How sustainable is green building?

If you are at all familiar with the "going green" culture, then you probably recognize the subtle play on words in the title.  The green industry has done a great job of inundating us with buzz words such as, green, renewable, sustainable, efficient, eco-friendly.  But I fear that these buzz words are just becoming a form of socio-political name-dropping, a popular way to brand yourself, instead of what they were/are intended to be: a description of products and practices used to simultaneously 1) make our homes and lifestyles healthier for us and our families and, 2) better manage our natural resources.

As a remodeler I have seen the significant, sometimes drastic changes made to the way homes are designed and built in order to promote energy efficiency and sustainability.  And while many of these changes are well-intended, they themselves can often add to the problem and make it worse instead of making it better.  In order for the green building movement to be successful in making homes healthier for families while also consuming less energy, then there needs to be both a realistic approach and a sustainable method of implementation.

To be realistic, green building practices must be taken on with the right priorities.  Right now too many people in the industry have their priorities as follows: 1) the environment, 2) the savings, 3) the family (inhabitants).  I suggest that these priorities, while correct, are backwards, and we will look at why in another post.  Another aspect to being realistic is keeping the proper perspective and not becoming so narcissistic that we, for example, think that making everyone change the type of light bulb that they use is going to save the planet.  We should have a healthy respect for the size and power of this planet, and remember that it has been here long before us, and will be here long after we’re gone.  We simply need to be good stewards of it while we are here.  More on this later…

Finally, to be sustainable, green building practices need to be able to exist on their own, apart from laws, mandates, and subsidies.  This is not intended to be a political discussion, as politics, like in so many other areas, just makes things worse.  The more we can keep politics out of the green building industry, the better I believe it will progress.  Many of the advances in the industry have come from companies willing to compete to make better, more efficient products that consumers want and can afford.  Consumers want to have energy efficient homes for a number of reasons, but one reason should never be because they have to.  When governmentally mandated practices are put into effect, it becomes more about meeting the mandates than doing what is best.  And when these practices and products are subsidized there is no incentive to reduce costs and develop better and cheaper products and more efficient practices – eventually the whole industry collapses because it is unsustainable.  And that is where I fear we may be heading if we stay on this current approach.  In the next several weeks we will look at a few of these topics more in-depth and I will share my opinions on how we can make the green building movement sustainable.