Green is in high demand. Today’s homeowner faces skyrocketing energy prices and indoor health hazards and lives with the pressing fear of global warming.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) warns about the health effects of poor Indoor Air Quality from the off-gassing of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs).

Materials such as insulation, paints, stains, carpeting, flooring and countertops can produce significant off-gassing in the home so manufacturers have responded with some environmentally friendly innovations.

The idea behind green building is to increase the efficiency of buildings and their use of resources like energy, water and building materials to protect human health and the environment. The U.S. Green Building Council is leading the movement with its LEED program — Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. The LEED Green Building Rating System is the nationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction and operation of green buildings.

LEED promotes sustainability through five key areas of human and environmental health: sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials selection and indoor environmental quality. Fortunately, the list of product offerings that address these topics is constantly growing.

Insulation Innovations

A carbon footprint is a measure of the impact human activities have on the environment in terms of the amount of greenhouse gases produced, measured in units of carbon dioxide. Fiberglass insulation tends to have a high carbon footprint from energy intensive production, and some have associated health concerns in terms of off-gassing. Now there are some interesting insulation alternatives to pick from.

Dryvit Exterior Insulation and Finish Systems (EIFS) is a cladding system for commercial and residential construction, offering a highly energy-efficient, lightweight engineered cladding system in a vast array of finish options. Dryvit is available in a number of system configurations to match any climate or building condition. In testing by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Dryvit proved to be 84 percent more energy efficient than the next best performing cladding material. When a building uses Dryvit’s systems, energy consumption for heating and cooling the building is reduced on average by 20 to 40 percent.