Gottfried Green

I was very excited to attend Green Trends which had about 35 booths within the larger 2500 booth show that was the Southeast Building Conference. Their list of exhibitors was small but still representative. The usual suspects were in attendance: James Hardie Products, Homefront Homes, along with tankless water heaters, spray foams and quite a few solar companies as well. I've known or read about many of the companies except the solar ones. I learned a bit more about the tankless system which we will be using in our house and went around some of the other booths out of curiosity. Since I have most of my materials already selected, some green, some not depending on budget and availability, I came away with more of an overview of the state of the building industry at least as comprised in this show. To have some "green" products in one section and the rest of the mainstream "non-green" products making up the entire rest of the show... all I found myself wanting to do was walk up to all the mainstream booths and ask them if they were ready for the big change that is coming to home building. I equate this whole green building movement as far as material and product marketing to that of the coffee industry when specialty coffee first hit the scene. When it started everyone complained about the cost but as it infiltrated mainstream society, people started to be unable to drink crap coffee. So specialty coffee not only made Starbucks a fortune but has now come full circle to McDonalds. Coffee then got a conscience in fair-trade, organic practices... home buyers, builders etc are not only asking themselves what looks good and what is well made but also, how was it made and what was it made with... it's human nature to want to make your most educated decision. So many more analogies out there so little time.

Labels: materials