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I have had a difficult time trying to find a comprehensive list of all sustainable and green products used in both residential and commercial design. Does a list exist and where can I find it?

Penny Bonda -- Interior Design, 12/6/2006 1:42:00 PM

Oh my, here it is again-a request for The List. Unfortunately environmental design doesn't lend itself to easy list-making. It spans across all design categories, and has innumerable variables and exceptions that conspire to make compiling such a list a Sisyphean task. So, at the moment, there is no list.

But allow me to reframe the issue. It is helpful to regard sustainable design as less about dos and don'ts and more about context. For example, most of us would agree that vinyl isn't a very environmental product, yet plenty of widely acclaimed green projects have some vinyl in them.

Conversely, any list that could be developed would be practically useless unless the designer understood the intricacies and contradictions; i.e.: is bamboo a better flooring choice than hardwood?

Well, maybe. It depends where each material comes from, how it got here and

how suitable it is to the application. My point is that designing and building green requires, first, a fundamental understanding of the principles of sustainability and then a level of knowledge about the science and technologies involved.

Lastly, the aspiring green designer must realize that this field requires constant continuing education, for there is always something new to learn.

So! If there is no list then where does one start? The good news is that there is help out there. Start with LEED. While it doesn't list products, LEED does begin to define desirable product attributes such as recycled content and low emissions. Next step? Check out GreenSpec, a product of Environmental Building News and the other resources accessible through links available on this page. Meanwhile, the folks at Interior Design and I are working on it. The List is on our list.