Green Homes, Cleaning, and Eco friendly products

What is a green home? For many it is simply the color of a certain house in the neighborhood, it could be next to the blue home or the pink house, but now this word “green” has a variety of connotations largely relating to the environment and its overwhelming naturally occurring green hue.

Why are plants green? Because they have billions of little molecules called chlorophyll which are very effective at harvesting sunlight. Sunlight is predominantly red and blue light, which is absorbed by chlorophyll and converted into energy that can be used by insects and animals. Since red and blue are absorbed so readily the plant appears green. In contrast, an apple absorbs every color besides red which it reflects into our eyes.

While green homes do not necessarily need to be green in color, they have a lot in common with their rooted, growing, green friends. Many of them absorb sunlight and convert it into another form of energy although instead of converting sunlight into carbohydrates, proteins and other nutritious molecules, they convert sunlight into electricity through the photovoltaic process. This allows the home to survive in much the same way animals do.

A green home could be considered a macrocosm of a living organism, able to provide its own energy, maintain itself, and not be destructive to its surroundings. While the intricacies of an organism’s maintenance are complex, a house has a similar system of veins that supply water instead of blood and have filters for waste instead of kidneys and livers. Both are heated by the sun, one by producing electricity, the other by breaking down carbohydrates, although even the greenest home cannot reproduce, at least not yet.

The future of green homes and sustainable architecture relies on the symbiosis of the electro-mechanical devices humans love and the organic complexity of nature. Houses are likely to be grown in the near future from genetically enhanced trees that seamlessly integrate the creature comforts of home in exiting new ways. Plants already have their own highly efficient plumbing and waste disposal system that has been emulated with the root-like pipes snaking throughout walls and under roads.

 It is only a matter of time until our unnatural surroundings begin to emulate our much earlier natural surroundings and homes will be a living organism as they were when man still slept in trees and relied on leaves for shelter.

 

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