wood.

I love soapstone. Particularly they way the it feels when you touch it. It also reminds me of middle school science lab which had soapstone counters. So perhaps part of the appeal for me is a wistful nostalgia for the good old days of the asymmetrical hairstyle and Frankie Goes to Hollywood. My husband does not share this love. So the soapstone is off the table, or cabinet as the case might be, for us.

The trifecta of the green movement is Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. But how does this apply to the home renovation?

One company, Green Demolitions, is navigating a previously untapped market.

Green Demolitions works with professional, insured contractors who carefully remove and transport donated kitchen cabinets, countertops, appliances, fixtures and building materials.

Green Demolitions establishes a tax deduction for the donor, by reselling the items, and providing the donor with the resale amount.

Buyers save 50- 75% off their ‘new’ kitchens. Most importantly perfectly good cabinets, appliances, counter tops, sinks, etc do not end up cluttering a landfill.

All the proceeds that Green Demolitions makes go to Recovery Unlimited, a 501c3 non-profit organization dedicated to All Addicts Anonymous (AAA) for all addicts and all addictions including alcohol, drugs, tobacco, food, depression, anxiety and anger. Owner Steve Feldman set up this non profit charitable organization to help a program that had helped him in his youth.

Recycling Luxury for Recovery… sounds like a deal in which everybody wins.

The Harmony Wood Collection is a real wood tile from sustainable forests that come mesh-mounted for ease of installation.

Modern and warm these tile can be used in a variety of applications where they will not come into contact with water.

Harmony Wood Tile comes in a wide range of colors, wood types, and textures. The photo above is from the Wood Tile Cane line. It is meant to mimic a caned seat and is priced at $27 per square foot.

Recently it was featured as aDwell product of the day. And Apartment Therapy also mentioned this line of tile sold by Anchor Bay Tile as a great find for warming up a modern home.

I think that this particular tile is my favorite from this line. Called Falling Water, it is an accent border tile. I think it would be stunning as a backsplash in a kitchen. It can be purchased at the Anchor Bay Tile website for $18.50 a square foot. Teak Vein Cut is just one of 7 styles offered in this line.

The house we own now came with a garbage disposal. Before that I had never given them a second thought. But now that I have one, I love it. I love not having to stick my hand into the mucky sink to remove food scraps. My spoons don’t love it quite as much, poor battered things.

One time we had our plumber at the house doing work and he had said that most of his emergency calls were because of clogged garbage disposals. He also said that potato peels were funding his son’s college education. With the amount of money he was charging per hour, I doubt he was joking either.

Until recently I did not realize that disposals were not considered environmentally friendly.

According to Grinning Planet, using a garbage disposal taxes the sewage treatment facilities.

This past month the town of Raleigh, NC banned the installation of new garbage disposals. Citing sewer overflows caused by people pouring grease down their drains. I am not really sure what will prevent the people from pouring grease down their drains without a disposal.

I wonder if people think of disposals as trash compactor instead of just using it for the small random scraps that are left in the sink. You aren’t supposed to dump containers of food into the sink and let the disposal have at it.

A much better way to get rid of food products is with a compost pile. We have one, though I willingly admit that in the frigid winter weather I do not use it. But I don’t shove the food scraps down the disposal either.

Popular counter top material are being used in new and exciting ways. Corian and Quartz have long been favorites of homeowners and designers for kitchen countertops due to the durability and endless color range. But recently designers have been looking at these surfaces in a whole new way.

According to Remodeling Magazine:

Departing from their usual horizontal kitchen and bath applications, solid-surfacing materials are creeping up adjacent walls to serve as backsplashes, shower walls, fireplace surrounds, and more.

These materials are infinitely flexible. Corian can be thermo-formed into custom shapes, bent around difficult angles, and can be requested in special sizes and thicknesses that make it weigh less than traditional countertop surfaces while still maintaining its durability.

Cambria, a Quartz product, comes in thicknesses down to 1cm, meaning it can be used for things like outlet covers. And it is the only quartz product to be manufactured solely in the United States. Cambria is also a certifiedGreen product. The company is committed to environmental responsibility in its product manufacturing and business practices.

If you are thinking of a remodel in the kitchen, bathroom, pool side, or a wet bar, or even perhaps a new fireplace surround, you might one to consider Corian or Quartz for your project. The applications to which it can be applied are endless, and the flexibility means your project can stand out as unique. Who doesn’t want to inject some personality into their home in this era of mass produced houses?

Doesn’t this home look like somewhere one of the Hobbits would live? Or some Woodland fairies?

This is home to a couple and their two young children. It is a completely green home. Solar panels provide electricity. A composting toilet. No running water. Straw bale insulation. Heated solely by a wood burning stove. The refrigerator is cooled using the naturally cooled air underneath the foundation.

The home is dug into a hill, with sod used for the roof.

Would you like to live there? Well, they are building an eco-village in Southern Wales.

And they are not alone. In the UK there are groups of people who are living in low impact developments. Cae Mabon is a community with breathtakingly beautiful roundhouses.

There is a huge green living movement afoot. And while this type of home and lifestyle is at the extreme, I think that most of us are looking for ways to reduce our energy consumption. For many of us it may be based solely on a selfish desire to lower our energy bills, but for these select few it is born out of a desire to have a zero impact on the earth.

All of us can probably learn from it.

Do you find the idea of making your home energy efficient overwhelming?

The Money Pit has just the answer for you. The first ever video podcast by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) ENERGY STAR program which shows the simplicity of home energy efficiency.

“This podcast is an invaluable resource for anyone looking to make green improvements to their home while saving money,” said Kraeutler. “Homeowners can use it as a step-by-step guide to improving their home’s energy efficiency. The tips we discuss are incredibly simple yet make a great impact on energy bills and the environment.”

Taking you on a room by room tour of a typical American house and offering tips for improving energy efficiency.

The New York Times recently ran an article about people who are capitalizing on their windy locations and installing turbines to harness the wind and provide energy for their homes.

Sales of wind turbines have been growing steadily since 1990, when the American Wind Energy Association, a nonprofit advocacy group in Washington, D.C., began tracking them. Last year, about 7,000 small wind turbines — defined as those that have a capacity of up to 100 kilowatts, roughly enough to power a large school — were purchased in the United States, according to the group, which said it expects sales to reach about 10,000 this year.

If I lived somewhere windy enough I would definitely consider this. While the cost sounds high, when you figure in your utility costs and heating costs, which for those of us in northern states are significant, a turbine would pay for itself in within a decade.

Residential turbines… are typically 33 to 100 feet tall… cost between $12,000 and $55,000, but in recent years, 19 states, including California, New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts and Ohio, have begun offering incentives and rebates that can cut purchase prices by up to 50 percent… the United States House of Representatives passed a bill that would help states provide grants and low-interest loans for residential turbines (as well as solar panels and geothermal heat pumps), and that would offer a 30 percent federal tax credit on turbine purchases, up to $4,000; the Senate is now considering a similar measure.

One man featured in the article has a turbine which not only powers his entire house, but makes surplus power which he “sells” to the power company. How awesome would that be? Not only would you be reducing your own carbon footprint, but helping to make the power company a little more green.

However, there is a booming market right now beyond the homeowner. In places like Texas where there is lots of empty land and lots of wind, enormous turbines are beginning to dot the landscape.

Photo: Brian Harkin for The New York Times

The wind turbines that recently went up on Louis Brooks’s ranch are twice as high as the Statue of Liberty, with blades that span as wide as the wingspan of a jumbo jet. More important from his point of view, he is paid $500 a month apiece to permit 78 of them on his land, with 76 more on the way.

Texas, once the oil capital of North America, is rapidly turning into the capital of wind power. After breakneck growth the last three years, Texas has reached the point that more than 3 percent of its electricity, enough to supply power to one million homes, comes from wind turbines.

Utilizing wind energy has grown 45% over the past year. While still a small percentage, if it continues to grow as expected it will eventually make a significant contribution to the electrical contribution of the entire nation. To quote the television commercial, moving towards a more energy efficient and environmentally friendly future, priceless.

What kind of light bulbs are you using in your house?

The last time I was at the store buying light bulbs I was confused by the vast array of choices. There was literally an entire aisle of light bulbs. I had no idea what I wanted or what the differences are between the various types. I want a nice warm glowing light. And while I am all for saving energy, the environment, and puppies, I hate the greenish cast of some florescent lights I have tried. The odd shape puts me off for some applications. The buzzing noise is somewhat annoying, though I have children who adequately cover that up for me.

It seems that I am not alone.

In a recent article in the NY Times, a panel of staff members from the Times tested and rated 21 different light bulbs that were provided by various manufacturers. Almost all of them were rated as unacceptable.

There were a few that got good marks from the reviewers:

The n:vision TCP Home Soft White, for example, was deemed “a warm pleasant light.” The TCP Spring Light/Soft White was “almost warmer than incandescent,” one person said. And the MaxLite SpiraMax was generally liked, considered “pretty good” and “clean.”

One thing that I did not know until reading this article is that compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) contain mercury and can not just be thrown away with your regular garbage. They need to be properly recycled. I wonder if I am alone in my appalling lack of knowledge in this area or if this is something that needs to be addressed better. The Energy Star website answers the questions of disposal and what to do if you should break a CFLs.

Most of the light bulbs in my house have long ago been replaced by fluorescent bulbs. The few lone remaining incandescent bulbs are in places where the bulb shows. But now that there are new bulbs that have the tell tale fluorescent coil hidden in an outer case, I really have no excuse.

And it seems we had all better just get used to it.

After more than eight months of intense deliberations between Congress and bulb manufacturers, environmental groups and other parties, a law that requires light bulbs to become more energy efficient became part of the energy bill that President Bush signed into law on Dec. 19.

Over a three-year period beginning in 2012, all new bulbs will have to use 25 percent to 30 percent less energy for the same light output as today’s typical incandescent bulbs.

Why wait until 2012? Go buy your CFLs now and break yourself in slowly.