As a green building consultant, I receive dozens of Newsletters, environmental alerts and product announcements. A trend I see is a rising number of exotic green products.

What do I mean by exotic? I could pick from a number of examples, from insulation made from blue jeans to pipe systems that recover the heat from bath shower wastewater, or even faucets with in-line micro-hydro generating plants. I recognize that product developers must dazzle us to get our attention, but some exotic products distract us from green building basics. Moreover, their benefits don’t always “move the needle” in terms of what green building must accomplish, specifically, reducing energy consumption and lowering overall environmental toxicity. Worse, some products even try to give the impression we can consume our way into a green future, which, of course, we can’t. This is especially true of the wastefully oversized and extravagant green “show homes” built to showcase environmental products.

I am in favor of innovation as much as anyone, more so than most, probably. But I can’t help think that many new products (or even traditional products that are now being retroactively marketed as green) actually are holding back the green-building movement. Here’s why; Besides writing magazine columns, I also speak internationally at trade events about green building. Believe me, the level of doubt out there about the green building movement remains remarkably strong. Many mainstream contractors still believe that the green building movement has been dreamed up by graduate students who have no calluses on their hands, and who think Carhartt is a kind of Danish sports car. They also believe these elite, deep greenies are eager to promote expensive contraptions, and a rising tide of codes and regs which only make houses harder to build and more expensive, with no measureable benefit or return-on-investment for contractors and buyers. As evidence of this impression, someone in the audience will point out some wild product, or refer to a hokey marketing campaign as evidence that the entire green building movement is suspect.

Which, of course, it isn’t, but clearly, many exotic products aren’t focused on what matters in terms of green building. What is that?