To us, building green means building multi-generational energy efficient buildings that most of the population can afford. Reduce, Reuse, THEN Recycle
The first thing people should learn when “going green” are the three R’s: Reduce, Reuse, then Recycle. Unfortunately, our society often skips the first two because they involve more effort than recycling. This being said, people are starting to re
duce their waste. It is very common to see people with reusable water bottles to avoid using plastic water bottles. The main goal of “going green” is to save the environment, and that starts with reducing. The problem is that at this point, society has barely transitioned from recycling to reusing. How can we as a society move to reducing our waste in a major way? The answer, as you may have expected is “go green”, but more specifically Extreme Green. Extreme Green Design Build focuses on making a big impact on the environment by focusing on what most individuals spend the most money on, their home. Robert Montoya, owner of Extreme Green, first became interested in green building when his family lived in Israel. “When we first moved to Israel we took pictures of every old building we saw,” stated Robert, “but soon we realized that all the buildings were old. We couldn’t take pictures of everything, so we decided to only take pictures of buildings 2,000 years old or older.” The reason these buildings are all at least 1,000 years old, is because they were built with concrete. The issue with wood construction is after only 50 years or less the buildings are forced to be torn down. This involves multiple diesel trucks, a lot of waste from old materials that cannot be reused, and then further waste from rebuilding. Sometimes the costs are so high that these buildings never get rebuilt. Robert has personally observed this effect in Albuquerque. “The homes in the war zone used to be nice, but they were being torn down after only 50 years. They would get worn down, and then drugs followed.” This inspired him to try to find a way to change the way our society looked at building homes. Robert has been a major name in New Mexico’s green building community since 2001 with the opening of his factory which produced a green building product called Rastra. (Figure 1) This product was made by mixing concrete and recycled styrofoam. Mayor Martin Chavez worked closely with Robert to collect all the styrofoam needed for these products. Eventually he noticed the issues that occurred with this product and began to think of a better green building product. In 2007, he began the construction of his own green building product called Mightywall. (Figure 2) With this new product he started his own construction business called Extreme Green Design Build. When building a new home, the first thing a client will do is go to an architect to design the building and then go to a contractor to get a bid on it. Extreme Green both designs and builds. The designing process is unique because they use 3D design software so that the client can see what their house will look like before getting ready to build. Robert states, “concrete construction is usually more than wood, but with the right design you can make it equivalent.” One of their major accomplishments was in 2009, when New Mexico Business Weekly named Extreme Green Design Build the number one residential green builder in New Mexico. Figure 1 Figure 2
Even with all these advances in green building, Robert refuses to stop there. He is constantly working to give more to his customers. Mightywall homes are so well insulated that they can go off grid. This however does not help people who do not have Mightywall homes, therefore Robert has come up with a product called “Outsulation”. He covers up cracking stucco on homes with styrofoam and re-applies the stucco. This causes insulation to be improved as well as keeping the stucco from needing to be re-applied for longer than usual. In the long run, Robert hopes to spread throughout the country and eventually overseas. He hosts green building seminars to help teach people about the options when going into green building. Eventually he hopes to set up factories across the country as well as in countries in need of infrastructure. To begin work on this, Robert traveled to Haiti in order to work with rebuilding strong and long lasting buildings for the people who were forced to begin living in tent cities. Extreme Green Design Build isn’t just a great construction and design company, but wants everyone to be able to help in making the world a greener place.
