Rebecca Brayton: The leadership in energy and environmental design system or LEED is a rating method that provides standards for environmentally friendly homes. Hi! I am Rebecca Brayton and welcome to watchmojo.com. And today, we will be learning more about green renovations from the man who overhauled, one of the most ecological building in North America.
I think a lot of people think of cars as the big kind of culprits in green house gas emissions but buildings are really bad too, you want to talk about that a bit?
Emmanuel Cosgrove: I'd say, one of the most important think about building isn't how they are built, it's where they are! And here we're in pretty central neighborhood, pretty much anything, we can need as far as services are within walking distance and that's I think the way of future development is going to be make pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods.
Rebecca Brayton: What is LEED?
Emmanuel Cosgrove: It's a voluntary certification system that measures environmental performance of all types of buildings, in this case the home.
Rebecca Brayton: Why would you say that this is an important undertaking?
Emmanuel Cosgrove: It's important because people recognize the label. Labeling is a great idea because it's true environmental performance before, you have a label, it's hard to say what really is green. Pretty much any builder can go ahead and say, oh, this is a super Eco house and if there is no one there to measure, how green it is, then who knows. You know you can get away with anything.
Rebecca Brayton: Are there any kind of quick renovations that a homeowner can do to their own home to try to improve the Eco friendliness?
Emmanuel Cosgrove: Energy efficiency is always the number one thing to target, if you are looking at environmental performance. You have got an old leaky toilet, loosing a lot of water, you can change it for a super efficient dual flush toilet or just as a very low flush toilet, change your light bulbs, compact fluorescent, when it's time to paint your walls, use either recycled or a paint that doesn't contain any volatile organic compounds, these are just simple things for your own help. Yeah, I'd always say to look into municipal reclaim projects, where you can go buy, used materials and get creative with your next renovation project.
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