One of the things so many people are concerned about when they think about living more environmentally-friendly lifestyles is that they will have to live more austere, almost ascetic lives. The following NOD addresses that notion.
One of the motivations for designing the Oxford Ecohouse was to put paid to the notion that pursuing a high quality of life necessarily entailed irreparable damage to the environment. The challenge was to prove that those in richer countries could maintain an acceptably high standard of living without polluting the planet at the cost to those in poorer countries. To help better understand the relationship between individual behaviours and the built environment it is necessary to look beyond the form and construction of a building to the consumption patterns of its inhabitants irrespective of culture, geography, or economy. Environmental accounting methodologies, such as ecological footprinting, can provide a very useful insight into those factors which are most important in minimising environmental impacts.
