Nashville's Gettin' Green!

Yesterday I went to a Lunch 'n' Learn session sponsored by the Nashville chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council.

It was my first time at the event, and I was pleasantly surprised to see about 40 people there. I was expecting around 6-8.

Apparently, there is a lot more green stuff in Nashville than the abundant hardwood trees covering the hillsides...

The topic was Metro government's new Green Permit for building. Anyone who is building a residential or commercial building and becomes LEED or EarthCraft certified can apply for, and receive, the Green Permit from Nashville.

What are the advantages?

Besides marketing (there was a lot of discussion how anything with the word "green" in it is instantly marketable these days), the Green Permit creates a permanent record for posterity that the structure was built to green specifications.

Codes Administrator Terry Cobb and Council Mike Jameson were the speakers, and during their talk let it be known that under the new leadership of Mayor Karl Dean, Nashville has set a goal of being the greenest city in the Southeast within the next 8 years.

In fact, despite being smaller than other major cities in the Southeast, Nashville is already ahead of the curve, being outstripped only by Austin, which is much, much larger.

I was very excited to hear this, and also to see how the Metro government is supporting green issues. I hope this will trickle on over to Williamson and Rutherford Counties, and eventually to Cheatham, where we live at present.

As a side note, one bizarre topic came up...apparently a couple from California (one of the zillions of Californians who have moved here in the past few years) purchased a brand new house...never lived in...then tore it down to build a "green" home!

This apparently got a lot of media buzz even though I never heard about it. In fact, it apparently got a lot of positive media buzz, which shows how ignorant the media is...at least, here in Nashville.

The woman who brought this up was outraged. While I don't want to get outraged about something which is someone else's personal business, I am thinking, "What the.....?"

While they could have just greened up the existing home, I decided they probably didn't want to deal with off-gassing.

A better solution would have just been to purchase a lot and build a green home to begin with!

It is kind of ridiculous to think of all the labor and expense that went into the original home, and that all the materials are now sitting at a garbage dump somewhere. I hope at least someone salvaged cabinets, windows, and so forth.

Anyway...time to sign off now and go out to dinner!