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From the Father of Green Chemistry to that guy from This Old House, a couple dozen videos of speakers and presentations from Greenbuild '08 have been posted at Greenbuild 365, "USGBC's interactive green building learning portal."
Among them, there's a very special episode in particular. You may have heard that our own Alex Wilson received a Leadership Award from the USGBC during Greenbuild. (Okay, the story's getting old, but the quality keeps getting better.) Check out Mister Wilson now!
I'm not usually all that comfortable in front of a camera, but I had fun walking the Greenbuild 2008 Expo floor with a video crew from CNNMoney.com and Fortune magazine.
We focused on four or five technologies in our tour, only two of which made it into the final two minute video (after a nice lead-in by Scot Horst of 7group). The CNN crew were looking for photogenic presentations, while I was looking for products I believe in to talk about. I'm pleased with how it came out in the end — though it would have been nice to cover a lot more stuff!
This is the really slick two-minute video that was projected onto the giant auditorium screens just before our own Alex Wilson was given a USGBC Leadership Award during Greenbuild. Get a sense of our offices in the historic Estey Organ Factory... see some of the faces behind the work... and meet Roxy Wilson, the Retriever...
I promised participants at my GreenBuild session (Nutrition Labels for Products: Taking control of deciding what is green for you) a list of the efforts to bring clarity - through summaries, comparison tables, databases, whatnot - to the plethora of green building product certifications out there. I should have done this in the session, but here it is now:
Building Products only:
Greenbuild 2008 included the first ever Green Homebuilder's Day, a conference within the much larger overall conference. Homebuilder's Day welcomed old hands and newcomers to the field of green building, and the sessions were full. BuildingGreen organized the event, which coincided with the announcement of our soon-to-be-available, residentially oriented Green Building Advisor.
That this day of educational sessions took place at all is a good sign for the future of houses in America and for softening their environmental impact. But in a general session on that topic, three speakers--Kevin O'Connor, host of "This Old House"; Tedd Benson of Bensonwood Woodworking Company; and Steve Kieran of architecture firm Kieran Timberlake--all expressed the view that American homebuilding is fundamentally flawed, and that the current mortgage meltdown is only one symptom among many.
(A Project Frog zero-energy classroom is in the background.)
There were quite a few of these placards in booths on the expo hall floor at Greenbuild. They were nice-looking signs, and seemed to give some green cred. But... no. As it says on GreenFormat's website, " GreenFormat is open to any manufacturer that wants to list a product."
Now, I don't want to dis GreenFormat — BuildingGreen is actually working with CSI on this project, which is sort of an offshoot of their MasterFormat system — but being listed doesn't actually mean anything. Product manufacturers pay a fee to be listed; they input their own data; and GreenFormat takes no responsibility for the relative greenness of anything listed. Their FAQ answers the question "What about greenwashing?" like this:
GreenFormat does not seek to determine whether a product is green. Instead, using a comprehensive questionnaire, GreenFormat reports on the properties of a product, referencing specific industry standards wherever possible, and allowing space at the end of each category for individual manufacturer input.
This system is designed to allow users to compare product data and make their own judgments — and the potential for it to be exceptionally valuable is high if there's enough buy-in from manufacturers. We're excited about GreenFormat and are pleased to be assisting in its ongoing development. The day when it's de rigeur for any building products being introduced to the market to be added to this database is going to be a mighty fine day.
The placards at Greenbuild were really publicity for GreenFormat, to help achieve its purpose... but were easily misconstrued as some kind of endorsement — which unfortunately means that those signs were helping to create the very mess that the program is intended to help clarify. That said, this well-intended misstep doesn't diminish GreenFormat's ultimate goal. Check it out if you haven't already.
Preston Koerner, over at Jetson Green, posted his "Top 10 Tidbits from Greenbuild 2008." Check out numbers 2, 4, 6, and 7:
2. The LEED AP Program undergoes major overhaul and the GBCI talks about LEED Green Associates, Legacy LEED APs, LEED AP Fellows, and the other family of LEED APs (ID+C, BD+C, Homes, O+M, and ND).This item links to a post our own Tristan Korthals Altes wrote here on BuildingGreen.com's blog.
4. BuildingGreen soft launches a new online information resource on residential green building and remodeling called GreenBuildingAdvisor.com.That's us.
6. The USGBC gives 2008 Leadership Awards to Alexander Karsner, Alex Wilson, Scot Horst, Ted Strickland, CB Richard Ellis, San Diego Gas & Electric Sustainable Communities Program, and the founding members of AIA COTE.Alex Wilson! BuildingGreen's founder.
7. BuildingGreen announces their seventh annual list of green building products with the 2008 Top-10 Green Building ProductsThat's us, too.
Seriously, it's great to be a contributing cog in an organization that was a major player in defining the green building movement at its inception and is still at the forefront after all this time. Here's to the next 23 years.
Posted live from Greenbuild.
This announcement was actually made a couple weeks ago, but it flew pretty much under the radar. Martin Holladay of Energy Design Update (a publication with similarities to Environmental Building News) has joined the BuildingGreen team. This is a really. big. deal. He's working on the GreenBuildingAdvisor.com project (see the previous post) that was highly publicized during Greenbuild, and will be contributing to EBN. This guy is world-class, and his involvement adds considerable weight to the already formidable wall of green at BuildingGreen.
Press release:
Martin Holladay, who has single-handedly written Energy Design Update for nearly seven years, has joined the editorial team at BuildingGreen, publisher of Environmental Building News. "We are thrilled to have Martin's building knowledge, research skills, and journalistic abilities at BuildingGreen," said company president Alex Wilson. "Martin will add considerably to our depth as an information company, particularly in residential construction and building science."Prior to taking on his role at Energy Design Update in 2002, Holladay was an editor at the Journal of Light Construction for two-and-a-half years.
Posted live from Greenbuild.
Press release:
BuildingGreen, LLC, announces a new online information resource on residential green building and remodeling. GreenBuildingAdvisor.com, which will be officially launched at the International Builders Show in Las Vegas January 20, 2009, is an online suite of expert advice, proven construction details, and real-world tools for residential architects, builders, remodelers, and highly engaged homeowners."GBA builds on the decades of experience and depth of the two partner companies that came together to create this resource: BuildingGreen, publisher of Environmental Building News and The Taunton Press, publisher of Fine Homebuilding," says BuildingGreen director of residential services Peter Yost. "In the works since the two companies joined forces in early 2008, GreenBuildingAdvisor.com will be the most comprehensive, useful, and easy-to-use online resource serving the residential green building community," noted Yost.
GreenBuildingAdvisor.com, which was previewed at the Greenbuild Conference in Boston, will include seven primary components:
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