[GSBN] Straw Life Cycle Assessment Information Request [GSBN Digest, Vol 38, Issue 9]

[RT]

On Sun, 29 Jun 2014 13:00:01 -0400, <gsbn-request at sustainablesources.com>  
wrote:

>>
>> I am writing because I am a Master's student at HafenCity University in  
>> Hamburg, Germany in Resource Efficiency in Architecture and Planning

>> I am hoping to find information regarding the economic cost,  
>> environmental cost, energy consumption, and air and water pollution at  
>> each stage of straw in its life-cycle. Do you have any information that  
>> you could share with me?

If I were the Pacifica Patootie (aka Ann V. Edminster), I'd probably say:

"Environmental impacts of Straw Bale Construction ?
  Been there, done that, got the Master's Thesis T-shirt."

Fortunately, I'm not Ann and she's far more gracious than I and her 1995  
Master of Architecture (Univ. of California Berkeley) thesis was indeed on  
the subject mentioned above.

One of the tables that sticks in my mind (pretty impressive considering  
it's an almost 20-year old paper) is one which included numbers for  
embodied energy, water consumed in production and indices for waste  
factors for most common building materials and included straw. Recall that  
back in the early 1990's the notion of being able to quantify stuff like  
energy intensity/embodied energy of building materials was still in its  
infancy (like Maya was ?)and there have been some pretty nifty software  
tools developed since then that make LCA's much easier.

Unfortunately, I don't have Ann's edress on this computer but I'm sure  
that there are many on this List who do. Or perhaps a Google search will  
turn up one of the many books that Ann has written and one of the hits  
will include contact info.

Me ? Tea break is over and time to head back out into the searing  
summertime heat of the Great White North to finish splitting some rubbery  
Maple. (Hit it with a splitting maul and it's likely to bounce the maul  
back to smack you in the head. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I should have done this  
back in the winter but... )


-- 
=== * ===
Rob Tom  .  .  . T60BOM
Kanata, Ontario, Canada

A r c h i L o g i c  at  Y a h o o  dot C A
(manually winnow the chaff from my edress if you hit "reply")