Mr. Leo’s Neighborhood

One of my favorite TV shows when I was growing up was Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood. The TV show’s creator, Fred Rogers, was from Pittsburgh, and so am I. (I write this post before my beloved Pittsburgh Steelers play for a berth in the Super Bowl, just like they did a lot when I was a kid growing up in 1970s Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.) I was also an avid viewer of Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood in the same decade (1970s) when the show started to gain wide appeal. I liked when Mr. Rogers would show me lots of the neat things in his neighborhood. It was all new to me.
Likewise, my sustainability journey (the purpose of this blog, after all) is in many ways new to me. In my last post I discussed my disappointment because I had found insulation made from almost 100% recycled product with no horrible formaldehyde—which ended up being 10 times the price of the regular insulation available in the Home Depots of the world.
What I did not fully discuss was my happiness about the fact that I now know of not one, but two stores in the Philadelphia area (where I live now) that sell environmentally friendly home and construction products. These are Greendepot.com (in Northeast Philadelphia) and The Environmental Home Store (in West Mt. Airy and Doylestown). I happened to have spoken to and received quotes from both of them on the insulation. But I was pretty excited to know that these stores existed in the first place.
I have not yet visited either store’s showroom, but I have scoped out their websites. The http://www.environmentalhomestore.com seems more oriented to the individual consumer. The http://www.greendepot.com seems more oriented to the contractor/builder. For example, The Home Store product pages tend to have their products displayed in the context of your home; The Green Depot had lots of really interesting information about various technical standards and terms that are applicable to environmentally friendly construction products. Nonetheless, I am sure that both stores gladly work with both homeowners and contractors.
What a happy surprise to find both of these stores in the area I live in! Last summer, my wife and I had happened across a similar store in British Columbia. (www.buildingtree.ca) We were thrilled that such a store existed, but we thought that there was no way such a store would exist anywhere near our neighborhood. We have since learned otherwise. Stores oriented towards sustainable home construction products did not exist in Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood, but they do in mine.