BioIntegra is a business concerned with the future lifestyles of the American people. Based in downtown Tacoma, this home construction startup is breaking ground in most every green sector imaginable. Chiefly promoting a wonder product called Air Kreete, via greeninsulation.net, they provide fireproof home insulation that is more energy efficient than anything else on the market. Yes, FIRE PROOF, and the best part is, it’s made from seawater, totally non toxic and totally renewable. In a construction world filled with horrors like asbestos, lead paint, or more recently, toxic foam insulation and uncompostable vinyl siding, an inert building material is like a breath of fresh air from the tailpipe of a two-stroke.
People pump the word “green” in the home market like some food manufactures use the word organic at the grocery. According to the greeninsulation.net Web site, “Known carcinogens are deemed ‘Green’; products composed almost entirely of fossil fuels become ‘Green’; toxicity is literally overlooked as men in hazmat suits enter a family’s home to install a product whose Material Safety Data Sheet warns against direct or indirect exposure at all costs… While such products undoubtedly have their place in the construction industry at large, they are not, by most standards, actually ‘Green.’“
Green should mean “from the earth,” but right now it means money to companies that understand that the perception of the people is changing. More and more people want to be conscious of what they are doing to the environment. “I think we need to realize we are responsible for what we are doing to the earth and what we are doing to ourselves,“ Aaron Gould, co-founder of BioIntegra, tells me as we survey the community garden near where he lives. “Being conscious of our lifestyle is not only stewarding the earth, it’s stewarding our minds.” Gould and his friend Adam Martin started BioIntegra with the hope of finding more and more ways people can be truly “green” right in their own homes.
As well as offering education and green insulation, this hope-instilling business hosts a timber frame workshop on Fox Island. Timber framing is probably the most artistic earth-connecting building practice possible. In a near magical fashion, by cutting grooves and tongues into rough milled wood beams, this method of house framing craftily uses no nails, and ends up being stronger.
This kind of thinking is what we need; as the delusion of our endless consumption erodes, it is wonderful to know people out there who are re-connecting with the earth and rebuilding the systems we need for survival. If the machine falls (cross your fingers), it will be good to know people who can grow their own food and build things by hand.
[BioIntegra, 1516 Commerce St., Suite 152, Tacoma, www.biointegra.us]
