"Buyers wanting to upgrade to a new home but who are concerned about the subsequent tax increase should consider renovating existing homes. These buyers can reduce their environmental footprint and gain substantial long-term tax savings. Sarasota is ripe with renovation opportunities.”

-Grant Castilow

Think Green Winner - MyGreenBuildings, LLC

YourObserver | June 9, 2011

Steve Ellis grew up in Boston as the son of a prominent developer. He loved going to visit his dad on job sites and seeing how his father changed an old piano factory into the first condominiums in the area. It is no wonder that Ellis grew up with a fascination with wanting to improve upon things that had potential to be something more.

In 2006, Ellis began working on a house he owned and asked for help from Grant Castilow, now his business partner at My Green Buildings, LLC. As the two worked together on building Ellis’ house, they tried to make it as high-performing and green as they knew how. Once the house was finished, it became the first green home certified under the Green Coalition in Florida and the second-highest scoring home in the state. The two realized that they had hit on an emerging trend.

Since then, My Green Buildings, LLC has added eight more full-time employees and moved into its second office space. The entire staff incorporates green into everything they do from recycling at the office, using more efficient lighting, painting the walls with zero VOC paint and buying all their furniture used and creating desks and cabinets out of items from a building that was never completed. Their eco-friendly office only cost the company $2,000 to create.

When the team is out on a job site, they make sure to achieve certain LEED levels and build their buildings in efficient ways that produce the least amount of waste possible.

“We practice what we preach,” says Ellis..

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