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

[Bill Christensen]

FYI, Ann Edminster's site is http://annedminster.com/  and her direct 
email is ann@ that domain.

On 6/30/14 2:21 PM, RT wrote:
> 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... )
>
>