I love lists! Must be the Virgo in me that is drawn to the clean organization of thoughts ranked and filed. But who would have thought it would be so tough to find ten “Top 10” lists related to green building? You could pull together about 50 top ten lists related to cars without breaking a sweat, cars for women, cars that are fuel efficient, even the “Top 10 Gay Cars”, but finding lists for green building is a chore.

But here they are anyway, in no particular order, my top 10 list of the top 10 green building lists for 2007.

1) BuildingGreen.com took a look at innovative products for new construction for their rankings. Several of these are on my wish list including the 800 Series SHE98M Evolution Dishwashers from Bosch. It’s cool, quiet, a water miser and means no more dishpan hands! Also on the list was the Cube3 Ultra Urinal from Caroma, what guy wouldn’t want this?

2) Time Magazine Top 10 Green Ideas. Notable on this most notable Top 10 is the complete lack of green building. #5: Green-Collar Jobs, makes a passing reference to workers within the green building industry, but only to suggest that there will be more of us in 2008.

3) The American Institute of Architects (AIA) and its Committee on the Environment (COTE) sent out their list in April, but it’s still worth checking out. For their 2007 Top Ten Green Projects they listed a variety of non-residential sites including the awesomely space-aged Whitney Water Purification Facility. In their words: “Like an inverted drop of water, the building's shape creates a curvilinear interior space that opens onto expansive views of the surrounding landscape.” In my words: “Neat-o!”

4) For Earth Day BOMA (Building Owners and Managers Association) International published their Top 10 Ways for Commercial Buildings to Save Energy. While it is always nice to see associations putting good ideas out there for their members, I think this list needed a bit more effort. #1 on their list is “Check that Equipment Is Functioning as Designed.” That’s sound advice and almost as inspiring as suggestion #8 which is to harvest daylight by locating workstations that requiring high illumination adjacent to windows. Brilliant.

5) Ecogeek, a favorite site of mine, ranked the “Uber-Eco Top Ten Skyscrapers” in June. Talk about some jaw-dropping designs and eye-popping greenness! While New York is home to two of these beauties, absent from the American designs are the wind turbines most of the other international towers utilize. It would seem we have some catching-up to do in that particular arena.

6) The Partnership for Advancing Technology in Housing (PATH) released their annual Top 10 Technologies for new construction. I think it is kind of cute when new technologies start to look more and more like old technologies. For 2007 this included solar water heaters and permeable pavers. Land development with GPS, however, is both modern and prudent.

7) With a follow-up list PATH also published their first Path Top 10 Remodeling Technologies since 2004. This list actually had some great ideas for every homeowner including smart ventilation systems for crawlspaces and recycled/renewable flooring options. Here’s hoping PATH puts out another one in 2008.

8) Get with Green had their own list of products and manufacturers working in the green building industry. I like these guys; they have a positive message and tend to show both the consumer and product side of sustainable home ownership. For example making the GetwithGreen.com top 10 is the ENERGY STAR rebate finder proving that it doesn’t have to be a gizmo to be green.

9) The Top Ten Green Building Blogs -- Guardians of Green Building -- is a handy list of sustainable building advocates from Jetson Green. Their list came out before I started posting here at Celsias so I'll forgive their oversight.

Which brings us to #10 on my list:

10) My 2007 Top 10 Green Building List of Green Building Top 10 Lists for 2007. Yes it is true; I could only find nine top ten lists, so I had to include my own.

Call me silly but I don’t think many people understand the value of these top ten lists. When an organization produces and publishes a list it creates a buzz, people like me write about the lists, builders, home owners, and trades people haggle and debate whether or not things should be on the list, items are compared and contrasted. For some these top tens are shopping lists, or wish lists, for others they are benchmarks.

Here’s hoping that 2008 supplies us with more substantial and a greater variety of top 10 green building lists.