Sustainable design, natural building, green architecture… whatever name you know it by, holistic and environmentally oriented buildings are the future of society. Both embodied and operational environmental impacts must be considered when building carbon neutral (or even carbon positive!) structures. We must think outside the box, consider location, and not just rely on “green bling” when literally building the future. Keep listening for a very passionate introduction to all these concepts and more on this week’s episode of The Environmental Podcast.
0:00 – Overview of embodied vs operational impacts
6:13 – CONCRETE!
12:49 – Wood
16:05- Localization of materials and labor; significance of the issue and its under-representation in mainstream discourse
23:16 – Operational impacts + sites
27:07 – Energy: appliances, insulation, windows, producing energy onsite
39:32 – Water: stormwater collection, filtration, lo-flush, etc.
42:09 – Misc. + conclusion