The most sustainable home is no home!

A dream house was in my mind for a long time. A minimalist three-room house. All rooms with big windows to ensure natural lighting and adequate ventilation. All rooms would have lots of indoor plants. A beautiful front and back garden too. “My backyard will not be landscaped, will not have any exotic plants,” I decided. Instead it will be just a patch of wilderness inviting butterflies and bees, providing them a much-needed oasis in these days of the rapidly shrinking bee populations amid monotony of croplands.

Then I paused. Am I not entering the territory of disingenuous utopia? Just like thousands of products in Amazon targeting those consumers who are experimenting with, guess what, anti-consumerist minimalism!

Is my shiny new sustainable home what the world need right now? Does it help to reduce my carbon footprint in any way? Not a drop in ocean. Concrete’s Carbon Footprints are massive. As per the recent estimates, cement manufacturing alone is responsible for about 8% of anthropogenic CO2 emissions. There are alternatives, albeit expensive, claiming to be eco-friendly; wooden houses for instance. Unfortunately there are trade-offs; wood would necessitate deforestation, and there are structural issues. Building a house is a zero-sum game!

The planet earth already has a plenty of houses; some are centuries old. A significant portion of the houses are empty too. Agreed, those houses might never would be dream house. Alexander Pope said ““Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.” By deciding not to build yet another house would be my little act of kindness to this world, and our future generations. A baby step towards sustainability.