By Harriet Blake
When a member of your family is sick, you probably call the doctor. But what about when your home is sick? Who ya gonna call? Ghostbusters is probably not an option, but invisible house issues need to be dealt with.
A house might be considered “sick” if it never seems warm enough, cool enough or maybe has utility bills that are sky high.
That’s when you want to call in a specialist in sustainable home retrofitting. It’s a relatively new field, although bits and pieces of the industry have been around for a while, just not under one roof, so to speak.
Mike Rogers, senior vice president of GreenHomes America in Syracuse, N.Y. and Irvine, Ca., calls it one-stop shopping. And more and more companies are emerging that can handle the multitude of tasks required for a full home retrofit.
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Mid-size cities go green
By Kelly Rondeau
Move over Seattle, Portland, and Austin and other green heavyweights — make room for some like-minded, newcomers.
Columbus, Ohio; New Orleans, La., Syracuse, N.Y., and Louisville, Kty., residents might not be wearing Birkenstocks and basking under solar tubes. But they are living in some of the growing number of mid-sized, Middle American cities that are making impressive green strides, changing their attitudes and getting smarter about eco-choices.
Syracuse, led by Mayor Matthew Driscoll, is becoming a greener “Emerald City” of New York with its sustainability website, partnerships with area universities and a solid number 17 placement for 2008 on Popular Science’s list of the 50 Greenest Cities in the U
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Tags: · bike paths, Columbus, green growth, Greenest Cities, Greenlight New Orleans, ICLEI, Local Governments for Sustainability, Louisville, Make It Right, New Orleans, sustainable cities, Syracuse
