Is this the Future for Eco Friendly Homes?
This is a fascinating insight into what might become the model for building sustainable environments with sustainable housing in an eco friendly style; some of the concepts are quite amazing, I love most of the ideas. Especially for a Country that is so highly populated.
Singapore fireworks display
By Se7enw00d (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons
Singapore tests eco-friendly homes!
(CNN) — Singapore’s first public housing blocks built to be environmentally sustainable have become the testing ground for future projects.
From afar, the high-rises of Punggol Eco-Town look unremarkable, but they are the first large-scale experiment to make public housing – eco-friendly homes, in Singapore, a tropical city-state that is hot year-round.
CNN’s Liz Neisloss reports on how Singapore is bringing sustainable housing to a new level, in this video on eco friendly homes.
Courtesy of CNN
Over 80% of Singapore’s residents live in public housing, called HDBs, after the government agency that builds them.
“What we have done is that we put in various eco friendly homes features that helps in terms of capitalizing on the wind, enhancing greenery, reducing energy consumption, water usage, how to promote waste recycling, et cetera, all in one development,” said Ng Bingrong, the project director, Treelodge@Punggol.
The eco-friendly homes methods range from commonplace and practical to highly innovative.
Plant-covered roofs naturally lower the buildings’ temperature, and the towers’ orientation, facing away from the sun, helps too.
Painting the buildings white helps keep them cool and bring in sunlight.
Alan Tan, the director of HDB’s Environment Sustainability Research team says the project’s variety of experiments will have wider implications for future housing in Singapore.
“Punggol Eco-Town is in fact a living laboratory for us,” said Tan. “This is where we test bed a lot of urban solutions for us to identify which of those are workable and for us to adopt, for us to introduce more to our public housing,”
- Inside the apartments, tap water that goes down the drain is used to flush toilets.
- Solar energy powers elevators, lighting and water pumps.
And various indicators placed around the buildings, like the ones found in the elevators that show the amount of solar energy being outputted, provide constant reminders to the residents of the different lifestyle they are living.
More at Singapore tests eco-friendly homes – CNN
So, what do you think?
Could this be the start of a more foreward thinking period in the life of our planet or another false dawn on the way to the doom that you see predicted everywhere you look these days.
Hopefully projects like this one in Singapore will become more and more commonplace as we move deeper into the 21st century.
If you would like to share your opinions on eco friendly homes or anything else you consider of note in eco friendly terms, please do so below, many thanks for taking the time to read this post.