Home Green Home

There are a growing number of green-product retailers, both online and in storefronts. We list some of those with a specialty focus in GreenSpec, but there are so many more popping up all the time. I visited one last weekend that's quite something — Home Green Home, in Ithaca, NY. While most green retailers are either boutique shops with small, unique items, or building supply outlets offering wall finishes, insulation, and sustainable-construction hard goods, Home Green Home has taken a more encompassing approach. "We try to cover every room in the house, including the garage and the patio," founder Joe Nolan said. The range of merchandise displayed in the large, spotless retail space extends from natural paints to locally-made quality furniture to nontoxic cleaning products to organic mattresses. Deliberate care is taken to offer the most deeply green options.

The seed for Home Green Home took root after Joe and Michelle Nolan built their beautiful, code-approved, timber-framed, straw-bale-insulated house a few years ago using local, salvaged, and earth-friendly materials and finishes. People were interested... came in droves to check it out... and were inspired and motivated by the possibilities they saw. A vision formed to provide the benefit of the all the research the Nolans poured into their own choices and actions, making it easier for others to implement the same sorts of green changes in their lives now. The retail space itself is a showcase for the products and techniques available, from the RetroPlate-rehabbed structure-as-finish existing concrete floor, to the clay paints on the walls and ceiling (Green Planet clay paints have been approved for GreenSpec, but the listing hasn't been drafted yet); from the displays and fixtures created by local craftspeople out of reclaimed wood (including shutters and doors), to the weathered steel roofing repurposed as a decorative finish element. They will ship goods if people don't have a more local source available, but they've so far chosen to not implement ecommerce, Joe said. "People can call us up and we'll put a human interface on it — talk to them about what their needs are and the best way to meet them."