Southeast Building Conference
This year’s Southeast Building Conference in Orlando, FL gave a hint of a positive direction for green building and sustainable design with its new “GreenTrends” section. However, I made a point of going to the non-green booths which dominated the trade show floor to ask people what their companies were doing to be more green.
The first couple of guys I talked to were from a design group. Despite their eco-friendly concepts one man remarked that it’s really up to the builders. “Ultimately it’s what the consumer wants and whether it’s sexy.”Next up was a cement company with two women fronting the information booth. What were they doing to be more green? They’re going “in that direction”, but they would need to “talk to the bigwigs in Mexico to really find out.”
The man I spent the most time talking to was a self-proclaimed treehugger that was in the business of designing cookie-cutter homes. He was torn that there is so much waste in his industry, but emphasized that he still has to make a living. “It’s all about perception and economics” was his opening line of non-salesman conversation. He’d love to design more green, but there just isn’t a demand for it because it isn’t what most homeowners can afford.
Every home built with sustainability is mind is a step forward, but the major battle remains to be pressuring major developers to design and build with the environment in mind.
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