It takes a village. Managing up, managing down. Garbage in, garbage out. We’ve heard all the cliché’s before. And now that it’s cool to “go green” we are hearing the term LEED all over the place too. LEED is an acronym created by the U.S. Green Building Council that means Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. It’s become pretty special to builders and eco-living seekers across the globe as an internationally recognized green building certification system. They measure everything from energy savings, water efficiency, CO2 emissions reduction, improved indoor environmental quality, and stewardship of resources and sensitivity to their impacts. And then they “rate” the buildings and give them a gold star if they pass. Or a bronze star, or if you are extremely lucky you can earn a PLATINUM star. Or if you just barely squeaked by, you get no star, but you get to be “LEED approved.” Reminds me of when I was a kid in grade-school. Boy, did I love to earn those stars my teacher gave out for doing good things each day. The problem was, so did all my classmates. We’d all vie for the most stars, and highest star color rating – then it was red, blue and gold. We didn’t have “star approved” though. We actually EARNED those stars. Sometimes, it got so competitive that we’d just pretend that we got the highest star at school that day when we went home to report our day around the dinner table.

That’s the way it’s becoming to some builders. One study in Green World Media (see the Green impact report) reports that about 25% of projects that register with LEED end up failing to certify. This causes some builders to take liberties with the LEED label to get higher rents or sales figures, causing some risky business practices. A posting last year in the housing section of the Chicago Craigslist markets thee availability of one- and two-bedroom condos in an “Eco-Friendly, LEED Certified Building!” The ad for the homes at “9 West Erie” says the building lists “LEED-Certified” as one of the “eco-features.” The problem was that the 14-story high-rise was not even built when the ads appeared, and therefore cannot be certified by the LEED program (for full article go to www.greeninc.com).

Telling potential buyers or renters that their building or home has a LEED certification when it doesn’t, or advertising they have a higher certification than they do has become almost commonplace. It’s because buyers want, nay, NEED to know they live in a home that isn’t adding to the carbon footprint the way their gas guzzling SUV’s once did when they were all the rage. The fact that people are willing to pay a premium for green buildings is almost certainly a driver. Uber-energy efficient buildings command higher rental and occupancy rates, and garner sale prices that are as much as 30 percent higher per square foot than conventional buildings, according to a recent study by University of San Diego researchers (see The Economy of Being Green

That’s why it’s refreshing when good, honest building projects come along, like the one at The Villages at Cascade Head Resort on the Oregon Coast (see www.thevillagesatcascadehead.com). They’ve been so committed to sustainable building that their certifications are coming in at the PLATINUM level, and that’s not because they are building low-grade, wood-frame homes and throwing solar panels on the roofs. Even without renewable energy technologies to impress the solar, geo and wind green-enthusiasts, the homes have the environmentally friendly amenities to achieve the highest certification ratings. And around the dinner table? They can proudly boast their PLATINUM star without batting an eye.