It's not only the virtuous who are jumping on to the green-building bandwagon: Companies hoping to burnish spotty track records are hopping on as well. The blog Green Building Elements did a helpful service, gathering ten of the most egregious examples. Included are Justin Timberlake's green golf lodge--that actually sits on a golf course that guzzles water; a LEED certified water-bottling plant; and the tower you see above. It's a huge skyscraper intended to be a carbon-sink in the middle of Mumbai. Only it's also a single-family home.

These are all good examples, but you can't blame the architects. I actually once interviewed one of the architects of the Helios House--a green, BP-branded gas station--and he pointed out that each building should be as green as possible, so it's hard to refuse this sort of commission, especially if your firm is living hand-to-mouth. Meanwhile, the bigger problem is that superficial touches such as green buildings make for better publicity than calls for changes in our behavior. That's a tough, fundamental problem that marketers and business strategists will be hard pressed to solve.

[Via Treehugger]