Green Sustainable -Maintainable.
I was recently at a BBQ where the question of sustainability came up. It was asked of me directly what exactly does sustainable mean with respect to building. My response was sarcastic when I said it is when people buy any product so long as it has a green leaf on the package. My thought is it is certainly partly about the products we use but, I think it is at least as important how a product is installed – maybe even more important. My next comment was I don’t care how Eco friendly your product is, if it is installed in a manner in which it can not be saved at the first sign of trouble then in the garbage it goes. How Eco is that? I wondered out of the room and when I came back there was a discussion in full flight that after hearing my remark on reusability, the the term sustainable didn’t seem to fit as well. The description ‘Maintainable’ seemed to be a better descriptive. So, ‘Rick’ gets credit for the term as it is very fitting. I think for my purposes the words sustainable/maintainable are forever linked. If a product or system is not maintainable then the claim of being sustainable is surely diminished.
