Green homes

A grass roof in Cannon Beach, Oregon

According to yesterday's NYTimes article, only a dozen homes are certified as "green" by the United States Green Building Council. I love how home builders and home owners are thinking through alternatives to conserve energy and recycle materials and there are some good examples in the article. But it does seem that green homes primarily occur as new development, not adaptive re-use.

I still believe that the "green-est" lifestyle is to share lots of resources with neighbors and communities, like the way people live in most non-American cities, with New York as the exception. I don't have numbers to prove this, but I always think back to that New Yorker article by David Owen published a couple years ago, about living in a city as an environmental action. However, if you are going to build a new home, then it should become a requirement to utilize some aspect of LEED for Homes. Hopefully the costs will start coming down as more supply and materials companies continue to tinker with the production process.