New Sustainable Building Products

New, Green Products Can Save Energy and Increase Comfort

With the backsliding of the current federal government, state governments, local jurisdictions, and private businesses need to do more to forge ahead in addressing climate change. The building industry is a big contributor to greenhouse-gas emissions (GHG). It is also conservative and slow to change. Many construction innovations and new building products, however, are in either the research, prototype, or early adoption phase. A few examples are:

• Pre-cast “self-cooling” concrete walls incorporate scalloped or deeply fluted exterior surfaces. A car radiator is similar — lots of surface area for wind to pass over and remove heat. A building project in Houston combined these grooved walls with reflective white paint, which also repels dirt. Vertical fin walls were added to the exterior as well as shade-giving plants on the sunny side. Monitoring showed interior temperatures 18 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than in nearby buildings with standard flat walls. The result: less cleaning, lower maintenance, reduced energy bills, and greater comfort for residents, with only a slight increase in construction costs. Society gets fewer GHG emissions and electrical grid pressure relief.

• A transparent window coating uses applied quantum physics to outperform conventional heat-reducing coatings. Multiple refractive indices inside stacked ultrathin layers collectively transmit or reflect light based on wavelength. The application is like polarized sunglasses, but unlike sunglasses, the coating remains clear and effective no matter the angle of incoming light. During heat waves, 87 percent of heat gain in our houses is through windows. This new coating blocks heat-producing ultraviolet light and infrared rays but not visible light. Tests of this wide-angle spectral filter coating yielded temperatures 13 degrees Fahrenheit lower than conventional glass. This coating can also be applied to car windshields and sunroofs. Comfort is improved with less energy demand.

• EcoSmart gypsum wallboard (GWB) uses 25 percent less water to fabricate, produces 20 percent less CO2 emissions, weighs 20 percent less, and saves 20 percent of fuel during transportation. EcoSmart 5/8-inch Type X board has a slight increase in cost — 7 percent — but has already captured about 35 percent of market share. It is considered cost competitive because installers love the reduced weight. Concerns about acoustic and fire-resistant properties, both of which depend on density, turn out to be unfounded. Tests show performance equal to standard 5/8-inch GWB.

To avoid big temperature swings, buildings incorporating passive solar design strategies rely on material with high thermal mass. Concrete is one such widely used material. A double layer of 5/8-inch GWB performs equally well, is less expensive, and a better choice for multi-storied structures harnessing natural heating and cooling technologies.

Speeding up our adoption of these and other innovations in sustainable building materials could greatly reduce carbon emissions not just in the building sector but overall. 

Deconstruction Versus Demolition

Save Money, Energy, Lots of Materials but Not Time

We live in a throwaway economy. Advertising, built-in obsolescence, and undervaluing labor contribute to this system. Right-to-repair laws are pushing against this embedded pattern, with California being one of the leaders and early adopters. The construction industry generates massive amounts of waste when buildings are demolished or renovated — 22 percent of everything in landfills in California, according to a statewide waste study. When demolished, a typical 2,000-square-foot house produces around 240 cubic yards of debris.

Buildings account for 40 percent of global use of raw materials and are one of the biggest contributors to greenhouse-gas emissions. Deconstruction is an alternative to demolition. It is a careful process that involves taking apart a building to salvage reusable materials. Disassembling a building can be time-consuming and requires skilled workers, but it reduces the need for new materials, conserves energy, and minimizes environmental impact.

Offsetting the time issue is the tax advantage that the building owner can gain. IRS rules allow an owner to get a tax credit for materials being salvaged for reuse or recycling. After a site visit, an IRS qualified appraiser prepares an inventory of salvageable materials with their “fair market value” numbers, usually about a third of the cost of the same materials when purchased new. Separately, the owner contracts with a deconstruction contractor or their builder if the crew is skilled in deconstruction. Since 75-90 percent of materials in a home can be reused, repurposed, or recycled, the tax benefits often add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars. However, these tax deductions can be claimed only when materials are donated to a nonprofit organization such as Habitat for Humanity or The ReUse People (TRP).

Why has deconstruction not gone mainstream? As mentioned, it is working against a system designed to make it easy for people to throw things away. Taking longer can also be a deterrent, but that can be lessened by disassembling interior spaces while waiting for permits. To encourage deconstruction, a community needs property with a building dedicated to storage and display of materials (like Habitat’s Reuse Stores). This requirement has been mostly offset by one successful program that sells most of the salvable materials on site before deconstruction begins. The final challenge is how to get contractors to use salvaged materials in their projects. 

Although not mainstream, deconstruction does happen. Locally, the Miramar Hotel tile reuse project in Montecito donated large quantities of iconic blue roof tiles to affordable housing projects in the community. Rebuild Green deconstructs about 100 houses a year in the Bay Area. In 2016, Portland became the first city to institute an ordinance requiring deconstruction of single-family houses built before 1940 slated for removal. Half a dozen other cities have followed Portland’s example. Palo Alto requires the deconstruction of all residential and commercial buildings slated for removal regardless of age. Boulder mandates 75 percent of buildings by weight be diverted from landfills. Can Santa Barbara follow these examples?

Headway in Curbing Packaging Waste

Europe is Moving to Reshape Its Packaging Culture

Plastics have brought convenience and benefit to our lives but also pollution, toxicity, and environmental degradation. Globally, almost 500 million tons of plastic are produced each year, 90 percent of which ends up contaminating our planet. Alarmingly, plastic production is forecast to soar and could triple by 2040.

The framework for a global plastics treaty was adopted by 175 countries in 2022 with final negotiations to happen later this year, followed by implementation starting early next year. Despite being a giant step forward, much remains to be done to reverse our plastic polluting ways.

Perhaps the most encouraging are the sweeping measures that the EU (European Union) has just enacted to address packaging waste. The regulations aim to reduce environmental damage and promote sustainable practices. The PPWR (Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation) sets binding targets on throw-away plastics. On average, every person in the EU generates 418 pounds of packaging trash each year, and this figure is growing.

For the first time, the EU has created goals to combat the growing problem of waste by reducing packaging regardless of the material involved. Packaging must be 5 percent less by 2030, 10 percent by 2035, and 15 percent by 2040. The PPWR’s fundamental goal is to reshape packaging habits everywhere in the EU. The protocol requires that almost all packaging material be recyclable by 2030. Plastic packaging is especially singled out with minimum recycled content standards. Takeout restaurants must provide reuseable containers. Single-use plastic bags, straws, utensils, etc. will be banned by 2030. Similarly for miniature packaging of toiletry products, ubiquitous in the hospitality industry. Plastic and metal beverage containers will be collected separately via deposit-return programs.

These EU rules cover the full life cycle of packaging, including the manufacture, composition, and reusable or recoverable nature of materials. The requirements are designed to foster innovation. One example being researched in Singapore is to duplicate the gut flora of a super worm (Zophobas atratus) that degrades plastics. Using the microbes found in the worm’s gut in varying combinations, scientists have been able to efficiently break down the most prevalent types of plastics in a scalable and replicable manner.

While challenges remain, adoption of the PPWR is a big leap forward in the fight against plastic pollution and waste proliferation. Being the biggest producer of packaging waste, the U.S. needs to follow suit. As an added benefit, all these rules, requirements, and measures provide a big boost to creating a circular economy.

Oceans Are a Great Source of Food for the Planet

Sustainable Aquaculture Practices Need to Expand Worldwide

Concerns about human and planetary health have led many to prefer locally produced, organic foods. Despite no pesticides or chemicals, the organic label tells nothing about the nutritive content of food. Only healthy soils such as those restored on regenerative farms can produce foods rich in vitamins, proteins, minerals, and enzymes. Local sourcing means fewer carbon emissions and improved freshness.

Because we have depleted our soil over many centuries, but especially in the past 70 years, the fish, plants, and algae we harvest from our oceans are more packed, in general, with protein and micro-nutrients than terrestrial foods. Seafood is an important and growing source of protein for humans around the world. Data from 2020 indicates that more than half the food harvested from the oceans is from aquaculture, namely, fish farms.

After a rocky beginning, large-scale fish farming has become a truly sustainable method of producing seafood. Some categories of aquaculture are inherently sustainable — mussels, clams, and oysters filter pollutants out of water and create habitat for other sea creatures. Seaweed farms are another — they sequester carbon, offsetting greenhouse-gas emissions, and extract nutrients from fertilizer runoff from land, thereby helping reduce algae blooms.

Some farmed species — such as salmon, tilapia, and shrimp — had many negative environmental impacts in the early years of farming but have undergone a transformation due to technological innovations and new practices. Waste has been significantly reduced: AI camera systems track fish movement in their pens to deliver just the right amount of food at the right time. Bioremediation, another improvement, employs filters that provide surfaces for beneficial bacteria and micro-algae to clean up pollutants in the water. These and other management practices, now incorporated into U.S. regulations, have made a big difference. Unfortunately, they are not implemented in many other countries. Since the U.S. still imports around 70 percent of the seafood consumed here, a serious issue remains as to how to get other countries to improve the sustainability of their aquaculture.

California became the first state to set up a statewide network of marine protected areas (MPAs), the largest component of which is in the Santa Barbara Channel. Our local MPAs protect numerous endangered species, sensitive habitats, kelp forests, and deep-sea coral gardens. The success of these zones has been dramatic, essentially dispelling the initial opposition from local fishermen. Species have rebounded, spilling beyond the reserve boundaries, and greatly increasing the catches of fishermen. Because of our healthy and sustainably managed Channel, buying local seafood makes sense, just like consuming local, organic fruits and produce.

“Our planet is 70 percent ocean” says Kim Selkoe, CEO of the local Get Hooked seafood company. “If we fish sustainably and harvest sustainably, we can meet the protein needs of large numbers of people.”