Construction is conventionally a carbon-intensive industry – especially in a place like Brooklyn where most homes, coffee shops, book stores and restaurants are built primarily with concrete, mortar, brick and stone. Some degree of greenhouse gas emission is inherent in the production of all construction materials, but none more so than the cement which makes up our foundations and holds our brownstones together. After energy generation, the cement industry is the 2nd-largest CO2 emitting industry in the United States and the world – responsible for about 5% of all man-made carbon dioxide emissions.

Cement manufacturing entails a chemical process known as calcination in which limestone (i.e. calcium carbonate, CaCO3) is heated with small quantities of other materials, namely clay, in a kiln to 1450° C; this process liberates a molecule of CO2from the calcium carbonate to form calcium oxide (CaO). The clinker – which is the resulting hard end product of calcium dioxide – is then ground up with gypsum into powder form to produce what is commonly known as “Portland cement”.

From start to finish, roughly 0.9 kilograms of carbon dioxide is produced for every 1 kilogram of cement that is produced – 50% from the end-products of the chemical process itself and 40% from the burning of fuel to heat the limestone to such a scorching temperature, the rest mostly in transportation and administration. More than 70% of all energy consumed by cement kilns is generated by burning coal – the worst of all fossil fuels in terms of greenhouse gas production, about 12% from petroleum coke, 9% from waste fuels, 4% from natural gas and the rest from oil and coke.

Industry leaders and environmental scientists are trying to devise ways of reducing the environmental impact of cement production. The Environmental Protection Agency, for one, is trying to prod the U.S. cement industry to substitute coal-powered kilns to kilns which run on any fuel other than coal, CO2 capture and sequestration, alternative processes of concocting calcium oxide, etc. The state of California’s recently-enacted carbon emissions standards are forcing their large cement industry to invest in cleaner, less carbon-intensive production methods. We support these regulatory efforts, but we also believe that New York’s green contractors can do much more than to sit back and wait for change to come from the top down.

Here at Eco Brooklyn we have devised an even more effective and remarkably simple means of reducing the carbon footprint of our construction and renovation projects: conservation. Such a large amount of the cement produced in U.S. factories for some reason or another is never actually used to mix the mortar or cement it was intended for. Either contractors estimated too high when they made their bulk purchases and are left with excess cement that they don’t need, or somewhere in transit from the factory to the individual vendor cement bags are ripped or broken and cannot be sold. This surplus is considered trash on the free market – very few contractors make the effort to buy second-hand cement, so every year they take untold tons of perfectly good cement and just throw it in the landfill. From our perspective, this is throwing the baby out with the bathwater!

If there is any way that NY green builders can cut down on the carbon footprint of construction/renovation jobs, it is by reducing this wholly unnecessary waste of cement; for every 1,000 kg of cement that is thrown out, our air and our oceans are polluted with 900 kg of CO2 for no reason at all!

As a green contractor, Eco Brooklyn salvages this otherwise landfill-bound cement from conventional contractors who have overstock and merchants who are stuck with unsellable bags – not only are we reducing the volume of waste sent to our already-overcrowded landfills, but we are using it to make the homes and businesses of the 21st century.

We do procure some of our cement by conventional means, but we salvage as much as possible via conservation. By recycling salvaged cement, Eco Brooklyn is busy conducting construction projects without there needing to be any additional cement produced, energy consumed and greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere. By adhering to our environmentalist mission by this and other practical methods, this green contractor is committed to limiting our carbon footprint to an absolute minimum. And that is not the only benefit of salvaging cement and material conservation; Eco Brooklyn’s procurement methods are also crafted to reduce unnecessary costs from our overall production process, to reduce the burden on our city’s public sanitation infrastructure, to curb the volume of waste sent to our landfills, to do a favor to other businesses in the neighborhood and to invest in the health of our community.

Moreover, this NY green contractor is also developing new methods of building and renovation which can cut cement out of the production process as much as possible. Instead of basic concrete which is usually used for foundations, basement walls and floors, Eco Brooklyn is perfecting a rammed earth technology which simply uses the earth and stones dug up from the ground mixed with the most durable and sustainable ratio of cement and water. And instead of pouring plain old concrete for the front walkway and steps, we are using natural stones, scrap bluestone and tile. We don’t need to invest in the costliest and most exotic foreign technologies – in order to turn every brownstone into a greenstone all we can procure most of our materials straight from our own backyards – literally!

An LED driver is a self-contained power supply that has outputs matched to the electrical characteristics of your LED or array of LEDs. There are currently no industry standards, so understanding the electrical characteristics of your LED or array is critical in selecting or designing a driver circuit. Drivers should be current-regulated (deliver a consistent current over a range of load voltages). Drivers may also offer dimming by means of pulse width modulation (PWM) circuits. Drivers may have more than one channel for separate control of different LEDs or arrays.
definition from led center

Mean Well’s Cost Effective PLP-60 PCB Type LED Power Supply. A nice built-in design for low cost applications.

LED Drivers should not be looked at as inefficient devices. Here is an example of a press release for a 96% efficiency device.

LEDs without drivers?!?! YES! Acriche™ 4W AC LED from Seoul Semiconductor can be directly plugged into the AC line voltage without a converter or separate power supply. (Watch your fingers!)

So as you can see an LED driver is the type of device that comes in many flavors. It depends on your system wattage needs, for the associated cost increase. In an attempt to recycle reuse and repurpose we, here at EcoBrooklyn, decided in a ‘build it forward’ , commonly associated with a ‘green builder’, attitude, to find some drivers of our own. With some ingenuity and help from our friends (our thanks to you) I undertook the idea of using computer ATX power supplies as a regulated Voltage source. Since an LED is a current driven device any fluctuation in voltage even down to a tenth of a volt can cause a large increase in current flow. This can damage or destroy the LED at worst or cause flickering at best, which can have quite a discomforting effect. So with this in mind and the knowledge that computer electronics are very sensitive to voltage fluctuations on a small but reasonably similar level, I had a great match up. Other standard functions include short circuit, over load, over voltage protections and over temperature shutoff. As well as more than one voltage source in the original package. This we can use to allow more than one type of LED being powered by such VCCS (Voltage controlled current source) supplies.

This is more a technical point but something worth considering when
using materials. For example the “problem” with recycled cellulose is that it is
degraded. There is a green term for this but I forgot it. Basically
you are taking a higher purpose material – newspaper that is used to
transport knowledge – and degrading it to ripped up pulp to stuff in
walls. It’s like using a cell phone as a paper weight. Sure you are
recycling but there is degradation in the use.

The ideal recycling process is where the material is used for the same
level or even higher. An example of this would be to re-use the paper
as future newspapers. An example of higher use might be to take old
wall studs and turn them into cabinets. There is room for
interpretation as to what is “higher” or “lower”.

Not that I’m bashing cellulose since it’s one of my favorite for
soundproofing (PolyISO is my favorite for heat insulation). But before
I use a “new” recycled insulation I try to find old recycled
insulation from other houses first (as long as it still has life in it).
That is an example of same level recycling.

What you are doing here is taking the concept of recycling a step further. Recycling is good. Same level or higher level recycling is great.