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"Basically, they are just greenwashing," says Grant,. "They are putting a label on a status-quo product and calling it green."

Industry-Controlled

In 2007, as a cornerstone of the campaign to counteract LEED, the NAHB Research Center spearheaded efforts for its own National Green Building Standard. It went public this year after receiving approval from the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) in late January, with the Research Center serving as the official certifying body.

The Research Center then took the process one more step. In March 2009 it launched a product label called "Green Approved" to help connect "green" builders to NAHB's members, who manufacture everything from lumber to stormwater collection systems. The two programs tie together on an NAHB website, where consumers and builders can use an online calculator to see if their home projects would qualify for green status — as defined by the NAHB.

Network TV debut notwithstanding, the two new NAHB certification programs may have a hard time escaping the impression that they are creatures of industry.

Homebuilders and building product manufacturers who supply the industry made up two-thirds of the voting members who wrote the NAHB building standard. That sort of industry-led certification process is a red flag for Consumers Union senior scientist Urvashi Rangan, an expert on green certification processes.

"You can have good labels and standards that are not independent. But they tend to have more bias and cater more to the lowest common denominator," she says. "Third-party verification means nothing when the label is made by a trade association."

How Green is Weyerhaeuser?

The NAHB's product label is also facing scrutiny that cuts to the crux of what it means to be "green." Last month, the Research Center awarded its first "Green Approved" certifications to iLevel pre-engineered wood products by Weyerhaeuser. For environmentalists who have gone up against Weyerhaeuser for decades, the move underlines the dubious credibility of the NAHB as a green building standard-bearer.

The lumber giant promotes itself as a steward of the 6.4 million acres (2.6 million hectares) of U.S. timberland it manages, and has contributed to nature groups, such as Conservation International, The Nature Conservancy, and World Wildlife Fund. But it has also been embroiled in protracted fights with regional activists over its forestry practices.

In 2006, a federal judge shut down Weyerhaeuser operations in Washington state spotted owl habitat after ruling that the logging violated the U.S. Endangered Species Act.

And after floods outside Seattle in December 2007 brought mudslides crashing down from heavily logged areas onto communities near the Chehalis River, Weyerhaeuser executives were called to testify before the Natural Resources, Ocean & Recreation Committee of the Washington State Senate over the role the company's clearcutting might have played in the disasters.

"Timber companies are smart and well-financed. They are trying to confuse the marketplace with their greenwashing," says Peter Goldman, the director and managing attorney of the Washington Forest Law Center. Goldman represented the Seattle Audubon Society in the Endangered Species Act lawsuit against Weyerhaeuser that led to a settlement protecting the owls.

What is "Sustainable" Building?

In addition to the question of whether Weyerhaeuser's past imbroglios — and current practices — should disqualify its products from certified green status, there is a broader question about what green building standards should do.

Should green standards denote improvements and innovations in sustainability — compared to conventional practice — or is it enough for such standards to simply recognize positive attributes of existing products and practices? Where should we be setting the bar for "green"?

Weyerhaeuser says its iLevel products are efficient because they use more than 99 percent of each log. That seems hard to argue with.

Weyerhaeuser's other argument for the sustainability of iLevel products — that they "are made from trees, a natural and renewable resource" — is more controversial.

Weyerhaeuser and other logging giants produce most of today's lumber on tree farms, or plantation forests. Like most commercial agriculture, the trees are planted in rows of one or a few species selected for commercial productivity.

Such sylvan monocultures support only a tiny fraction of the biodiversity of an old-growth forest. Heavy doses of chemical fertilizers, herbicides, and other pesticides applied to support the tree crop, as well as sediment from erosion of disturbed and poorly stabilized soils, can contaminate watersheds. And short-rotation farmed forests never provide the level of carbon sequestration found in pristine natural woodlands.

Can Any Logging Be Green?

The environmental community is divided on the issue of logging itself. Some groups have no objection to continued cutting on tree farms, as long as virgin forests are preserved. Others support logging of rotational woodlands if "sustainable forestry" practices are used, aimed at harvesting logs over time without destroying the habitat that supports forest life.

Some activists say the time has come to protect all that remains of the forests, by adopting alternative building materials. This view is supported by the findings of climate change scientists, which show that preserving the world's fast-disappearing timberlands could play a key role in mitigating global warming by keeping climate-changing carbon dioxide from being released into the atmosphere.   >>>

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The vast majority of houses in the United States are built with substantial framing lumber and other wood products. Photo: David Owen/ Artifice Images Extra Large Image A load of trees is hauled away from a clearcut site within Weyerhaeuser's 209,000-acre (85,600-hectare) Millicoma tree farm in southwestern Oregon. Photo: Francis Eatherington Extra Large Image Flooding caused by the Chehalis River in December 2007 threatened buildings and blocked a major interstate highway near Centralia, Washington. Photo: Courtesy Washington State Department of Transportation Extra Large Image SUBSCRIPTION SAMPLE Inadequately reinforced roads on clearcut logging sites, like this one in the Coos River watershed in southwestern Oregon, can destabilize soil, which may eventually clog streams and rivers. Photo: Francis Eatherington Extra Large Image The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that building-related construction and demolition debris in the U.S. solid waste stream totals 136 million tons (123 metric tons) per year (1999 data). Photo: Mark Altstiel Extra Large Image Salvaging strutural wood from demolished U.S. houses could save over 4.2 million trees per year, according to a 1996 EPA estimate. The amount of recoverable materials is even greater if you include nonstructural building products, such as flooring. Photo: Steve Culpepper/ © The Taunton Press Concrete is a durable, high-mass alternative to wood. Appropriate alternatives to Portland cement help reduce its environmental footprint. Photo: Courtesy Wall-Ties & Forms, Inc. Extra Large Image Like concrete — but typically at a much lower cost in embodied energy — rammed-earth walls can score higher than wood construction for durability and thermal mass, and can often be made from materials on site. Photo: Gregory Lee Extra Large Image   Click on thumbnail images to view full-size pictures.