The walkable, cultural, and entertainment-rich urban, numerous parks and recreation, and car-free transportation make life in Philadelphia wonderful. It’s all accessible via an expanding network of bike paths. We often eat breakfast and dinner at our café table on Pine Street, meeting our neighbors and their dogs in good weather or enjoying the 360″ view from our roof deck with family or friends. There’s always something interesting to see from the rooftop or the sidewalk.

Laura and Paul practice many fun and fulfilling sustainable activities:
– Car-free. Paul and Laura are bike and SEPTA riders. Since giving up our car if a vehicle is needed, we carshare from the half dozen local Zipcar lots, rent Turo for long-distance, and catch an Uber or Lyft. We enjoy being unburdened by car maintenance, searching for parking spaces, and lower annual travel expenses.
– Kitchen garden. We eat from the kitchen garden on the roof for at least two seasons. The small container garden yields Swiss chard, kale, green peppers, carrots, beets, chives, tomatoes, blackberries, and blueberries. Yes, all the soil was hauled by hand up the fire escape.
– Microgreens. The grow light trays in the basement yield microgreens year-round. Favorite super nutritious greens include beets, sunflowers, radishes, peas, and turnips. We also grow plants from seeds to transplant to the rooftop containers.
– Flowers & Trees. Laura is the family gardener, maintaining the Pine Street container garden and the roof deck. Paul and Laura took PHS’s Tree Tenders training to help support the City’s tree canopy. We have four rain barrels/ planters to collect stormwater, reduce runoff, and lower garden water use.
– Kombucha. Every two weeks is Kombucha Day. Kombucha is a fermented drink with tea, sugar, bacteria, and yeast ingredients. The SCOBY (Symbiotic Culture Of Bacteria and Yeast) eats the sugar to naturally carbonate the beverage. We enjoy anise and peppermint-flavored kombucha or just the unflavored drink. Fermented foods provide healthy benefits to one’s microbiome.
– Natto. Natto, a Japanese food created from fermented soybeans, is full of Vitamin K, a super food for bone health. Natto is a food considered ‘difficult’ for the Western pallet. The fermented beans are an acquired taste, sweet and pungent – Laura calls it the “Roquefort of Japan.” More so, the mouthfeel is sticky, slimy, and stringy – but delicious! Paul oversees natto production.
– Composting. We provide our tenants weekly composting services from Circle Compost, a bike-powered composter. In return, we get 5 gallons of processed compost for the garden!
– Glass, Plastic bags & Fabric Recycling. Remark Glass (Bottle Underground) in South Philly’s Bok Building recycles bottle & jar glass into custom art and tableware. A Kickstarter device in the basement takes two weeks of plastic and turns them into recyclable pucks for reuse. We have more recycling than waste by reducing processed foods and making thoughtful consumer choices.
– Carbon reduction. In addition to lowering energy utilization (electric bills), we reduced the embodied carbon by installing low-carbon cellulose and mineral wool insulations and only a minimal amount of recycled rigid insulation at the roof and under the basement and rear bedroom slabs. The increased comfort of living in a renovated historic Passive House is satisfying. We experience more gain than pain with our choices. The next project is a rooftop solar array. We search for new ways to grow carbon, whether literally growing plants and enjoying the miracle of life or learning new ways to lessen our planetary carbon footprint through our consumer choices such as plastic-free toothpaste, shampoo, laundry detergent, avoiding shopping malls for local vendors and suppliers, to name a few.
– Continuous learning. Laura and Paul engage the sustainable community through tours and seminars of our home and other projects, promoting Passive House as a carbon reduction tool. Philadelphia has outstanding architecture and sustainable communities, including the AIA Philly COTE (Committee On The Environment), Interfaith Power and Light, Physicians for Social Responsibility, and Green Building United. Paul and Laura are founders and active GBU Passive House Community leaders.
– Plastic-Free Products- Laura and Paul have reduced their waste. We avoid buying products with lots of plastic or other packaging. Plastic-free soap, shampoo, conditioner, laundry and dish detergent, and toothpaste pellets, to name a few.