"Green" is a concept that has been much diluted and adulterated in the recent pop-culture "green" blitz, and unfortunately the multitude of sharks swimming in the market-ocean smell "green" blood in the water, and they will say anything to make you believe that the very same product they were selling last week is now "green". I have heard claims of green-ness in everything from vinyl flooring to concrete to plastic water bottles stamped out in Chinese factories with no environmental restrictions.

Green is the color of living plant tissues that through the miraculous process of photosynthesis convert energy from solar radiation to chemical energy in carbon-carbon and carbon-hydrogen bonds. This process is the nuts-and-bolts basis to all life on earth. We perceive plant's leaves as green because the greens are the light spectra (wavelengths 520-570 nm) that are rejected by the chlorophyll molecule, which performs it's best work in the reds and blues.

Our concept of Green at the Mothership harkens back to this feat of divine chemical engineering. A technology that is Green must emulate the almighty chloroplast: it must be well-designed, sustainable, resource-efficient (in terms of materials, time and money), and energy-efficient. A Green technology is not Green if it doesn't work, and it is certainly not Green if it's not affordable. Have you ever heard a farmer say " I could really make a lot more money if those damn chloroplasts didn't charge so much for converting sunlight to sugar". No. All plants and their substituent parts provide their services for room and board alone. You may, however, hear the farmer complain bitterly about the cost of energy to pump water and run machinery. This farmer makes his livelihood at the whim of two energetic systems, one so efficient as to be unnoticed and forgotten, the other so woefully inefficient and capricious in it's day-to-day costs that at times it threatens to put him out of business.

Our goal is to provide construction technologies that are more like the avocado tree and less like the diesel tractor. This involves the use of innovative materials and technologies as well as the wise use of conventional construction methods and media. See the navigation bar at right for more details in specific areas of green building.