With new Title 24 energy codes due in June that put more teeth into the Green building codes implemented in January affecting all construction of whatever type there is no choice but to go green in California. California is mandated to be net-zero in energy consumption vs. energy production by 2020. Best plan now for a greener tomorrow whether you like the color or prefer grey. Given the horrific weather this winter and the drought throughout the western states signaling the real cost of global warming and with so much more to come..can we afford not to pay the cost now to save something for our future?

Going green with paint is easy. Paint companies are reducing the VOCs in their paint products one by one, and keeping the quality high. Backed by popular demand, companies advertise their going green intentions because they know it is a selling feature. Power to the consumer for caring about the environment enough to cause companies to make the changes.

I'd love to get more into building and designing green. I think more and more clients are starting to realize that you can achieve the same look and still be green about it. I think in a few years it won't be just a trend, but the industry standard.

tsudhonimh is very correct. Use local products too. Trucking a reclaimed wood beam across three states to be "green" really is questionable considering the fuel consumed. Flourscent and LED lighting helps as does efficant appliances along with Smart Home controls.

Going green as in saving energy and materials. Sure. Rebuilding, Recycling and buying second hand building materials helps. My main concern is saving human energy to make a house as friendly as possible first for the people who live there and then for nature in general. EMF /EHS (Electro Magnetic Fields) is a growing concern for many people which can be easily mitigated by using correct wiring techniques. WIFI can be avoided by hard wiring all Internet and TV connections. Avoiding radiation pollution, at least inside our homes, is my main priority. So using a bit more cable or using a bit more electrical energy to maintain the health of the inhabitants seems legitimate to me. We buy local produce, preferably biological, use a bicycle or public transport, refuse plastic bags, eat vegetarian. Small steps towards a more sustainable future for humans, animals and nature.

You've got to build local to act global. Go green !

I recently put on a new roof. One of the things I did was to choose a white/gray roof color after reading it's good for the environment (light/heat reflects up). I also have good insulation, check for leaks in doors and windows, wear fleece and sweaters (not turning up heat past 68) and only turn on a/c when it's past 82 degrees inside. How can we not be doing our part to help save energy and the environment?

I know I will take some heat (sic) for this, but I am not on the global warming band wagon.

I'm an advocate but I think for a lot of people it's a "feel good" thing without meaningful substance. They say "Oh yes! I'm all for green" but then drive a Durango, live in a house where it requires a five mile drive to get a loaf of bread, a house that's 4000SF (or more!!!!) for four people, etc.

Kinda like the folks who say they're into exercise so the "feel good" workout for them is walking a mile on the treadmill once a week while reading a magazine!

We're doing everything we can! The builder for our new home has been a great help. He regularly uses green practices where they're financially affordable and we can hardly wait for move in time! We decided to go with a smaller home so we could spend our resources on quality, and more environmentally friendly materials.

Our scary experience - one would think that "green" building would be healthy, but when I had a severe reaction to off-gassing in a house we viewed that had an insulated concrete form basement we found out that isn't so! After some research we discovered that apparently green just means use less energy, and we will now have to be careful if we consider using it.

I'm building a cabin and so far the only new materials I have used are the screws and insulation. My friends and I tore down a building and reused all the materials to build the cabin. We got beautiful 12"x24' beams. Not to mention everything else. The insulation I got at 1/8 of the price from craigslist from someone who bought too much. I have been buying left over materials for this spring when the building will start again. Winter interrups the building process. It's a slow and steady process doing it this way but it will be great when it's finished. I like the fact that I am able to use products that otherwise would have gone to waste. The woodstove I got was free I did have to spend the money for the gas to go get it. The only thing wrong with it was it had a big scratch on one side, otherwise it was brand new. And it even came with all the pipes to my surprise.
Green building means different things to different people...the bottom line is to save the footprint on our planet. There are a few things people need to be wary of with some green building just as there is with other building. For example I can't have any carpeting in my home because of all the chemicals in the carpet not to mention all the germs and dirt underneath that builds up - no matter how much you clean and vaccum carpet it carries huge amounts of bacteria. Which I have a reaction to. Little things people don't know can make a huge difference in the way they live.
My cabin may be a slow process but it will be great knowing that I have saved a huge footprint on our planet.

We are in the finishing stages of a 2 year project of renovating a 128 year old one-room schoolhouse into a 2 bedroom/ 2 bathroom home. This was a gut renovation on our part. The previous owner had acquired the building for free and moved it onto a well made cement and cinder block basement foundation and installed a very basic wind/solar off-grid system. By the way, from experience, EVERYONE CAN AND SHOULD INCLUDE SOLAR ENERGY INTO THEIR HOME SYSTEM SOMEHOW, GRID-TIE SOLUTIONS AS COMMUNITY COOPERATIVES IS A GREAT WAY TO START. GET A GROUP TOGETHER AND GO TO YOUR LOCAL MUNICIPALITY ABOUT IT. We have used as much "green" material as possible during this renovation from recycled newspaper cellulose insulation to the re-use of old growth lumber from the original building, to lumber from already down trees in the forest milled by the local miller, to clay/limestone plaster walls, to BIOSHIELD paint. I am writing about the process on a blog: twofishfarmer.wordpress.com in order to give folks another example of how to "think green" in making building choices.
It is ESSENTIAL to consider environmentally-friendly practices for your whole lifestyle. Modern technology is great and has given us the ability to extract and use our natural resources in greater quantities to serve a greater population at great convenience, but our human practices of consumption and hoarding of those resources is out of balance with natures regenerative qualities. We all need to wise-up and not act like ignorant, spoiled, selfish children when we're the adults making the decisions of the world for now. Green can mean a lot of things, so we have to use our brains to make choices. Ask yourself questions like: is the process of shipping bamboo from China to America and manufacturing those tiny, thin strips of wood into hearty floor planks with glues and chemical really more sustainable than buying pine or maple from a local source? (Look for Ash wood as it is being forested now because of the Ash borer epidemic.) We can't be dumbed down by convenience, we have a huge responsibility as human beings!

Environmental Responsibility Is Our Social Responsibility: A growing trend in building, interior design, and architecture is the widespread integration of sustainability into mainstream practice. Producers are increasingly aware of their responsibilities in terms of their environmental impact. Respect for nature and ecologically sound business practices are influencing every facet of design. This conscientious thinking is filtering down to end users – Interior Designers and their clients. http://bit.ly/1odc0t0

We're ultimate recyclers -- ninety year old home with antique or vintage furniture. The only newer things we have are highly energy efficient appliances and heat pump AC and furnace.

Going green in Jamaica is great until the hurricane warning rolls in making concrete block a no joke business. Solar energy is always a good start mostly because Jamaica Public Service (JPS) light company are the biggest crooks on the Island. So going green in a few areas are often by default.

I'm a member of www.facebook.com/groups/naturalhomes It's a fabulous site with great ideas for making and sustaining a completely natural home. I'm building one with straw bales in a year or so. X

We do as much as we can, and as much as our clients are interested in. We also do our best to know how and by who products are made. Our education to clients focuses on the health aspect and keeping their home environment as clean as possible.

Sustainable furniture and building practices are the core of our business! We celebrate the clients who are invested in long term thinking over short term gain and the potential clients on the fence we see as a potential opportunity to educate. We are fortunate as a small business and independent makers to be able to have so much control over our environmental footprint, and in fact these efforts usually save us time and money.

Going green means living responsibly. In our mild climate, solar wastes money and resources; the payback time is forever. (Pacific NW) My special peeve: enormous homes built to LEED standards. How many rooms do a few people need? 10k square feet equals indulgence, not conservation -- no matter what materials you use.

Super important!

wow,nice!!!

You guys should check out what solar city is doing right now in mass! Contact me for more info

green everything including beauty products

green is more expensive so my version is recycling used items using recycled paint,trading plants,keeping trees healthy,and doing my best to use energy star windows doors and insulation to use less fuels

wow,love it.

We are working on this pretty actively. Our house was built in 1969, so there's a lot of room for improvement. Last year we replaced all the windows with low E versions, and added insulation. In a week we are having an energy audit, to find out what else we need to do to get ready to convert from oil heat to a geothermal system. We are in the process of going to either florescent or LED lights throughout the house, and after determining that our site isn't very good for solar collecting, we are looking into a wind turbine for electricity. We try to reuse things instead of just replacing them, so our furniture is a rather eclectic blend of family heirlooms, antiques, roadside discoveries, and new purchases that pull things together. By the end of the year, our goal is to be using zero fossil fuel for heat, and to be generating more than half of our electricity onsite from the wind. The normal stuff, like recycling glass, plastic and bottles, as well as paper, we have been doing for so long now that it doesn't seem like anything special. We may set up a composter this spring, because we have over two acres of land, nearly half of it wooded. The leaves every fall could make a lot of wonderful amended soil if we collected it correctly.

I consider myself an environmentalist and would never make a major purchase - home related or otherwise - without taking environmental factors into account.

I appreciate A.N.A.s comment about EMF /EHS (Electro Magnetic Fields) concerns. Years ago after a health scare I had our home checked for environmental hazards including EMF/EHS, radiation, mold, radon & more - a full screening. The detector picked up a high EMF reading in my daughters room, just off the charts - but nothing you would detect without monitoring aggressively. Turned out it was in the wiring in the wall just next to where her head was...they couldn't fix the wiring issues (and it was safe as far as fires were concerned but not for EMF's) - they were able to paint over the surface of those walls with a heavy duty (and very expensive) coating they use in the walls of buildings and offices where there are a lot of high energy tech devices (places that frequently have clusters of workers with cancer) - after the coating went on the reading went down to nothing...but what if we had never checked? I've had every home checked out since by a company called Environmental Testing & Technology, from mold to EMF's. We have added solar, better hot water heaters, and do the best we can to conserve and re-use.

The best thing about green building is that it deals with multiple issues, in multiple places. Poor in Georgia? Wouldn't air conditioning for less make better sense? Poor in Wisconsin? Wouldn't heating for the price of running a small fan be a great idea? Wouldn't cheaper building materials from local people be a good idea? Wouldn't employing your neighbour? How about building a house that is healthy for the people living in it, and for the people who made the materials it's built with? That sounds reasonable. A house that lasts longer is a good idea. One that is really, really cheaper to run, not just advertised to be so. One that insulates its owners from fluctuation in energy markets sounds just fine.

Oh, and if green building slows climate change, so much the better.

Though for my money, if 97% of experts in automobile safety told me that my car was likely to crash, I would be a fool not to buy insurance, maybe a bigger fool for messing with those odds and getting in. Yet when 97% of climate scientists say that climate change is real, we are not interested in even buying the insurance, but prefer to drive that particular bus over a cliff.

Insurance? Yes. Practical action to improve your life and economic health, in the face of predicted change, and ethical action to help others. This is what green building is built on.

StudioM has got the right idea with her comment about achieving the right look. We've moved beyond ugly solar panels and can now not only preserve but enhance the appearance of our homes in adopting solar. It's an eco-friendly, beautiful option that pays for itself - what other home renovation does that?
More builders are starting to include it as a standard feature. If they aren't, home buyers should ask why!