When many people first think about building a green home, it is the materials and products that come to mind: insulation made from recycled newspaper and decking made from recycled plastic, for example. Product selection is an important part of green building, but it is generally not as important as energy performance or where the house is built (to minimize automobile use and protect natural areas), or measures to ensure a healthy indoor environment.
It is certainly a good idea to select green building products whenever possible, but note that it is possible to build a home that would be considered green by almost any measure — a compact, healthy, energy-efficient home close to alternative means of transportation—using few if any products that are specifically considered green (i.e., products listed in the book Green Building Products). Conversely, a house could be built almost entirely from these green products, yet not be very green at all — because it isn’t energy-efficient, because it’s much bigger than necessary, because it necessitates driving 20 miles to get to work or shop for groceries, or because building it harmed an ecologically sensitive area.
That said, this addresses insulation methods and materials and products to use in green building. We will address some general issues related to material use and environmental assessment of materials, then review the criteria used to designate building products as “green.”
There are really three stakeholders that can benefit of having energy independence and from the use of green building products: the people who work with the materials in the factory and on the job site; the homeowners who live with the materials; and the local, regional, and global environments that are protected through the production and use of the materials.
The direct benefits of green building products to workers and homeowners are the easiest to justify. A construction company can save money if its employees don’t require protective gear and if they stay healthier, losing less time to sick leave. And that company can build loyalty among its employees if it works hard to maintain healthy working conditions.
Homeowners benefit from green building products by being able to live in a safe, healthy home, the importance of which almost goes without saying. Since we spend more than 90% of our time indoors, it’s imperative that our indoor environments don’t make us sick. There are thousands of chemicals we introduce to our homes whose health effects we know almost nothing about: plasticizers in vinyl siding, brominated flame retardants in carpet padding, and fluoropolymers in electrical cabling, for example. Some of these chemicals are now showing up in the blood of humans worldwide and are being linked to behavioural and human development problems.
Many green building products provide their benefit in the operation of a home. Some are more energy-efficient or more water-efficient than conventional products; others are more durable, or will require less maintenance. These direct benefits will save homeowners money or time over the life of the home and can easily be justified on those grounds.
Selecting green products because they protect the environment can be more difficult to justify, but is also important. While most homeowners will be sympathetic to concerns about rainforest destruction, or ozone depletion, or toxic chemical releases from manufacturing plants, those impacts are far away and most of them don’t directly affect us. However, growing awareness about global warming is helping consumers understand the fact that actions in one place have environmental impacts far away. If, as many scientists believe, global warming is going to become a lot more apparent over the coming years and decades, it may become easier to draw the connection between our purchasing decisions and a wide range of impacts. If that happens, the environment could become a much bigger factor in purchasing decisions.
