Making green sexy?

The Greenwash Brigade

Here at the Greenwash Brigade, we recently received a press release titled “Making Green Sexy,” about a LEED certified mega mansion in Florida called Acqua Liana.

(image from www.frank-mckinney.com)

The average American home, which has more than doubled in size since the 1950’s, is now about 2,500 square feet, with the median home price just over $200,000 (opens PDF). At 15,000 square feet and $29 million, the 11-bath ‘green’ megamansion is 6-times larger than an average new home, and nearly 150-times more expensive.

Some of Acqua Liana’s features are legitimately more environmentally preferable than what one might find on a typical 15,000 square foot home, if there is such a thing. It has a solar system large enough to cover a “regulation-sized basket ball court.” The website indicates that the solar array generates enough electricity to run 2 average sized homes, but not enough to power the megamansion. And the release touts the 10.5 acres of Brazilian rainforest ‘saved’ through the use of reclaimed wood.

But can any house using more than twice the electricity of an average home or consuming 10.5 acres of wood (sustainably harvested or not) really be called ‘green’?

To apply a tortured analogy, this feels a bit like the school bully asking for pacifist credentials because he hit you fewer times than he could have. “Hey, I ‘saved’ you from being hit a few times! Butch would have hit you 6 times, but I only hit you 3 times. That’s a 50% reduction from conventional practice. Let’s celebrate my pacifism!”

Maybe the “waterfall spa with fire feature” and the “arched aquarium wet bar (walk below with exotic fish above!)” will indeed help to make green sexy, as the press release suggests. But this smells more like an attempt to assuage the potential buyer’s guilt over such conspicuous consumption in an age where that has clearly gone out of fashion.

Making green sexy? This feels more like making obesity sexy.

January 26, 2009 by Jim Nicolow
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tags: Acqua Liana Frank McKinney green building LEED megamansion reclaimed wood

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Meet the Greenwash Brigade

Our hand-picked environmental professionals, each part of the Public Insight Network, are on the hunt for "greenwash" as they examine eco-friendly claims by companies, governments and other groups. They ask tough questions about the mainstreaming of green, from the perspectives of people in the trenches who are focused on these issues 24/7.

Jim Nicolow is a nationally recognized expert on sustainable design and leads the sustainability initiative for Lord, Aeck & Sargent, overseeing the incorporation of sustainable design strategies and features into the firm’s design projects. He is a LEED® Accredited Professional with extensive knowledge of the U.S. Green Building Council’s (USGBC) LEED rating system.

Janne K. Flisrand has worked as an affordable housing and urban planning research consultant for five years, primarily supporting local non-profits. Her focus is on transit, transit-oriented design, affordable housing, and sustainability. Currently, she’s the program coordinator for Minnesota Green Communities, a program promoting affordable, healthy, sustainably built housing throughout Minnesota.

Dennis Markatos-Soriano recently completed a Master's in Public Affairs at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School. He is now launching Sustainable Energy Transition (SET) to help individuals and institutions move from dependence on oil and gas to an efficient use of renewables. Previously, he co-founded SURGE (Students United for a Responsible Global Environment), which aims to bring young progressives together across issues of environmental and social justice throughout North Carolina and beyond. In the summer of 2006, he helped to start a small green company, Greenway Pedicabs, to provide a greenhouse gas-free transportation option for people in the Triangle of North Carolina.

Heidi Siegelbaum is a principal with Calyx Sustainable Tourism and works primarily on advancing sustainable tourism practices. She also specializes in science translation, cross-border indicators with Canada, cross-disciplinary planning and environmental technical assistance to businesses. Previously, she was in-house legal counsel for EPA for industrial chemicals and biotechnology and the senior performance measure analyst with the Washington State Department of Ecology. She is on the technical advisory committee of the Seattle Culinary Academy and a long standing member of the Chefs Collaborative.

NOTE: The opinions expressed by the Greenwash Brigade bloggers and those providing comments are theirs alone, and do not reflect the opinions of American Public Media or its employees. American Public Media is not responsible for the accuracy of any of the information supplied by the Greenwash Brigade bloggers.

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