Article by guest author, Roger Marx

With increasing legislative and societal standards for green and environmentally friendly commerce, the construction industry has never been under greater scrutiny to build with sustainability in mind. While this often leads people to think of technologically advanced solutions such as solar panels and wind turbines, there are a number of sustainability examples to consider before starting a project. 

Sustainability may be a project that promotes energy efficiency, enhances longevity, preserves natural resources, reduces toxic byproducts, or mitigates the need for resource consumption due to future renovation. With this in mind, keep reading to consider 5 different examples of sustainable architecture projects. 

Article by guest author, Roger Marx

Energy-efficient buildings are becoming more and more important in recent years. A rising number of consumers say that the environmental impact of a purchase has a large amount of control on whether or not they buy or support something.

If you're curious about how this fits into construction: you're not alone! These are the most energy-efficient building materials for new projects, and why they're useful to anyone constructing a new project.

Even before the novel coronavirus pandemic—which, at the time of this writing, has claimed the lives of nearly 86,000 Americans—we managed to spend the vast majority of our time indoors (93% according to one study!). Of course, pre-COVID-19, “indoors” was more likely to entail some daily combination of home, workplace, stores, restaurants, gyms, etc. Post-COVID-19, “indoors” is more likely to entail just home with an occasional run to the store that feels more like a Navy SEAL mission than shopping. This rather sudden change in our behavior—necessary to protect ourselves, our loved ones, and our other fellow human beings—provokes the question of whether and to what extent our home is healthy.

Directly Paying Indigenous Forest Stewards for Their Services

Source: Reuters, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7388601/Indigenous-tribespeople-Amazon-vow-fight-against-loss-home.html

Welcome to part four of PLACE’s five-part series, Talking About Poverty. As our guide, we will be using the excellent series, Busted: America’s Poverty Myths from WNYC’s On the Media.

In our fourth part, we examine the myth of the safety net, which supposes that if any of our fellow Americans experience hard times, there are programs that, like a safety net, will catch them before they fall. We will also examine a recent quote from Speaker Paul Ryan in which he said, “We don’t want to turn the safety net into a hammock that lulls able-bodied people to lives of dependency.”

Welcome to part three of PLACE’s five-part series, Talking About Poverty. As our guide, we will be using the excellent series, Busted: America’s Poverty Myths from WNYC’s On the Media. We’ll even examine some basic logic. Stick with us.

In our third part, we examine what is perhaps the greatest myth in America, the myth of upward mobility; that everyone has an equal chance to surmount any obstacle and go from rags to riches. This narrative comes from none other than a “founding father,” himself born into poverty, Benjamin Franklin.

Young Franklin apprentices as a printer to his brother before setting out for Philadelphia to open his own printing shop. He begins to manufacture most of the paper in the colonies. In those days, paper was made from rags, and people used to buy and sell rags. Eventually, Franklin gets the license to print paper currency, literally turning rags to riches.

Welcome to Part Two of Talking About Poverty, PLACE’s five-part series on poverty and our deep-seated assumptions about our fellow Americans who are poor. As our guide, we will be using the excellent series, Busted: America’s Poverty Myths from WNYC’s On the Media.

In this, our second part, we examine the long-held notion that people who are poor are poor because they do not have the same work ethic as those in the middle class. This assumption leads to the belief that some people deserve to be poor because of bad decisions they have made, or that they just don’t have what it takes.

For example, Walter Mischel’s famous Stanford Marshmallow Study offered a group of children a choice: They could eat one marshmallow now, or wait 15 minutes and get two marshmallows. The ability to hold out for the promise of that second marshmallow correlated with greater success later in life.

People have naturally concluded that kids lacking in self control were missing something vital to success. The kids with the ability to delay their gratification, with self control, simply had what it takes.

Welcome to PLACE’s five-part series on poverty. We hope to get you thinking about poverty differently, and by extension, those who are forced to live in poverty. And we also hope to explain PLACE’s complex and effective approach to alleviating poverty.

Above all, we hope to make it interesting. After all, who doesn’t love myth busting?

As our guide, we will be using the excellent series, Busted: America’s Poverty Myths from WNYC’s On the Media.

Our understanding of poverty in America is shaped not by facts, but by private presumptions, media narratives, and tall tales of the American Dream. Even if you’re poor (and almost no one thinks they are), you probably share our country’s discomfort with poor people, because you are a product of a culture steeped in very potent, but very wrong narratives about people who are poor. The intent of our series is to expose those myths and dismantle them.

The PLACE organization will be leading a charge to convince the Trump Administration to take action to halt the destruction of the environment and the disruption of the global climate. And while many of you may think this is a fool’s errand, there are actually many reasons for Mr. Trump to embrace such measures. 

You are still who you are. I think that is crucial to remember. 

Today is a day of soul searching. I can see it on the faces of people I meet. Whether they look vindicated or distressed, they all appear as if they feel alienated from the other half of America. 

No matter how you feel about the election, it hasn’t changed who you are as a person. Nor has it changed the other people around you. 

If you cared about the environment yesterday, you still do today. If you thought education holds the key to a better world, for you, that is still true. If you believe everyone deserves a fair chance, you will continue to work to that end. 

We must stop believing that there are two Americas; red states and blue states, conservatives and liberals. These false dichotomies are brought to you by the two-party system, and they are as meaningless as they are unfortunate. Perhaps the greatest disservice The Political Machine has done to us is to convince us that there are two groups of people; those who think like we do, and everyone else, who must therefore be stupid, greedy or Un-American.