Green Living

My friend Kris (of the mover and shaker design blog, Better Living Through Design) recently bought a fixer upper in Atwater Village. And if anyone can fix it up right, it’s her. There’s only one thing she still needed: some green counsel as she moves forward.

So I called Green Irene, the green makeover company, to come and help. Our Green Irene was named Jeff. (And to answer the most pressing question up front, there is no Irene, just the founders who have other, non-rhyming names.)

Jeff Horowitz is one of the many Green Irene eco-consultants in cities across the country. He’s eco-smart for sure and even has LEED certification to prove it.

The company provides consultations for homeowners, apartment dwellers and businesses to reduce their environmental footprints, covering topics like energy efficiency, waste reduction, non-toxic living, water conservation and everything in between. For an H&R Block kind of price, you get a home makeover green edition complete with a walk-through of your space, a report with recommendations and an action plan, along with three-month membership to a comprehensive Green Irene database full of everything you’ll need to know about walking the talk.

Jeff gave Kris and me a mini-version of all that tailored specifically to the area she was most interested in: energy. Jeff dished out facts aplenty and a cool packet brimming with tools like calculator sheets to figure out how much money Kris could save by adopting certain actions.

I know we’ve heard this before, but sitting on Kris’s porch last Saturday I was impacted anew: CFLs use a quarter the energy of incandescents. So let’s say you have 24 bulbs (that’s a lot of light, but I was shocked to find that even my little apartment has 19) and you spend the 265 bucks it’ll take to replace them all. You’ll end up saving close to $3,000 over a few years! Sometimes it takes somebody putting it that way to get in gear.

The final component of Green Irene’s approach is its product selection. Yes, you could purchase these anywhere, but Irene has done the work to research and select products that come with her/his/its seal of approval. And each listing tells exactly how much you’ll save, be it energy, water, greenhouse gases, money or some combination of that list. My favorites that Jeff recommended? The power strip with a remote switch, eliminating bending of tired backs and draining of phantom power (which accounts for around 10% of your energy bill) and the eight dollar refrigerator thermometer that measures if your fridge is over the correct temp. (37 to 40 degrees F), so you can turn it down and save some juice. (You may need consultant ID #1130 to have a looksee.)

As for Kris’s pad, it turns out she can make some small changes to make a sizeable difference while she saves up for solar panels and insulation and goes back to sprucing up her kitchen remodel in the meantime.

To set up your own green makeover, contact Jeff in L.A. at (949) 689 – 6313 or jeff.la@greenirene.com, or set up an appointment directly on the website. If you live elsewhere, check www.Green Irene.com for an eco-consultant near you.

Tags: green consultations, green home, green Irene, Green LA, Green Living, Green Living In L.A., green makeover, sustainable home