Zed Books Eco-Homes: People, Place and Politics (Just Sustainabilities)

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Eco-HomesPeople, Place and PoliticsBy Jenny PickerillZed Books LtdCopyright © 2016 Jenny PickerillAll rights reserved.ISBN: 978-1-78032-531-6ContentsFigures and tables, Acknowledgements, Introduction, 1 Eco, 2 Home, 3 History, 4 Place, 5 Affordability, 6 Comfort, 7 Gender, 8 Mobilisation, 9 Community, 10 Future, Appendix, Notes, Further reading, Index, CHAPTER 1ECOThe main purpose of an eco-house is to reduce waste – in its construction, occupation and demolition. This is in order to reduce its impact on the environment. Contemporary conventional housing uses resources at an unsustainable rate (demand for resources is outstripping supply) and produces waste with negative consequences for society and our environment. Waste is produced through the inefficient use of energy (used to heat or cool spaces, or to heat water and fuel for cooking), materials (in construction, lack of recycling in demolition, short-life white goods) and water (such as using high-quality drinking water to flush toilets). Waste is also generated in transporting energy across large-scale infrastructures (such as the National Grid). In Britain, the construction industry is responsible for one-third of the total waste produced annually and yet the construction industry 'has a low awareness of the sources of waste and duplication that are embedded in current construction practice'.Eco-housing involves changing the processes of building and how a house functions to minimise waste, both materially and in less visible forms such as energy. As Borer and Harris argue, 'our building practice should alleviate as much as possible the environmental debt which the next generation is going to have to pay.' However, an extremely ecological house that provides no comfort does not satisfy our human need for a home. Therefore, an eco-house needs to do more than simply reduce its environmental impact. An effective eco-building balances our need for comfort with minimising ecological impact Finding the right balance between reducing waste while creating comfort, and thus creating a comfortable home which functions with minimal waste, is by no means a simple task. It is a tension that is returned to several times in this book (particularly in Chapter 6).As the needs of a home are complex and diverse (see Chapter 2), so too are the ways in which eco-houses have been designed and constructed. Eco-building is a diverse and contested array of approaches, designs and methods. This chapter explores the broad principles of how eco-houses are being built by exploring structural innovations, the size of dwellings, harnessing renewable technologies, retrofitting existing housing stock, and reducing demand by changing residents' behaviour. The intention of this chapter is to illustrate the diversity of eco-homes and explore some of their common forms and functions.More than carbonIn Britain, eco-housing has become synonymous with low or zero carbon housing. Although the early roots of eco-homes were diverse (and included concerns for biodiversity, materials scarcity, pollution, water-use reduction), reducing carbon became the dominant discourse that framed the need for, and function of, eco-housing; 'even within the green building community, it seems we are more interested in technology than in ecology, and in saving energy more than in saving nature.' A concern for carbon emerged from the recognition of humans' role in affecting climate change. The consequences of increased human-produced CO are rising global temperatures which in Britain are likely to result in more heatwaves, fewer frost days, increased rainfall, more intensive rain showers, a rise in sea level and coastal surge events – in other words, flooding, storms and heat. In Britain, 'the construction and operation of the built environment ... accounts for 45% of COemissions in the UK.'Britain had introduced legislation seeking to mitigate and adapt to climate chang