What Makes A Sustainable Home?
This is a simple answer in terms of coming from a knowledge of these things. However, when trying to come up with a concrete and succinct answer, it is sometimes a bit more difficult. The simplest answer is to say that what makes a house a sustainable home is that it is not only built from materials that are harvested or manufactured in a way that is supportive of the larger global environment, but that is in constant balance and harmony with the environment that it is a part of as well. In other words, it is constructed of materials that support a more ‘green friendly’ – we’ll get to that as well – approach and is also surrounded, supported and maintained in this fashion as well.
As the term implies, the idea is that this sustainable home is one which can sustain itself within its larger environment. We are all living inside larger and larger rings of environmental and universal rings. Think of it in terms of one big compost pile. In other words, 
the tiny microorganism that helps break down the waste products in the soil is also contributing to the food that is grown. This food is what you eat and what drives your life force and energy. You, in turn, do some sort of work and contribute to another way to the global community. Our efforts and by products are affecting the Earth and beyond. It doesn’t matter to what extend you agree or disagree with political wrangling of facts and figures, the point is that we are all interconnected. The homes in which we live are part of a larger living community and environment.
Rather than trying to isolate ourselves from this larger environment, what if we embraced where we were and lived in harmony with it? This is not really as radical a concept as it may sound. In fact, these concepts have been espoused for years by Native Americans and other Native peoples of various places in the world. They have a greater appreciation for these concepts because they interact with their environment in such an intimate way. The people that truly ‘live off the land’, as all human beings did at one time in our history, have a greater appreciation for the immediacy of their actions. The further and further we isolate ourselves from the environment, whether that is through distance or technology, the less able we are to see the affects we are having.
This is a big problem, and maybe not in the way you might be thinking. While there are certainly intelligent people arguing that humans are destroying the planet, it is our contention that it is more contributory than causative. That is to say, while there are signs that we are currently in a warming trend on our planet, it is not definitively caused by humans. We have gone through these cycles in the past and we will again in the future. To assume that we have all of the conclusive evidence NOW is just too egotistical to begin making judgments on. Don’t read this the wrong way. After all, you are on SustainableHouseandHome.com. It would be silly to think we don’t care about these matters. Quite the contrary.
This site is dedicated to those principles that we believe will have the greatest impact to limit our footprints on this blue and green planet we co-inhabit. That there is evidence that our past and current actions are contributing to the trend has been proven to our satisfaction. The purpose and design of this site is geared toward you, the individual, inhabitant of a house you call home. Whether or not your home could qualify for a “green building council” award is not the only matter we are concerned with. Of greater importance is bringing awareness to the materials, products and ways of living that we each have that can minimize the destructive impact we are having on the planet. We may not be able to reverse any trends that have been set in motion through the ages of time, but we can certainly not add more in the way of our past and current transgressions. Together, one home at a time, we can make our local environment, then our global environment one connected and sustainable place to live.