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USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION
CLOSE TO HOME
Climate-Friendly Construction Environmental activist builds sustainable house from scratch
Story and photography by Melody Burri
W
HEN NEW YORK’S BLUSTERING winter winds
or sizzling summer heat strike, Kathleen Draper will be unbothered. The Gorham, N.Y.-based climate change activist has constructed a 1,500-squarefoot low-embodied carbon home out of nontraditional materials such as straw bales and other carbon-sequestering materials that she says will help reduce global warming and keep her comfortable inside, despite the weather outdoors. “I call it my ‘dwelling on drawdown’ project,” she says, referring to the future
point at which the atmosphere’s greenhouse gas levels stop climbing and start declining, halting climate change. Draper is U.S. director for the Ithaka Institute for Carbon Intelligence, a nonprofit focused on the use of biochar, a charcoallike substance that results from burning organic material from agricultural and forestry waste. She is incorporating biochar into her home’s construction. The more than 200 straw bales Draper used were the waste product of 2 to 3 acres of wheat harvested locally. And much of the structure’s white oak, cherry, ash and hemlock lumber was cut nearby. Why did Draper decide to build a CONTINUED
Kathleen Draper, shown here with volunteer Dave Vail, is using more than 200 straw bales to build her low-embodied carbon home in Gorham, N.Y.
