Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the greenest of them all?

I was listening to a local radio show yesterday and heard a Sussex builder describe himself as the greenest builder in Delaware. Later, driving down Route 9, I spotted a billboard belonging to “the only green builder in Delaware”. That evening on I read another article online about a local builder who said they were selling the greenest homes in the greenest community in the “greenest state”.

This reflects the growing marketing battle over sustainability going on everywhere. It should have been expected from the industry that brought us the biggest and most luxurious home, the most inexpensive biggest home, the most luxurious small home and the smallest big home and on and on.

The truth of the matter is that this flood of comparisons is growing by the day and ends up making a really good case for not believing anyone. Unfortunately there are many really good genuine sustainable builders who are getting sucked up in this brew of greenwashing and exaggeration.

EnergyStar is an example of a third party agency that has successfully set up programs to police everything from televisions to new homes. A major newspaper reported that the Government Accountability Office (the GAO) set up fake companies that submitted nonexistent products to test approval procedures at the EnergyStar program.  "The fake companies submitted data indicating that the models consumed 20 percent less energy than even the most efficient ones on the market.” Yet those applications were mostly approved without a challenge or even questions, the report said.

Without a challenge? It gets worse. Many of the approvals were issued by an automated machine with zero human interaction. An official with the Environmental Protection Agency, which administers the program within the Energy Department, insisted that the automated system is only preliminary and that every product is also screened by a human.  However, many of the Energystar workers told different stories. Yup, the government is at it again.

Where does this leave our local consumers? When I was in my teens, I believed that I should trust no one over 18. This worked for me at the time. Conservative caution may be the route to follow with “green building” until there is more accountability in place to protect the public.

Forget the word green all together. Green is not a designation; it is a poor substitute for honestly defining a product by its features (50% lower electric bills, 25% lower water bills etc). You need to spend time doing your homework, talking with educated professionals and proceeding slowly.