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October 22, 2007

Which green is more green?

I was realizing the other day that "green" -- sustainability and the environment -- seems to be everywhere these days (finally!). You see it in the news, hear about it on the radio, and get it sold to you in practically every store you walk into. Seeing all the hype out there got me thinking about what a broad and complex topic green building really is. There's such a range of projects that fit under the label of "green." Let me give you two opposing examples of what I’m talking about:

Right now at my day job I’m working on a gut remodel of a small commercial building. The project is about 14,000 square feet and is slated to be LEED Gold-certified by the U.S. Green Building Council. (For those of you who aren't familiar with LEED, it's a national rating system that certifies mostly commercial buildings based on environmental standards.) The many decisions that go into the design of the building -- from the energy use of the heating and cooling systems, to the type of insulation, to the mix design of the concrete -- are assessed through complex modeling and analysis by engineers and consultants. It's a complicated process with a lot of money at stake and potentially BIG positive results.

On the other end of the spectrum, there's the story of an old friend of mine who now lives in Seattle. He and his girlfriend bought an old house about seven years ago and have been working since to update and modernize it. Check it out in Popular Mechanics or The Seattle Times. They are the best example of DIY’ers I’ve ever known, and they did it ALL green, from insulating the entire house with far more cellulose than required by code, to designing on the fly around found items from the local salvage yards, to reusing old timbers from the attic to mill their cabinets. Fortunately they had the benefit of a great community of friends willing to help and the fortitude to stick it out in conditions that I would never consider other than for a weekend camping trip. Plus Rob has a background in engineering so he could do some cool math to help make good decisions. But the bottom line was almost always how to save money AND do the right thing at the same time. And it looks like they have.

So my thought -- and my question to you -- is which of these projects is more green? Is it the big commercial one with the big money and the big impact? Or is it the down and dirty do-it-yourself project without the complex decision-making algorithms? Let me know what you think (and of course why)!


Peter Kellner
Columnist, Going Green Blog

Posted by pkellner at October 22, 2007 8:14 PM

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Comments

The Seattle down & dirty project reused materials already in the home or gathered locally. I'm assuming that the large project is trucking in new materials from across the country. When looking at overall "green-ness" I would also take into consideration the electricity used by all the engineers & contractors, the impact of shipping in materials, the fuel spent coming to & from the project, the cost to manufacture the efficient materials, etc. It all points to the Seattle project as the truly green one.

Posted by: Wendy at October 30, 2007 1:03 PM