Expedition to GreenDepot

Is all that stuff really green? Well no, most of that belongs to the non-green building materials company next door, but it could be, all that metal and stuff comes in a green version. I took a major trip to the Green Depot in Greenpoint, Brooklyn yesterday to get 3, count 'em 3, pieces of "green" plywood for the subfloor of the bathroom. Green plywood is made without any formaldehyde, and with glue that's low VOC (that's volatile organic chemicals - organic like carbon based, as in chemistry, not like a environmentally friendly... although plants and animals are mostly carbon based - wich is why VOCs are so bad for us, we incorporate them very easily). Its also Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified, which is nice, although to be perfectly honest I wasn't that worried about it for my 3 pieces of wood. It seems like a lot of trouble to go through for less than 100 square feet of plywood, and really, it was. So I thought I'd get a few pics of the stock yard where my bemused car sevice driver had to wait around for one of those tractor lift things to deposit my wood on top of the van - I paid extra for that. Worried about coming off like the green yuppie that I am, I tried to explain to the car service driver what was so special about this plywood. Recyled, etc., didn't make much of an impression on him, but when we talked about allergies and asthma -one of the biggest health problems for children in the whole city- the air quality thing started to make a lot of sense to him too. So the thing is, there's green for me, and green for the rest of the world. Green for me is healthier and smells better than the usual materials, and is even more important to animals who spend most of their lives inside the little box known as a house (or apartment). I've taken up the green ideology that it would be like putting poison in my house to build it up out of formaldehyde soaked wood and such, given that I know better and more to the point, can afford it. On this small of a scale the different doesn't add up to that much, but percentage-wise its much more expensive - the plywood cost me $36 a sheet, about three times the normal price. Then, there's green for the rest of the world: recycled materials, manufacturing processes that don't produce a lot of toxic waste, or a lot of waste period, buying stuff that's available locally to minimize shipping. This is important to me too, but given the scale of the project it isn't my top priority. The main thing I've learned about green building though is, most of the innovations apply to big suburban houses that waste a ton of water and energy, are usually poorly heated and full of cheap, shiny new materials put in by McMansion developers. Want to go green? Live in the city - in an apartment or a row house, with no lawn. Just take out that lead watermain and you'll be left with a lot of natural materials like wood and stone that have done the trick since before the cave got its first reno.