Carbon Neutral on a Shoestring

photos by Stefano Buonamici for The New York Times

TreeHugger Petz dominates the home section of the New York Times with a profile of her amazing green renovation of a flat in an 18th century building in Barcelona. When she started it had no heating or plumbing; when she finished she had built " an object lesson in how fully one can realize green ideals on a budget in an existing home in any city."

“Here people have an idea that sustainable is for the rich or that it’s something horrible and low-quality hippy,” Ms. Scholtus said. “I wanted to see if it was possible to make it inexpensive but also, you know, cool.”

Penelope Green writes in the Times that "in making her new home livable, Ms. Scholtus’s challenge to herself was to hew as closely as possible to the three R’s of environmentalism: reduce, reuse, recycle." but she also notes that Petz has added two words to the list that I think should become universal: Restore and Respect.

Read it all in the New York Times, watch the terrific slideshow, and get more information at Petz's site R3Project.

More on Petz Scholtus and her posts in TreeHugger