小房子對(duì)環(huán)境的影響很大：研究

小房子對(duì)環(huán)境的影響很大：研究

Tiny houses are annoyingly cute and wonderfully impractical. They’re also good for you — and everyone else.

小房子可愛得令人討厭，又非常不實(shí)用。但它們對(duì)你和其他人都有好處。

Tiny house dwellers slashed their energy consumption by nearly half after downsizing, according to a new study by environmental design researcher Maria Saxton.

環(huán)境設(shè)計(jì)研究員瑪麗亞·薩克斯頓的一項(xiàng)最新研究表明，小戶型的居民能耗減少了近一半。

In her doctoral thesis, Saxton surveyed 80 people who had moved from a full-sized home to a “tiny” home for a year or more. She then calculated their ecological footprints, or how much space they need to sustain their current behavior, including housing, transportation, food, goods and services.

在她的博士論文中，薩克斯頓調(diào)查了80個(gè)人，他們從一個(gè)全尺寸的家搬到一個(gè)“小”家已經(jīng)一年或更長(zhǎng)時(shí)間了。然后，她計(jì)算了他們的生態(tài)足跡，或者他們需要多少空間來維持他們目前的行為，包括住房、交通、食品、商品和服務(wù)。

Her research showed that tiny home residents’ average ecological footprint was about 9.5 acres, down from about 17.3 acres for regular-sized homes.

她的研究顯示，小戶型居民的平均生態(tài)足跡約為9.5英畝，而普通戶型居民的平均生態(tài)足跡約為17.3英畝。

In other words, tiny home residents reduced their energy consumption by 45%.

換句話說，小戶型居民減少了45%的能源消耗。

Better still, she found that moving into a tiny house had a major impact on a person’s wasteful behavior generally.

更好的是，她發(fā)現(xiàn)搬到一個(gè)小房子里對(duì)一個(gè)人的浪費(fèi)行為有很大的影響。

“As a whole, I found that after downsizing people were more likely to eat less energy-intensive food products and adopt more environmentally-conscious eating habits, such as eating more locally and growing more of their own food,” Saxton writes. “Participants traveled less by car, motorcycle, bus, train and airplane, and drove more fuel-efficient cars than they did before downsizing.”

薩克斯頓寫道:“總的來說，我發(fā)現(xiàn)，換了小房子后，人們更有可能少吃能源密集型食品，養(yǎng)成更環(huán)保的飲食習(xí)慣，比如多在本地吃飯，多種植自己的食物。”“與換房前相比，受訪者乘坐汽車、摩托車、公共汽車、火車和飛機(jī)的次數(shù)減少了，駕駛的燃油效率更高。”

They also recycled more and bought less consumer goods.

他們還回收了更多的垃圾，購(gòu)買了更少的消費(fèi)品。

Here’s to the gnome life.

為侏儒的生活干杯。