The Green Home Product Guide

The Green Home Product Guide

by Dru Meadows and Charles Bell, 1998. TheGreenTeam, 5822 South New Haven, Tulsa, OK 74153; 918/742-7593;arcvet@earthlink.net. Softcover, about 90 pages, $35.

Dru Meadows, well known for her pioneering green design work with BSW Architects in Tulsa, and Charles Bell set a very challenging course for themselves with

The Green Home Product Guide. Their goal is to simplify the decision-making process for homeowners and home builders seeking to create environmentally responsible houses by providing clear, visually keyed information on hundreds of green building products.

Ratings for

Stress Skin/Compressed

Straw Panels

Ratings forStress Skin/CompressedStraw Panels

A sample rating graphic from The Green Home Product Guide

indicates this particular option’s relative merits.

It includes a wealth of information about green building products and materials, with simple icons indicating how the authors believe the products perform in four areas: resource management, toxicity, performance, and cost (see figure). One icon indicates poor performance in a category; four icons indicate excellent performance. Using more “$” signs to mean better (lower) cost goes against the travel-guide convention, but on the whole this system works well.

As with most first-time efforts to compile very complex information about a large number of products, however, this book has some limitations. The introductory information is fairly limited, and the overall organization is hard to follow. While many products and materials are listed, the

Guide is far from comprehensive.

The Green Home Product Guide was sponsored by the Alternative Agricultural Research and Commercialization (AARC) Corporation, a government corporation of the U.S. Department of Energy, so AARC-sponsored products and goals are featured prominently.

The icon-based approach makes the product ratings quite accessible. As it evolves in future editions, this book should become a very handy reference.