How can we claim that something is green or sustainable? There are some emerging attempts to define green building systems and green building materials. And some attempts to create national standards are also developing.

Environmental Building News, the most comprehensive and up-to-date journal on green or sustainable building has created some general guidelines to help us focus our efforts.

Codes

Over the past two years, Jim LaRue has been working on a Green Building Residential Code for the City of Cleveland as part of a project created by EcoCity Cleveland. In the Fall of 2003 the Cleveland City Council will consider this code. It will be an appendix to the 1999 Ohio Residential Building Code. Homeowners and builders will not be required to use it for every residential building, but if a claim is made that a home is being constructed or rehabbed as green, then they will be required to use this code as their guide.

If you would like to review the proposed code, you will find it on the EcoCity Cleveland website. Your comments, criticisms and suggestions are welcome.

Colorado standards

Creating a working and measurable standard that can be used by a homeowner, architect and builder to build a home has been accomplished by the Built Green Colorado program. Our hope is that very soon we can create a standard, based on the Cleveland code and which incorporates our ecoregion conditions. An addi- tionally useful part of the Colorado Built Green Checklist is a point system which helps prioritize tasks and measure the comprehensiveness of a project.

Download a copy of the Colorado checklist

National standards

A national standard for green building in commercial projects has been developed by the United States Green Building Council. Its standard is called LEED (Leader- ship in Energy and Environmental Design). It is a standard which has now been adopted by several states and governmental agencies for the creation of all official public buildings under their jurisdiction.

A LEED residential standard is under consideration, but no date has been set for its release. When it does, it will dramatically focus all of our efforts toward some national standards for this work. The basic categories of the LEED commercial system will also be used for the LEED residential.

For more information on LEED visit the USGBC website.