All of the SSB family have grown up in the Chicago area and we have witnessed how our climate in the Great Lakes region has changed over the last few decades. I remember being able to ice skate on an outdoor pond all winter when I was a kid... sadly, our children have not been able to experience outdoor ice skating on a regular basis because the ice just won’t stay frozen. On a more daily basis our weather seems to be more extreme... sump pumps and battery back-ups are a regular installation to most homes on Chicago’s north shore thanks to regular devastating storms.

We are very concerned about our planet. We hope that we can make a more positive impact in how we build. We are doing what we can: we drive a Prius to reduce our gas usage; we use re-usable water bottles in the office, we recycle the miss-printed documents and dinosaur computer parts... it’s small, but it’s a start.

On the construction front we're trying to be as conscious as we can about the materials and the systems that we install. We are attending regular green building workshops and we're constantly surfing and studying to find lower impact alternatives for our customers. We believe that it is our responsibility to the planet to help educate our customers to make the healthiest decisions for their homes.

But, as Kermit the Frog so wisely said, “It’s Not Easy Being Green.” It seems that the people who have the physical space and financial ability to afford to build green are not choosing to do so, and those who don’t often have the space or budget are the real champions of the cause. The change is going to happen, perhaps more slowly that we want... and it will be a grass root effort (no pun intended). The change will happen because individuals start to demand that it happen. And once the demand happens, the prices will come down. We are ready and eager to help you learn more and make it easier to put earth friendly things into your home.

Learn more about our current green building project at Green Bean Chicago and the homeowners’s own Web site.