Green washing and the “not-so-clean” way of describing a home for sale.
As an internet platform for green, energy efficient and sustainable homes, Listed Green has come across some creative verbiage used by some sellers. In the environmental business we call this “green washing”. Green washing is when someone uses “green” terminology to help drive more interest to an otherwise typical (in this case) home for sale, in a currently flat and bloated real estate market. These “green” terms could be words such as:
• Solar
• Stewardship
• Eco-friendly
• Environmental
• Healthy environment
We've seen ads that would say “a solar home”, when all they really had was a wall that faced south. Or maybe the home just has CFL’s (compact florescent lighting) and not much else. Although these improvements help in a small way, there are homes out there that are making heads turn and ideas flourish in a BIG way.
Listed Green likes to see and loves to promote, innovative building technologies that we believe will make the quickest (and the biggest) change in the environment regarding the way we live, the homes we live in and the way we build them. Things we take for granted every day, have a direct impact on global warming. The toilets we flush, the indoor air we breathe, the utility bills we pay; all these affect the environment and our health.
There currently are so many new technologies in home building, we could make a huge impact right now, not years from now. We can now heat all our water with solar and not the black stuff you see on roofs, but glass tubes that absorb UV rays year-round; recycle all our grey water (sinks and showers) and redirect that water to flush our toilets; building design and orientation to take advantage of the natural heating and cooling effects in a particular location; construct living environments utilizing innovative building materials that may come from recycled or renewable sources that also offer a tremendous R-factor – a one-two punch in not only saving our limited building material resources, but also less requirement from fossil fuels and the like, to heat and cool our homes everyday.
Listed Green strives to make a difference in educating the general public about what makes a home truly “green” and helping bring an elevated increased value to these exciting energy efficient improvements, to a level that they really deserve in the real estate marketplace today and in the years to come.
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Filtering
Right on Listedgreen, for myself, I've found that green building is a little addictive. When you learn a little about it, you get hooked and want to go the next step, and before you know it, you've found inspiration.
Aside from the education though, you've got me wondering if and how you filter the listings on your site. After all, there's a continuum of sustainable practices, and lots of subjectivity.
- maxmsf
Subjectivity in Green
Listed Green hears that all the time. We give "weighted" value to many green attributes in a homes construction and components. Some are more considerable than others. Certification from green building programs are embraced and held to a high degree on our site is only one example. Land for sale needs to have convenants restricting building size/impact or requiring certified green builders for any homes/buildings built on the respective site. Just CFL's and nothing else won't make it either. Common sense and the human element makes Listed Green unique in what we do. Automated websites (which I won't mention) cannot control the green washing - which has just begun to accelerate. Sellers can be very creative in utilizing terms such as - "eco-friendly" or "solar". It's up to us to "sort it out". www.ListedGreen.com