Green Builder Media co-founder Ron Jones reflects on trademarking the term green builder, chairing the consensus committee that produced the ICC 700 national green building standard, and where the building envelope goes over the next 20 years.
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Sara Gutterman: Sarah, I'm CEO of Green Builder Media and I'm here today with my co-founder of Rebuilding Media, Ron Jones, who is one of the OGs of green Building himself. We are here today for a series of interviews that I'm going to conduct this year in honor of Green Builder Media's 20th anniversary, called The Frontlines of Climate Action, which will showcase people and projects products that are really making substantial change within the built environment relative to sustainability.
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Sara Gutterman: So thank you for being my first subject. Of course, always happy to be here with you. So you begin working to acquire the Green Builder trademark back in the mid 90s. Why was that important?
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Ron Jones: Well, it was just an opportunity. I had been involved in some associations in institutional efforts around green building and had been, I guess, what you would call a green builder for a number of years. And it occurred to me that I hadn't seen the term green builder put in any sort of.
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Ron Jones: Public arena. And so I looked into it, and I was kind of surprised to find out that Green Builder had not been trademarked. And I saw it as a couple of things. One. I saw that there was a potential for significant business value with the trademark in a number of ways, and I think that's proven out over the years.
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Ron Jones: But also, I wanted to be able to protect the integrity of of the words green builder. If it was out there for just anybody to use, it would really be easy to greenwash it. And I felt like I had an obligation to try to protect it and perhaps set a standard that would translate into a more meaningful use of, of the term.
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Sara Gutterman: So let's talk about that. What is the biggest difference in how green building is perceived between when we launched green Building Media 20 years and today?
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Ron Jones: Well, I think the biggest difference is that there's really no debate anymore about the necessity of more energy efficient building and higher performance more.
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Ron Jones: Association with the natural environment, with all of the things that go into what we call green building or sustainable development, whether they're environmental or social, technical, whatever those cases are. There's really no debate anymore. What we have are stratus in the market of acceptance within the building community, because there's still the hard pressure on building companies, particularly in the public publicly owned that.
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Ron Jones: Are, you know, it's still a bottom line business. And so their their first concern is their quarterly report and their profits for the year. And they'll do whatever they have to do to comply with the lowest requirement, but probably not too much beyond that. So the biggest difference is that more and more of the industry has shifted away from that thinking, and we have greater demand with home buyers, homeowners for a higher quality, better performing product.
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Sara Gutterman: So clearly, one of the big drivers for sustainability and rebuilding now, things like decarbonization, climate risk disclosure are regulations. And so talk a little bit about how those are driving demand and acceptance for Greenland today.
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Ron Jones: Well it's the classic carrot and stick. Some people respond better to the carrot. Some people respond better to the stick. And so if we if we think about it from the standpoint of regulation and whether that's building codes or performance standards of some kind. What that does is it levels the playing field so that the floor is equal for everybody.
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Ron Jones: It doesn't prevent anybody from piercing the ceiling for going for the stars, so to speak, but it raises the floor so that we have a higher baseline than we had before. The incentive side of the coin is where we have programs that provide rewards for higher performance, and that might come in the form of financial advantage for the building company or, or for the buyer or a combination of those.
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Sara Gutterman: So when we started rebuilding media 20 years ago, it was a very steep hill and a very big boulder, and the hill was steeper and the boulder was bigger. Even in the decades prior to us starting the media, when you were in Green Builder or when you began your journey to rebuilding. Unfortunately, that hill has gotten less steep and the boulder has gotten smaller.
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Sara Gutterman: But in your opinion, what are the challenges that we still face in trying to bring sustainability into the building? Was built in 19 state.
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Ron Jones: Well, they're mostly the economic pressures that I mentioned, and the fact that there are still people who simply resent being told what to do, and so they don't like the regulatory pressure that's put on them, the pressure for higher performance and and for better indoor air quality, for example, and, and for just all the requirements that go into to building green.
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Ron Jones: So there are still those challenges. There are some some challenges in cost. And those are generally first cost issues that are more than overcome by the long game. I like to call it where the performance of the of the residents is much greater and in the long run actually puts money in the pocket of the homebuyer. And so the challenges are are pretty much there, but they're diminishing.
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Ron Jones: And from a reward standpoint, the fact is that I think that it raises the status of homebuilding when we engage in the resolution of the problems that face the world instead of trying to avoid them. And there was a time when I first started pushing for the recognition of green building within the mainstream homebuilding industry, where people didn't want to hear it.
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Ron Jones: I was actually told, don't demonstrate that you can do it, because if you do, somebody will make us do it. Now they're interested in what the upside is. They're interested in the rewards. And so I think that's shifted quite a bit.
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Sara Gutterman: I agree I think sustainability has become a lot more transactional. Certain things like energy efficiency and solar storage and resiliency are less emotional and certainly more transaction. But let's get personal for a minute. Okay. What has been one would have been some of the most challenging and rewarding experiences that you personally have had as an advocate for green building and sustainability for now, for decades?
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Ron Jones: Well, from the standpoint of challenges, it was in trying to trying to inspire the mainstream industry to at least the open minded about a higher standard performance, just a better product overall. And by being responsive to environmental concerns and so forth. From a reward standpoint, I have to say that my involvement in in the movement, in the process came as something of a surprise because I was a small builder, custom builder, and a small volume, but very dedicated to a higher standard of product.
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Ron Jones: And it became possible for me personally to affect national housing policy. And that's that's a pretty big deal. When I was asked to chair the consensus committee that was seeded by International Code Council and NB to draft the original national green building standard, which became ICC 700. I had spent several years working on green building initiatives through the National Association of Homebuilders, as well as I had served on the steering committee for leave for homes for the U.S. Green Building Council.
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Ron Jones: And so I was I was very honored to be asked to chair the consensus Committee, which is made up of over 40 members who had very keen special interests in most cases, and they represented everybody, whether it was large builders, small builders, developers, manufacturers, designers, the building officials, utilities, the energy sector, I could go on down the list.
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Ron Jones: And so that was a pretty big challenge for a guy with a pickup truck, a tool belt and a barrel to me. But it was an honor to do. And I look back on it and feel the same satisfaction that I did when in a very short time, the ICC 700 did receive Ansi approval and became a bona fide Ansi standard.
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Ron Jones: And that was knowing that I could have simply been a member of the committee and and expressed my passion for green building, and I might have had a greater impact on the actual document that came out. But it was more important to me that as the chairman of the committee, I had the power to preserve the integrity of the process, and without that, the standard would not have any value.
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Ron Jones: So that's probably my greatest contribution to green building as we know it in the form of policy.
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Sara Gutterman: I remember those years when you engaged in those endeavors. So how do you define sustainability today?
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Ron Jones: I look at sustainability in a very broad way. And so if you think about it from the standpoint of human existence or the endeavors of construction or agriculture or transportation or manufacturing, no matter what your venue is, I see sustainability and define it as intergenerational prosperity. That is the result of ecological accountability. It's pretty simple if we are respectful of the resources that we have, especially with the challenges of a growing worldwide population, that puts more and more pressure on all of the systems.
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Ron Jones: If we look at the very real challenges of climate change, and we look at all of the extreme weather events and those kinds of things that are going on, we need to be economically accountable. And so that's that's my goal to to be an advocate for that.
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Sara Gutterman: So you've been engaged with green building and sustainability for a long, long time. 20 years before Greenville do media 20 years with green building media. Now, what do you foresee and what do you think we should expect in the next 20 years with respect to sustainability?
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Ron Jones: Well, I think from an acceptance standpoint, we're going to cross that bridge. And and so it's going to become a more normal existence for those of us that are environmental advocates and who are champions of sustainability. I think what we've seen over the past 20 years is a tremendous amount of advancement in the technologies and the the performance of building products and, and systems and manufactured products, to the extent that.
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Ron Jones: We have made tremendous strides. And so I think what we're going to see, and it's kind of interesting, I'm hopeful that this is what will happen. We have a couple of things that are going on when we realize that we don't have to build houses with sticks anymore, when we go about a sea change in how we build the actual building envelope, the structure of a residential building, it's going to open an opportunity for those really bright, brilliant minds out there to come up with an alternative, to come up with a replacement.
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Ron Jones: And so what I see in the next 20 years is an opportunity for us to come up with a new solution to the building envelope that will be environmentally friendly and which will do check all the boxes with one material. So the structural integrity of the building, the resiliency of the building, the insulation, insulating qualities of the building, the thermal mass and all of the things that go into a wall assembly and a roof assembly today in one package, in one product.
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Ron Jones: And we see examples of early stages of that with like 3D printing. I think what we're going to see is as that continues to improve and get better, we may see something really special. And the other driver is that if we're going to put permanent habitation on the moon and eventually on Mars or even beyond, we're going to have to come up with a substitute for a framing crew and an installation crew and a roofing crew.
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Ron Jones: A building is going to have to be something that essentially assembles itself. And I think that the opportunity to do that is incredible.
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Sara Gutterman: Fascinating. So my last question for you is do you have any tips, tricks, hacks, words of inspiration for our audience?
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Ron Jones: Only this don't let someone else define you or your level of commitment to sustainability. Establish it for yourself and always measure yourself by that standard. Don't. Don't allow yourself to be diverted from whatever your goal is. Nobody should be able to tell you how far you have to go or how far you you will be able to go.
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Ron Jones: You should always be pushing forward for yourself. So if you're a building, if you are any kind of professional, set a standard for yourself that causes you to know that when you come to work, your best day of work is still ahead of you.
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Sara Gutterman: Wonderful. Well, Ron, thank you for your time today. Thank you for your vision and your passion, your commitment and your leadership to sustainability. Thank you for being my partner in crime in this wild and circuitous journey that has been Green Builder Media over the last few years.