Friday, January 27, 2012

Definitely Eco-Thrifty


We are grateful for the positive feedback we've received on the Eco-Thrifty Renovation in the last few months. Thanks to the hard work by our interns and partners we've had an excellent first year, which has brought us even more partners who see the real value in the eco-thrifty approach. We are designing two new programs that we'll share soon on this site.



I recently tried to define eco-thrifty on another website as:


Eco-Thrifty: an approach to lifestyle, building, renovating or growing food that combines low financial outlay with low ecological impact. In a broader sense, the approach is low-input and high performance, be it the productivity of a garden or thermal efficiency of a home. Eco-thrifty seeks to dispel the false impression that green living is for the wealthy. It is a realistic, workable approach for a world of climate volatility, increasing resource scarcity and lingering unemployment and underemployment.


To put eco-thrifty in context, let's look at some systems that are not low input and high performance. For example, here is a well-known system that is high input and low performance.



"The study said Americans pay more than $7,900 per person for healthcare each year - far more than any other OECD country - but still die earlier than their peers in the industrialized world.

The cost of healthcare in the United States is 62 percent higher than that in Switzerland, which has a similar per capita income and also relies substantially on private health insurance."



Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2065548/U-S-ranks-28th-life-expectancy-pay-MOST-health-care.html#ixzz1epwFJcBS


Why eco-thrifty? These two recent headlines give some reasons.





And finally, eco-thrifty can also be applied to educational programs and projects. For example,



Cool stuff, eh? The ECO-School is committed to offering the highest quality sustainability education affordably. Our mission is to partner with organizations and individuals to create new projects or enhance existing ones.


Peace, Estwing


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