San Jose Mercury News (California), Jennifer Parrish
Published February 28, 2009
Just as Kermit the Frog sang, it's not easy being green. Good intentions aside, we need to know where and how to locate green products and services. Here are three Web sites that may be of help on your green journey.
Consult the Green Pages
Consider the following true story: Once upon a time your hot water heater broke and leaked all over your garage; you called a plumber and specifically requested it be replaced with an energy-efficient model; you waited for days with no hot water for the appointment with the plumber; and, when he finally arrived, the gleaming new water heater he brought with him turned out to be -- not an energy-efficient model after all!
"All new hot water heaters are more energy-efficient than your old one," the plumber says, trying vainly to assuage your grief. "Alas, I don't want a hot water heater that's more energy efficient; I want one that is energy-efficient," you protest. But, it's too late; you must either submit to your fate and accept the water heater that the plumber has brought with him, or wait for weeks, with no hot water, for an energy-efficient model to arrive via special order.
The moral of the story: Next time you require the services of a green building professional including a green plumber or you need green building materials, don't rely on the Yellow Pages. Instead, consult the Central Coast Green Building Directory at centralcoastgreenbuilding.org.
This handy Web site is similar to an online telephone directory, except that all of the businesses listed have at least one green business certified staff member, whether through LEED, Build It Green, Cabrillo's Energy Management Certification or several other sources. In other words, have no fear; these guys and gals understand energy-efficient water heaters or any of your other green building needs.
A work in progress, the Web site has only been live since December. Since then, the number of green building professionals featured on the site has been steadily increasing, with more than 220 listings in the Monterey Bay Area and surrounding cities.
Some of the categories, such as Recycling and Reuse, do not yet have any listings, but Loaren Soares, the site administrator, says that requests for a listing on the Web site have been pouring in.
The concept for a green building directory originated five years ago with Ana Maria Rebelo, the current public education training coordinator with the county of Santa Cruz. Rebelo sought to create a guide for county contractors and residents involved in green building. Other jurisdictions and members of the community soon became involved, and the directory took off.
John Ancic, the interim building official with the city of Santa Cruz, reflected on the origins of the Web site: "When we began the city of Santa Cruz's Green Building Program in 2006, there were a lot of inquiries by contractors and the public who were very interested in and supportive of green building, but didn't know where to go to find the goods and the people to help them to pursue it. The county of Santa Cruz had an existing directory, and we decided to partner with them so the public could access the information they needed."
Sensing that residents throughout the Monterey Bay Area region were similarly at a loss as to how to locate qualified green building professionals and contractors needed a reliable source for finding green materials, a region-wide coalition was formed to address this need for the entire area.
Partners included the city and county of Santa Cruz, the city of Monterey, AMBAG, the local U.S. Green Building Council, Ecology Action, and the Monterey Bay Area Green Business program.
"I am glad to see that everyone has joined together to create a regional document that can be used by jurisdictions throughout the tri-county area. I'm so happy that green building has really taken off in this region," said Rebelo, excited to see that all of her "hard work has paid off."
Emily Schell of AMBAG agrees. "It's been great to see the entire region unite for the benefit of the common green good."
The site allows users to search for a green building professional using a variety of criteria, including ZIP code, keyword and distance from home, or to access the database of listings directly by clicking on categories such as green materials, contractors, indoor air quality, or water management systems. The site also offers a page for business and contractors to apply for membership. "All green building professionals who meet the certification requirements are encouraged to contact me to sign up," Soares said.
Love the Skin You're In
How many personal care products do you use each day? Toothpaste, shampoo, conditioner, hairspray, lotion, shaving cream, lip balm, sunscreen, makeup ... Now, how many ingredients are there in each product? On average, it's between 10 and 25. A quick calculation is enough to reveal that we're exposed to a wide range of chemicals on a daily basis.
Final question: How dangerous are these chemicals? For the answer: consult Skin Deep, the personal care product safety database maintained by the Environmental Working Group. It can be found at cosmeticsdatabase.com.
A nonprofit organization dedicated to using "the power of public information to protect public health and the environment," the EWG has assiduously collected data on 41,520 products and ranked them with a score ranging from 0 best with few toxic ingredients to 10 worst with many harmful ingredients, using a compendium of sources and studies. One of the best features about this site is its transparency. Links to the studies that it references are available for each ingredient, and products are assigned a similar 0 to 10 data gap score indicating when not enough information is known about their ingredients.
Users can search by product name or by rating. In other words, you can research the ranking of your favorite shampoo by typing its name into the search engine, or find a new one by clicking on the category shampoo and accessing all of the brands that are ranked a 0 or 1.
Using this site for the first time brought some surprises. For example, I learned I was mistaken to switch from Pantene Pro-V to the Jason brand All Natural Jojoba Shampoo under the assumption that it would be healthier for me. Pantene Pro-V shampoo received a score of 5 from Skin Deep, while the Jason product was ranked a 6.
How Good is Good?
Skin Deep is all about health, but what about the environment? A Web site that aims to rank products as much according to their environmental and social impacts as their impact on our health, is the Good Guide. It can be found at goodguide.com.
The inspiration of a professor at UC Berkeley who discovered that the sunscreen he had been putting on his 5-year-old daughter contained harmful ingredients, the Web site ranks a wide range of products from toys to household cleansers to personal care products. Clearly the emphasis here is on protecting our children.
Unlike Skin Deep, which has a solely health-based focus, the Good Guide creates a union among human health, environmental health and social responsibility. Products are ranked from 0 here meaning worst to 10 best in all three categories, and then their ratings are combined to form an overall score. Continuing with the example of Pantene Pro-V shampoo, it was given a 5.5 on the Good Guide, slightly better than it received on Skin Deep, with its individual scores being 5.0 for health, 5.1 for environmental performance and 6.2 for social performance.
The creators acknowledge that measurements are necessarily subjective and that their Web site is a work in progress. Nevertheless, clicking on each product's ranking reveals the criteria that led to its assigned score.
Truthfully, I am slightly distrustful of the Good Guide's health rankings, especially where they differ from Skin Deep, because they seem less carefully researched. Nevertheless, I appreciate the opportunity to gain a sense of the environmental impact of the products that I am using. Were the Good Guide to merge its health ratings with those of Skin Deep, its overall rating would go from "good" to "excellent" in my book!
On the net
Check out these Web sites for information about green building, health products and environmental responsibility:
-centralcoastgreenbuilding.org
-cosmeticsdatabase.com
-goodguide.com
