Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Manufactured Housing-Foam Core

[Eddie Matejowsky (e.matejowsky]

At 12:26 PM 6/11/95 -0600, you wrote:
>I second Eric Hart's concerns about foam core construction.
>
>The petrochemical industry, and polymer in particular, is a textbook
>example of a polluting industry.  If you are serious about minimizing use
>of polluting technologies, particularly where cost-effective alternatives
>exist, I recommend avoiding foam core.
If equivalent cost-effective alternatives exist we'll all use them. I'm note
in love with a petrochemical industry either. What I'm saying is look at all
the pros and cons - the issue is very complex - labeling all plastics as bad
and all re-newables as good is not in the best interest of the planet. For
example some research (in new zealand I think) showed that paper cups are
actually less 'green' than styro-foam ones because of the lots of energy and
chemical processing goes into paper manufacture. The amount of raw material
and energy per cu meter that goes into foam is probably fairly low. If I was
given the task of reducing the worlds plastic consumption - foam insulation
(especially in foam sandwich) is one of the last things I'd phase out and
foam packaging is one of the first.
Eddie.M.


Edward Matejowsky.
Queensland University of Technology
Centre for Eye Research
email E.MATEJOWSKY [at] QUT.EDU.AU
Wk +61 73 864 5731 Hm +61 73 2825382