For them, there's only us
Green & Lean’s mission is to create charm, comfort and cost benefits in every home they work on
By Joanna Beresford 09/10/2009
Before the caffeine from my morning coffee hits my bloodstream with its customary verve, I find that the best way to describe the photo the Green & Lean Co. sent me is by counting. First, I count people. Eight of them are standing around a table. One old-fashioned light fixture hangs over their heads, gleaming gold and glass and clinging to the ceiling. Or what’s left of the ceiling, much of which appears in the photo as something like chicken wire and crumbling plaster.
I count six wooden support beams behind the people and some splotchy bits of wallpaper from another century. I can see the beams because the wall that they once supported has mostly been demolished except for some leftover panels. I see one strange-looking portal behind the aforementioned light fixture and I assume that has something to do with outmoded air conditioning or heating, or else it’s a laundry chute and somebody used to live on the roof. Two pages of blueprints cover the table top. Other stuff is hard to quantify, per se, because it’s sort of haphazard and messy. One more thing that is easy to count is smiles. I see eight happy smiles, one for every person in the picture.
You know, it’s weird, because I’m a writer, not a builder, so all I can really do is look at stuff and respond to it, basically through description. But the people in this photo are different from me. They create, envision, organize, draw, pound, consult, measure, collaborate — and they make something that’s inherently useful and good. They build homes, or they rebuild, or they renovate. And they do it with the expertise and deep desire to build beautifully, responsibly and economically.
Well, actually, one guy doesn’t have the experience or the expertise to build. The main guy, in fact, Norm Howe, the founder and CEO of Green & Lean, pretty much had no idea how to build a house until about a year ago. But he did have a really good idea.
“I had a marketing agency in Pasadena for two or three decades,” says Howe. “When I sold it, I wanted to give something back — to the planet, to my grandchildren. I wondered; where can I make a difference? I was concerned with the field of green construction, so I formed a company.”
The company includes an architect, contractor, LEED-certified advisors and a landscape architect named Roy Leisure, from whose name I assume that besides lots of drought-tolerant native plants, Mr. Leisure hangs a lot of hammocks all over the place.
Howe says that in order to manifest his vision, he had to have three things: the team, systems for communicating and producing stuff and a pilot project. And that’s where they’re standing in the happy photo with the walls falling down around them.
Howe bought an 850-square-foot house in Altadena for $200,000 and said, “Let’s learn how to renovate in a green, economical way — because you shouldn’t have to be a millionaire to live right.”
Forty-seven percent of residential energy use goes to heating and air conditioning, and 60 percent of water in California is used in landscaping, which seems like an enormous waste to the Green & Lean team. They introduced double-paned windows, proper insulation, shades, vaulted ceilings and fans. They reused cement and flooring and planted a kitchen garden in recycled wine barrels.
They met challenging building codes and earned permits — and they managed to basically cut the home’s utility bills in half.
“Our goal is to create charm, comfort and cost benefits in every home that we touch,” explains Howe, adding that the company is part of “a whole green evolution. It’s not a ‘revolution’ because we’re not revolting against ‘them.’ There is no ‘them.’”
I love the fact that for them, there is no them, only us. My only problem, however, is that green isn’t green anymore. Or green is the new black. Or the new green is brown or something. Neighbors in my community have been complaining recently that our lovely and rather vast compound is anything but green — because it’s so green. Actually, this morning the view from my balcony is both green and white.
Three paper airplanes have fallen to the lawn below, launched no doubt by my children and their friends during a long holiday weekend.
They look pretty aerodynamic, like sails or arrows — and they’re all pointing east, toward the rising sun, and a pretty little house in Altadena.
For more on Green & Lean, call (626) 578-7305 or visit greenandleanco.com.
Joanna Dehn Beresford can be reached at truewrite@yahoo.com.
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