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A few days ago I received an email from the U.S. Green Building Council's Green Home Guide, a resource that answers your building questions with solutions from their network of experienced green building professionals--architects, designers, contractors, electricians, energy experts, landscapers, tile & stone specialists, and more. There are a lot of great ideas here, including product recommendations. They also have local directories of green building professionals for about a dozen major metropolitan areas.

One of the topics was choosing kitchen cabinets. Most of the article was very good. Some of it I didn't agree with. What I write below is pulled from this article as well as some of the links from this article.

Before I get in to the options for new cabinets, it is definately greener to reuse your existing cabinets if they are in good repair, and often less toxic too. My husband and I have been slowly remodeling our kitchen and chose to keep our old cabinets--for economic reasons as well as resource efficiency. I happen to prefer open shelving, so we just removed the old doors on the top cabinets (though you can get a whole new look for the kitchen simply by replacing cabinet doors, if you want to). We're repainting and adding new hardware, which is completely sufficient for the style and vintage of our 1940's suburban house.

I have also seen a lot of cabinets at architectural salvage yards.

If you want or need to buy new cabinets, here are some points about choosing them.

According to the article, the three pillars of sustainable design and construction are energy efficiency, resource efficiency and air quality.

For energy efficiency, choose a a local cabinet maker who is willing to construct cabinets to your specifications. When I lived in California, the cabinets were so old they were falling apart and we needed to install new ones. There happened to be a cabinet maker right in the little village where we lived and he did an excellent job making solid wood cabinets just the way we wanted them, and it cost less than buying new "cheap" cabinets at Home Depot.

You can also check on the energy efficiency of the manufacturing process. Look at a manufacturer's website for this information.

For resource efficiency, "select a green cabinet manufacturer that uses sustainably harvested wood products such as Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified woods (given your preference for USA made, consider wood species grown in North America such as eastern maple, american cherry, red alder, hickory, etc.)."

Other commonly used resource efficient cabinet materials recommended in the article include:

• veneers
• plywood products such as SkyPly (Roseburg Forest Products www.roseburg.com),
• medium density fiber board products such as Arreis (Sierra Pine www.sierrapine.com) and
• particle board products such as Encore (Sierra Pine www.sierrapine.com) that do not use added urea formaldehyde.

Another article on Green Home Guide notes these options for materials being used to make green cabinets:

• low- to zero-VOC panel products such as Medite II or the less expensive Roseburg Skyblend, a non-urea-formaldehyde particleboard made with 100 percent post-consumer recycled wood fiber
• FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) certified plywood such as ApplePly
• rapidly renewable agrifiber boards (such as wheatboard, made from the shaft of the wheat stalk, an agricultural waste product)
• reclaimed wood.

Other materials include PureBond, a wheatboard core with a variety of FSC veneers, and Plyboo, a very strong bamboo plywood.

And finally, use low Volatile Organic Compound (VOC) paints, stains, finishes, and glues.

There is now a certification program for green kitchen and bath cabinets. The Environmental Stewardship Program (ESP) certification from the Kitchen Cabinet Manufacturers Association (KCMA) certifies cabinets for

• using wood from sustainable forestry and selective harvesting programs
• using low formaldehyde emitting products
• recycling, conserving energy
• educating suppliers
• showing involvement in their community.

They have a list of about 140 certified cabinet manufacturers at ESP Certified Companies. Some companies exclusively produce green cabinets while others offer a single line of green cabinetry.

I would check these companies thoroughly, however, and not rely on this certification for nontoxic cabinets. "Low formaldehyde emitting" does not mean "no formaldehyde." For example, ESP certified manufacturers guarantee that at least 80% of the particleboard, medium density fiberboard, plywood and hardboard used in their cabinets meets the formaldehyde emission level of the California Air Resources Compwood ATCM and that it is third-party certified to meet low formaldehyde emission standards. Personally, it would need to be 100% for me.

I haven't checked all the cabinets on this list, but it is a place to start for possibilities. (Note that as of this writing there is an error in their database that results in many of the links not working. The problem is an extra "http://" at the beginning of some of the URLs, so if you get a broken link, just remove the extra "http://" from the beginnning of the URL and you'll get through.)

Green Home Guide recommends these green cabinet makers::

• Neil Kelly Cabinets – www.neilkelllycabinets.com
• Berkley Mills - www.berkeleymills.com
• Pacific Crest Industries, Inc. – www.pacificcrestindustries.com
• Columbia Cabinets - www.columbiacabinets.com
• Crystal Cabinet Works, Inc. – www.crystalcabinets.com
• Huntwood Industries – www.huntwood.com
• Henry Built – www.henrybuilt.com

Here is a list of all the "green cabinet" Q&A on Green Home Guide: greenhomeguide.com/askapro/tag/cabinets.

And here is one homeowners tips for Getting Great Green Results from a Cabinet Shop."

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