ApartmentTherapy asks, What If Homes Came With Nutrition Labels?
Eco-conscious architect Michelle Kaufmann AIA, LEED® AP writes:
Homebuyers need more information about the homes they are buying when they are buying. There should be a way for them to have easy access to information like how efficiently a home will use energy and water, how healthful and eco-friendly its materials are, and the price of a home needs to be discussed in terms of long-term monthly costs rather than the hardly relevant upfront cost.
ApartmentTherapy looks at some of the potential problems:
A lot of the terms and figures are likely over the heads of most home owners (including ourselves). But like ’saturated fat’ versus ‘polyunsaturated fat’, future green minded home buyers will likely want to know sustainability figures like ‘R-value’, ‘U-factor’, and ‘VOC’ before putting down serious money for a home that may or may not hurt both themselves and the environment around them.
It took us a while, but we all know what transfats are now — so public education is possible. With nutrition, however, informing the public is a tremendous challenge because of changing and conflicting research, along with serious assumptions about what’s good for us. Hopefully, green housing and other green labeling initiatives can overcome this where possible.
Michelle’s original post is here.
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