Green at Ridgefield

Green Mission Statement

To the Builder: Helping Builders and Tradesmen build more energy efficient and environmentally responsible homes through education, product knowledge, recycling programs, and the largest selection of certified building materials.

To the Homeowner: Increasing public awareness of our need to reduce dependency on traditional sources of energy, reduce home energy costs and improve indoor air quality through our product selection.

To our Planet Earth: Reduce the carbon footprint of the Ridgefield Supply program by reducing the consumption of traditional corporate supplies and recycling.

Solutions: Sustainable Building and Green Building

The terms “sustainable”, “green” and the like have become a part of many discussions, product advertisements, and everyday speech.  However despite the growing pervasiveness of such terms, it is remarkable how imprecise and poorly understood the concept of sustainability is.  It is also not widely appreciated how difficult it will be to move toward a sustainable society or how significant the required changes will be.

Terms to Remember:

Material Life-cycle:  a cradle to grave view of all materials, from resource extraction to material disposal/reuse including pollution created.

Building Life-cycle: Which requires a flexible/adaptable design to allows for possibilities for re-use of building for different functions, re-arrangement of building, change in energy sources, replaceable and repairable components, sustainable lifestyles, etc.

Good Building Science: which means assembling building materials and systems in such a way that the enclosures controls heat, air and moisture so that a durable, energy efficient building is provided (even if made of, for example, natural materials that may have lower performance than substitutes) without using an excess of materials.