Culture, Sustainability and a Beautiful Smile – California Dreaming!

by Joanne O'Donnell

Late last year San Francisco's fabulous California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park received a Platinum LEED certification and now is considered to be the greenest museum in the world.  It is a truly remarkable place.  Not only does it combine under one roof (one amazing roof - but we don't want to get ahead of ourselves - back to the roof later...) a natural history museum, a planetarium, an aquarium, plus a 3-D theatre, library and science labs to support their scientific education and research goals, but it also has an amazing 4 story rain forest in the facility!  And then, to (literally) top it off, there is a 2.5 acre living roof with 1.7 million native plants!  This amazing roof garden is surrounded by a solar canopy containing 60,000 photovoltaic cells.    

In building this amazing sustainable structure they reused and recycled materials - from using 90 % of the materials from the demolition of the previous structure to getting 95% of the steel they used from recycled sources.  They used passive solar design and as a result 90% of the office space has natural light and ventilation.  They used FSC lumber and concrete with fly ash (which has both the advantage of reuse of something that would have gone in a landfill and the advantage that it makes concrete much stronger thus complying with century construction principles).  But my all time favorite sustainable building practice in the facility? The insulation is made from recycled blue jeans!  How cool is that? 

So, go take your family to see this amazing museum this weekend and start thinking of ways you can reduce your own carbon footprint.  Here's one factoid to get you started - did you know that brushing your teeth uses 4 gallons of water?  Four Gallons!  So, if your family of four brushes your teeth three times a day that is 48 gallons a day to brush your teeth...  Turn the water off when the brush is in your mouth...  Now was that so hard?  And now you know you too can make a difference...

The average North American uses 160 gallons of water per day while much of the world uses less than 3 gallons of water per day.  What was that saying?  If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem...

    

Check out our new Green Website! 

Chic Home Interiors does Home Staging, Interior Redesign and Training in Staging, Color and Green Build Science. Our training arena is all of North America, while our design and staging is in the San Francisco Bay Area only.

510-STAGING or email me at joanne@chichomeinteriors.com