It’s easier than ever to be green … or is it?

Earlier this year, the National Association of Home Builders introduced its Certified Green Professional designation. Since that time, the trade group — the largest for home builders — has certified more than 1,000 builders, remodelers and other home-building professionals as green builders.

Certified Green Professionals must take 24 hours of classroom training, have two years of professional experience and sign an ethics pledge, all while agreeing to adhere to environmentally friendly construction methods, to earn the designation.

This looks like good news for the building industry and for homeowners who want to be friendly to the environment. But I’ve seen far too many “green” houses that are anything but friendly to the environment. Here’s an example: I once interviewed a builder who proudly boasted that the new home he built for his clients sported geothermal heating, bamboo floors and solar panels. It was green as a home could be, he said.

Problem is, the home covered more than 5,500 square feet of living space. And to build it, the owners first purchased a perfectly nice 2,500-square-foot home that they paid to have demolished. Is that green? Is it environmentally friendly to rip down an existing home — one that had no real problems except that it wasn’t as modern or large as its buyers wanted — and then build a mansion? Even if you rely on locally produced lumber, I don’t see this as being especially kind to Mother Earth.

So while I applaud builders for incorporating green construction methods into their projects, let’s not kid ourselves about what environmentally friendly really means.