The term’ sustainability’ gets thrown around like crazy, but actually, it usually doesn’t explain anything.
You see it in ads and listings, mostly next to solar panels and wood finishes. You can also see it next to someone mentioning energy efficiency. And most people don’t even question it because there’s a label, so it feels settled. Case closed.
Housing doesn’t work like that, though.
You can’t call a home sustainable because it has one eco-friendly feature or smart upgrade. To make a home truly sustainable (or not!), you need to make a lot of decisions before it’s even built, and then you also need to stick to certain habits once you move in.
If your goal is to make a genuinely responsible choice, don’t start with the label but with asking better questions.
It’s easy to call a home, a product, a material, or a habit sustainable. But is it really sustainable, or does it just seem that way?
Figuring that out takes a bit more work, especially when it comes to houses. And we aren’t saying you need to turn your whole life upside down and go off-grid.
No. You just need to ask better questions.
So, here’s a couple to get you going:
Materials are super important, but not in the way marketing usually frames them.
‘Eco’, ‘natural’, ‘green’, and of course, ‘sustainable’, are all reassuring terms, but they don’t say much on their own. What you want to know here is where all the materials came from and how much energy was required to produce them.
Basically, even if the materials are 100% recycled/reclaimed – which is good – that doesn’t mean that they’re also low-impact, because they might’ve gone through a lot of processing/treatment, which made them less sustainable in the grand scheme of things.
Durability is the factor most people overlook, but it’s so important for sustainability.
If your home needs major repairs and replacements every once in a while, it creates waste and emissions, regardless of how efficient it seemed when it was brand new.
A long-lasting structure spreads its impact on the environment over time, which makes it a far more responsible choice.
Landscaping and everyday habits are major contributors to long-term water consumption, so make sure not to forget that. Some homes are crazy efficient inside but wasteful outside, especially in dry regions.
Despite this, water use doesn’t get nearly as much attention as energy use. But a home that’s truly sustainable is one that cares about water usage.
Life changes, and homes that can’t adapt get replaced.
Homes that are marketed as ‘flexible’ can still be limited by zoning and permanence (depending on the state you’re in). This is the reason why searching for property types like ‘park model homes near me‘ mostly comes paired with Q&As about long-term adaptability and legal use, not just layout/size.
This is super important because park model homes are often bought because of their lower material footprint and a significantly reduced upfront investment cost. They also have the ability to meet specific use cases without committing to a full-blown permanent build.
And does anyone really have to tell you how wasteful this is?
This is why you should look for flexible layouts and room for adjustments; otherwise, you’ll need constant renovations or even a full rebuild. Every remodel you avoid saves materials, energy, and waste.
Your home heavily relies on power grids, roads, water systems, communication networks – things like that.
This is the reason why it’s super important to know exactly how resilient those systems are and if any work needs to be done on any one of them.
When you ask better questions, you’ll be in a position where you can make better decisions – assuming you also got the answers to your questions in the first place.
It’s really THAT simple.
The point of ‘sustainability’ isn’t to build something that’s perfect on all fronts. The entire point of that word is to build/choose something that will hold up. That’s number one.
And number two, go for something that wastes less of… well, everything – less money, less materials, less energy (and ideally, it also needs less attention; that one’s a bonus).
