Benedictine Boarding School Grows Greener With New Eco-Friendly Homes For Faculty Families

Blu ‘Evolution’ home exterior. Photo courtesy of Blu Homes.

The Portsmouth Abbey School is in the process expanding its living space, with the addition of two new eco-friendly designed homes for two of its faculty members and their families, as part of the school’s expanding green initiatives.

The two new homes are being built by Blu Homes, which designs and builds of upscale, eco-friendly manufactured homes, home additions, offices, and structures. 

The two-story Blu ‘Evolution’ style homes will be Energy Star-rated and LEED certified. All of the appliances will be Energy Star certified.

Blu ‘Evolution’ homes are very large and come in designs that include three-to-four bedrooms, one-to-two bathrooms, and special features like roof decks, high ceilings, large kitchens, and spacious floor plans.

Kitchen design in an ‘Evolution’ style home. Photo courtesy of Blu Homes.

“The Blu homes, in particular, are very desirable for our faculty. The space is just a great space to be living in. Our faculty are responsible for their own energy costs, so the energy efficiency of these is good for the two families that are going to be living here,” said James DeVecchi, headmaster of Portsmouth.

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Simple Steps for Detoxing Your Kitchen: Creating a Healthier Cooking Environment

Eco-friendly kitchen. Photo courtesy of southernliving.com.

Everyone takes pride in having a spotless modern kitchen, but sometimes that new cookware and all those harsh chemical cleaners can make you as sick as that bacteria that your trying to avoid.

While a kitchen can hide a lot of dangerous chemicals, there are many simple and relatively inexpensive things that everyone can do to minimize their risk of exposure and health problems.

Solutions For Detoxing Your Kitchen

Cookware

Non-stick teflon-coated cookware contain perfluorochemicals (PFCs) which make them resistant to oil, stains, grease, and water, but they also pose a health hazard if scraped off and eaten.

The Minnesota Department of Health found that in laboratory animal, high concentrations of PFCs caused damage to the liver and other organs. Developmental problems also have been seen in the offspring of rats and mice that were exposed to PFCs while pregnant. Safer non-stick alternatives to teflon cookware are stainless-steel and cast-iron.

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Washed Out Plastics Retrieved From Our World's Oceans Being Used to Build Vacum Cleaners

Electrolux Vac From The Sea - Mediterranean Edition.

Even on the most basic level, plastics have become an essential part of people’s lives - needed to make everything from combs to laptop computers.

What’s also true is that most things made of plastic are petroleum-based, not biodegradable, and finding their way into our oceans.

Kimberly Amaral, a naturalist at the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary in Cape Cod Bay, says that, “When plastic objects get into main sewers (either by being flushed down the toilet, or carried by rain into street drains), then those objects can float out to sea.

“A more direct route is boaters dumping their trash right into the sea. In the past, this has been the main cause of plastics in the ocean.”

The 5 Gyres Institute, a non-profit collaborative of marine scientists explains that, “Large systems of currents, coupled with wind and the earth’s rotation, create gyres that are massive, slow rotating whirlpools in which plastic trash accumulates.”

Electrolux Vac From The Sea - Pacific Edition.

The North Pacific Gyre is the most heavily researched for plastic pollution, and spans an area roughly twice the size of the United States. The pollution is having a devastating effect on wildlife, and posing great risk to people’s health.

5 Gyre has found that whales, sea turtles, and a growing list of fish species have been documented with plastic in or around their bodies.

When marine animals consume plastic trash, presumably mistaking it for food, this can lead to internal blockages, dehydration, starvation, and potentially death. Also of great concern is the potential impact on human health from toxic chemicals entering the marine food chain from plastics.

Most of the research on plastic trash circulating in oceanic gyres has focused on the North Pacific, but the pollution exists in varying extents in all of the five major oceanic gyres around the world, according to 5 Gyre.

In the “Vac From The Sea” public awareness campaign created to bring attention to the problem, Electrolux has teamed up with conservation groups to create five functional display vacuums made from plastics retrieved from the world’s oceans.

Each vacuum cleaner corresponds to the particular ocean body where the plastics were retrieved to make it. The vacuums - which will go on tour - represent the pollution found in the Pacific Ocean, Atlantic Ocean, Indian Ocean, Mediterranean Sea, and Baltic Sea.

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