It seems the word green is being attached to just about everything – from cleaning solutions, to homes, to your favorite TV station.With the popular “greening” of so many facets of our society has come the dubious practice of green washing: people and organizations selectively adopting convenient green elements, labeling the entire effort “green” in their marketing campaigns, and charging high prices for the trendy green label.Green Building is no exception to this trend.
Integrating the environmental and social concerns of the green movement into home building, repairs and retrofits is an extremely complex process requiring a great degree of education, planning, foresight and honesty on the part of the professionals involved.The homeowner should select green building professionals carefully to avoid paying top dollar for a dubious product.Very often, it is the larger contractors who focus on high-end residential building projects, or on low-income housing developments who have the time and capital to stay abreast the changes in this niche market.It is a challenge to find smaller builders and contractors who work on middle-class homes that have had the same resources to educate themselves in green building technologies.
