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Constructed with Care
With all the convenience, urban living means less time on the road, which means less gas usage and less drain on the environment. For today’s hip city dweller, however, there doesn’t seem to be enough ways to go green. As a result, this NextGen Home is earth friendly at every turn.
First there are the products that lower waste by using recycled materials, including Millennium Decking’s use of 90 percent post-industrial materials, DECRA® Roofing’s use of 25 percent post-consumer recycled steel content in their stone coated steel roofing system, and CertainTeed’s use of more than 30 percent pre-consumer/post-industrial recycled material in their FiberCement.
Then there’s the products that have found innovative ways to avoid the use of the harmful chemicals, such as Icynene’s 100 percent water-blown insulation that uses a formula that is completely free of HFCs, considered by the EPA to be of high Global Warming Potential gases (GWP gases). For industry leader Carrier Corp., this green focus can be found in their top-of-the-line Infinity™ HVAC System, which not only kills up to 99 percent of captured cold and flu viruses, it operates using a refrigerant called Puron® that does not harm the ozone layer.
Finally, there are the companies that go above and beyond just making a green product. For CertainTeed this means saving more than 1.5 billion gallons a year by recycling the water used in their plants. For Owens Flooring Company, this means lending their support to the Temperate Forest Foundation, which helps educate students about sustainable forestry and other natural resource issues. From the air conditioner to the roof, there’s so much to feel good about in the NextGen “Urban Living” Home.
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