 here has been a lot of discussion for years on just what makes a product "green". In a perfect world we would have a list of materials with quantified life-cycle environmental impacts, weighted so a designer could quickly see which products had a higher overall positive environmental impact.
 While efforts are being made in this area, we are still a long way from having this resource. It's more difficult because we're often comparing apples to oranges. It's also difficult to compare manufacturing impacts of one material against the resource extraction impacts of another, or to the benefits of rapid renewability of a third.
BUILDING A GREEN HOME
In building a home, many materials are used, and even the greenest of homes may contain products that are not green and are used in a manner that reduces the home's overall environmental impact.
Our SIPs are made of OSB and polyurethane foam-- not green from the standpoint of being a natural material, but the foam no longer contains CFCs and doesn't outgas and the OSB contains no formaldehyde. Since they reduce infiltration and have a high R-value they contribute significantly to the overall "greenness" of our homes.
 High performance windows used today that significantly increase the insulation value of the glass aren't necessarily green themselves, but they direct solar heat and light into the home and contribute significantly to it's overall greenness.
When considering a material for your home, it’s important to look at it from more than one viewpoint. What is its overall contribution to your green home? What features and benefits does it provide? What are the trade-offs? How much does it cost? Where does the material come from and how is it made? Is it worth using? That last question is something we each have to answer for ourselves because there are many ways to approach the building of a green home.
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