Natural Capitalism - Required Reading

Fun Facts from "Natural Capitalism" (some paraphrasing)

First: everything below is by definition pre-2000, since the book was published pre-2000.

Second: you must buy this book (used preferably) or check-it-out and read it. Here's an Amazon link. And I'm not getting any kickbacks for this if you're wondering :)

Marketing tip for energy efficient homes: Sell "heater free" homes as "advanced hydronic radiant heat"

The energy required to create the materials in an energy-efficient building can exceed the heating and cooling energy it will use in 50 years.

German Passiv Haus designs use as much energy for all it's needs as a typical German house uses just for small appliances.

In Davis County CA, a 1656 sq ft house was built with no air conditioner. During a 3 day 104-plus degree heat storm, temps never got above 84 degrees.
If routinely built this house could cause $1800 less to build than
conventional ones.

In 1994 Whirlpool won a Swedish design competition with a 32-unit [units are units of electricity to cool a given volume] model.
Yet, since 1988 (eighty-eight!) the Danish firm Gram has been mass producing a 13[!] unit
model improvable readily to only 8 units - and with the best 1997 super insulation, compressor, and other tech. to 1-2 units.

Street widths in America are generally very wide because of some 1950's civil defense planners' notion that heavy equipment would need the space to be able to clear up rubble after a nuclear attack.

An inefficient house is like a bathtub with a leak. The answer is not to install a bigger heater, but to install a plug.

Using bigger pipes and smaller pumps, rather than small pipes and big pumps saved one firm 92% of the energy it would have used for pumping.
Traditional plumbing designs show small pipes with tight curves and tees. If plumbed like a house drainage/waste system (that relies only on gravity typically) with large pipes, gentle curves and wye's instead of tees, enormously less energy is required to pump through those pipes.
Also, in traditional systems pumps and other equipment are placed first, then plumbed. If instead the pipes are laid out first, then the equipment is placed, the large pipe gentle curve option becomes very possible.

It goes on and on.