Is everything green?

Just leaving the International Builders Show in Las Vegas, and even though attendance was down, it is as overwhelming an experience as ever. First, let’s get rid of the formalities. Las Vegas has to be the most surreal place on the face of the earth. The scale is not even close to being human - everything is huge – the buildings, the roads (typically 8 lanes wide), casinos, hotel rooms, and this trade show. Everything is designed to make sure you are completely disoriented all the time – walking through a hotel is an endurance test and a psychological puzzle – you feel like a rat in a maze, only the rat is smarter because you can’t figure out how to get out.

As to the show – green is definitely the color. Everyone and everything is, or wants to be seen as green. People are throwing around phrases like greenhouse gas emissions, carbon footprint, sustainability, and the like as if their lives depended on it. I’m not quite sure where this trend is headed, and while I am glad that there is finally some serious attention being paid to green building, I am very afraid that the general public, as well as much of the industry, is going to end up giving it a lot of lip service and we will see more and more greenwashing and flat out misrepresentation (read: LYING) about materials and methods and how green they are. I wade through literature and websites and I will share the best (or worst) examples of obfuscation that I can find.

Stepping back into some semblance of reality, I attended a news conference today which presented the results of a study of the efficiency of homes in California. Accompanied by some pie charts that very clearly spelled out the study’s results, it was pointed out that while homes account for about 14% of the energy usage in CA only – 0.12% of the energy is consumed by new homes. This is very telling data that states the case all too clearly that if we avoid addressing efficiency in existing homes, we are seriously missing the boat. It sounds like the new administration has gotten this message, let’s hope that they get the ball rolling on existing housing improvements and do it right.
Graphic courtesy www.consol.ws

Risky Living

A friend of mine recently had an extremely unpleasant experience, one which I would wish on no one else. Due to an unfortunate series of events, police entered his house and stumbled upon a certain illegal substance, determined that he was a hardened criminal, and hauled him off to jail, handcuffed, in the back of a patrol car. This being a Saturday night, he spent all day Sunday in jail, posted bond at 7AM Monday morning, and was finally released Monday evening after a twelve hour wait, a victim of a slow bureaucratic criminal justice system. The inefficiencies and frustration of dealing with an opaque system (the county jail), and being confined with a wide range of unfortunates and criminals provided him some perspective and led to some important revelations and decisions in his life.

His short stay in jail exposed him to people in dire circumstances, many of whom were unable or unwilling to accept their own part in their problems. He shared that almost to a man, everyone insisted that they were falsely accused, not guilty, or otherwise not responsible for their personal plight. Realizing that he needed to accept responsibility for his actions, he ended his confinement taking full responsibility for his actions, vowing to change his behavior so as to not every again jeopardize his freedom. This acceptance of responsibility and eagerness to make necessary changes is admirable behavior, one that should be used as a model for most of society. I’m not saying that we are all involved in illegal activity, but we are doing things that are detrimental to our lives, our country, and the planet that we can and should change for the better.

Many of us in the green building industry are focused on making better buildings, which is a good and important thing. I am concerned, however, that, as a society, we are not taking full responsibility for the effects of our actions, and until we do, we continue to cause and exacerbate environmental, social, and economic problems that we are in a position to solve. What if we all decided at once to stop building oversized houses with huge garages? How about only building homes meeting the highest level in one of the available green building programs? I know that this won’t happen quickly or universally. If you refuse to give a a customer what they want they will just go to someone else. We all need to make a living and can’t run off customers, particularly given the current state of the economy. But we should take the time to discuss efficient and sustainable options with our clients and push them as far as we can to make the right decisions for their homes. Let’s start taking responsibility for our actions and changing our behavior for the better. We may not end up in jail, but some of the long term consequences may be just as bad.

Green from the Start Part III

This one rambled off course somewhat, so please forgive me...

I hear one particular question very frequently these days – “How much more does it cost to build a green home?” While this is an excellent question, it makes me realize just how far we still have to go in order to move towards a completely sustainable economy. Everything comes down to dollars with everyone. Even people with practically endless amounts of money are cost conscious. Not that it is a bad thing to be aware of what you are spending, but it isn’t good to make every decision based on cost. As green building professionals, we have a long way to go in effectively demonstrating the value of sustainable buildings. There is the cost saving model – investing now in energy efficiency will pay off in reduced bills in the future. This works, but only to a point. Most of us are all stuck in a big box/discount store mentality. I am reminded of a great line of Woody Allen’s “in my family, it was a sin to buy retail”. In the 1970’s this was a humorous cultural stereotype, but now it seems to have become the mantra for most of our country. Development since the 1950’s has elevated the automobile to god-like status, and practically killed independent retail businesses. Between warehouse discount stores, malls across the country that look frighteningly alike, “outlet” malls, and on-line retailers, we can all shop for the absolute cheapest prices for everything. This mentality has taken over everything in our lives, and our goal to find the cheapest price controls many of our most critical decisions.

One of those critical buying decisions in our lives is our personal residence. For most of us, our house is the biggest and most important investment we will make, but, we often know less about the homes that we buy than our car or stereo. This isn’t necessarily our fault – it is easy to get objective information about mass produced manufactured products, but there are no clearinghouses for information about new or existing homes.

Inspection services provide a certain amount of information, depending on the skills and honesty of the individual inspector, someone who is often referred by a real estate agent and is relied upon to provide enough information, but not enough to jeopardize the sale. The closest we have to truly objective information about homes are green building certification programs available in the marketplace. These programs generally do a good job of assuring purchasers that their house meets a certain level of performance, but they are still a long way off from providing comprehensive quality control that should be available for purchases of this magnitude. I find an interesting parallel between the lack of oversight on home renovation and construction and investing. We put our life savings in the hands of “experts”, many of whom are not much more than clerical level help in large investment firms, expecting them to help us save for retirement, with no assurance that they will succeed, no insurance that our money won’t disappear (Every heard of Bernie Madoff?), and no transparency about the fees they are charging. We do much the same with our homes. Too many people in the construction industry have little if any training or experience, and there is no way to determine the skill level of the individuals who put your house together. Construction is a business, and the goal of business is to make money, which, until recently, many contractors did very effectively. We only wish that they had done as good a job on the construction of their buildings. The recent excesses in the home building industry, not unlike the financial industry, have been fueled by profit and greed. How do we change this? Can we take 100% of the profit motive out of building and remodeling? Should we require high performance homes by regulation? Can we enforce the building of green homes? Why isn’t healthy and efficient housing a right, instead of a privilege? Education is a right, legal representation in criminal trials is a right? I think it is time that we consider that all housing should, at a minimum, be healthy, efficient, durable, and sustainable – call it green, call it purple, just do it. All we need are some solid requirements, and the ability to enforce them, and we are on our way to a healthier and more efficient future. This would help to level the playing field by requiring better homes, eliminating the cost differential between “green” and “standard” homes, giving us a head start towards a healthier more efficient future.