[Editor's note: Today's guest post is authored by Bill Walsh, Executive Director of the Healthy Building Network.]
When building products carry different green certifications, how do you know which product is best? Maybe there is a way to compare apples and oranges.As green certifications and labels have proliferated, so has greenwash. Even among legitimate certifications, conflicts and inconsistency have made them hard to understand.
We've been hearing for years that "they're going to ban the incandescent bulb"--is that for real?
How do you build a green building? Let me count the ways.
We've got ASHRAE 189.1, a large and growing handful of LEED rating systems, the Living Building Challenge, Passive House, and many others...and now there's also the International Green Construction Code (IgCC) just published by the International Code Council.
Even water is toxic if you have too much. How do we keep a potentially harmful but necessary nutrient like boric acid at safe levels in our buildings and our bodies?
What do you do about a substance that is a biologically necessary trace nutrient, long considered nontoxic, and in a multitude of products--but that is also now listed on a major European Union chemical hazard list due to evidence that it is toxic for reproduction?
