It is eco-friendly for various reasons. Two major ones are:
- The lighting is mostly natural, so there is less energy use - The space required per person, and thus the associated materials, is significantly less than a typical US living space. Further, less space means less heating/cooling requirements.
(And compare all this vs. what his neighbor lives in, if we're going to play the environmental card. You know what's better for the environment than all those rooms? Not having all those rooms....)
Just because it's ascetic doesn't automatically translate to it be particularly environmentally low-impact.
Or it may be fantastic. But if we're going to praise this I'd want a more careful accounting. I've noticed people get very careless with their accounting when presented with this sort of thing.
Not only is it used on the title card, "World's Greenest Homes", but the narrator uses the term "green" twice as a synonym for "ecology friendly".
- The title of the video is "The World's Greenest Homes"
- [...] is what shaped architect Gary Chang's green philosophy [...]
People in Hong Kong don't live in tight spaces because they are green but because space is very expensive.
Yes, this isn't by choice, but lack of choice doesn't mean that it is not eco friendly.