The Green Market Reaches Critical Mass

A New Survey Finds a Growing Commitment to Green
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How green is green?

Genuinely green products and materials are critical to successful green building and require long-term commitments to produce.

Yet overall, asSmartMarket found, large building product manufacturers, who are the tipping point to broad diffusion of green building, take a conservative or measured position on green building, most likely due to a typical three-year product planning cycle. Green products or features are seen as "value-adds" to meet customer requests, rather than as high importance to their business planning or strategy. Industry leaders also expressed concerns about "greenwashing," the term used to describe unfounded claims by manufacturers that their products are environmentally preferable or beneficial compared with alternatives.

One manufacturer believes that there is a problem with the current "green" thinking-"green" should not be thought of as products in isolation but instead as a "system" in which all the pieces need to work together. Another reported being concerned early on in the movement that fly-by-night manufacturers whose products would not live up to long-term scrutiny would undermine the entire green movement and corrupt the green market. He now thinks that manufacturers have been reasonably responsible due to the LEED standards. Industry leaders do agree on one point-no green leader has emerged.

Producers already offering a line of green products are taking green to another level such as, for example, manufacturing wood fiber particleboard with no added urea-formaldehyde. Regarding such a product, says Ray Barbee, Vice President, Sales and Marketing for Roseburg Forest Products which owns 750,000 acres of timberland, of which approximately 40 percent is FSC certified, third party tests verify formaldehyde emissions to be similar to those occurring naturally in outdoor ambient conditions.


Eastern Sierra Residence designed by Arkin Tilt Architects, recipient of 2005 COTE/AIA Green Project Award.
Photographer credit: © Edward Caldwell Photography

Green systems gaining growth

In contrast, green lighting controls and water conservation systems are growing fast. "Sensors have been around since the early 70s, but there wasn't a lot of momentum for using them because of the low cost of energy. Sustainability design and LEED has changed the ballgame, even in the past two to three years." says Paul Trively, Vice President of Specification Sales for Lutron. "I've been in this business 37 years and sustainability is the biggest thing I've seen." With lighting contributing 70-80 percent to a building's energy costs, owners and employers are now acquiring automatic lighting controls, which control daylight in different parts of a space, and shading that reduces solar load. Because employees are the greatest expense, they are also paying attention to productivity and giving their people more controls, he observes, especially in healthcare where the shortage in nursing staff is forcing employers to provide patients with more lighting and shade controls. It's important for design professionals and building owners to discuss and quantify the costs of aesthetics, security, life safety, configurable office space, and other lighting needs, notes Trively.

Buildings with innovative water conservation systems range from Vermont state rebuilt rest stop by Timothy D. Smith & Associates, near Sharon, Vermont, which recycles wastewater through a greenhouse, to the 2005 COTE winner Austin Resource Center for the Homeless, Austin, TX, by LZT Architects, Inc., which has a 13,000-gallon rainwater collection system that supplements the building's water supply. "The industry is seeing a fast growing demand for water conservation products," says Jim Allen, Water Conservation Manager at Sloan Valve.

Not all manufacturers are taking a measured approach to green. Employee-owned Columbia Forest Products, North America's largest manufacturer of hardwood plywood and hardwood veneer, has certified its woods with the FSC for a number of years. So rather than dedicate a portion of its production facilities to formaldehyde-free products, it has begun converting all three of its veneer-core hardwood plywood plants to formaldehyde-free manufacturing processes using a patented soy-based adhesive. Next year it will convert three more plants. It's important to provide a cost-competitive solution while increasing moisture resistance without urea formaldehyde, says Columbia executive vice president of sales and marketing Ed Woods, who points out that urea formaldehyde is classified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, part of the World Health Organization, as "carcinogenic to humans."

 

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Originally published in Architectural Record.
Originally published in November 2005

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