Green Me Now

As I write now, I am struggling to concentrate over the excruciating harassment of not one but two leaf blowers. My elderly neighbor has hired some help to maintain her yard. Two blower-toting young men have double-teamed the leaves in angry discord.

Like the case in our lead story, in which the definition of a key green retros term can vary significantly among users, so too is the challenge with the terms used for building materials.

There’s no arguing that building material selection has become a complicated business, usually requiring research on the part of homeowners about to undertake renovation projects. But given equal performance among options, how do you choose?

We love the sound of “Recovery through Retrofit,” the federal program unveiled by vice president Joe Biden last week for energy-efficiency retrofits to homes. Even though the word “recovery” has perhaps taken on a something-less-than-positive connotation lately, I like the Recovery through Retrofit moniker for the way it rolls quickly off the tongue, unlike that other, larger recovery program with a title so lengthy it obfuscates its intent.

It’s good to hear some Yankee thinking in the midst of the hundreds of millions of dollars being dropped by the government in the name of alternative energy and weatherization. And it comes from the top: U.S. Energy Secretary Stephen Chu says he and his wife, while shopping for the many homes they have lived in, have made a game of energy conservation. They would ask to see the energy bills of the previous homeowners and then attempt to reduce the bills by 50%, according to a CNET report.

Most of the changes they made are simple with costs in the hundreds of dollars, he says.