Guide to the 1997 Eco Expo Environmental Demonstration Home

Introduction
Welcome to the Eco Expo Environmental Home. This model home has been designed, built and furnished with both environmental preservation and human health as prime considerations. As such it constitutes an exercise in the complex arts of balance and compromise.

For instance, in order to reduce excessive harvesting of our precious living forests, which are such important elements of the life support systems of the earth, the exterior structure of the Environmental Home consists of steel studs within recycled polystyrene filled panels manufactured by E-Building Systems. The panels have an excellent insulation rating of R23 and the steel studs contain 25% recycled steel. So, in the energy efficiency and recycled content categories, E-Building Systems rates high. However, since the embodied energy of steel is high and polystyrene is plastic and isn't biodegradable, these panels cannot be considered the ideal environmental building material either.

There are products made of recycled materials that may out-gas fumes which can cause health problems. On the other hand, there are products that are completely nontoxic but may be composed of materials that are damaging to the environment. The present reality is that environmental design, building, furnishing and living is an ongoing, evolving process of weighing many factors and making the best choices possible within the given parameters, knowing that compromises are inevitable.

The good news is that there are an increasing number of products that meet all criteria and you will see many of them in this demonstration home. A list of the products used and displayed in and around the 1997 Eco Expo Environmental Home follows, with brief notations on why they were chosen.