Exterior House Paints - green for the money?

As our remodel saga continues, when faced with a decision on materials I am researching the option with the least envirnomental impact and cost effective. I've found that nothing is simple, everything has multiple issues, it is so hard to find any good info.

So my latest is exterior house paint. By now everyone has heard of no and low VOC paints. Time to set some things straight:

1. The VOCs that are being taken out are to reduce smog and low level ozone depletion. This has nothing to do with toxicity.

2. Most people are concerned with the VOCs because of the outgassing and awful smells - indoor pollution - but really there could be lots of things outgassing making that smell that have nothing to do with VOCs.

3. There is very little data, reviews, etc. on EXTERIOR house paint because you won't smell it, like inside your home. But actually, that is where VOCs matter the most.

4. The paint base may be VOC low or no, but the pigments themselves give off VOCs. If you really want a no VOC product, you have to find one where they also claim that the pigments were designed also to be no VOC.

5. Due to Federal Laws, upcoming Federal laws, and CA state laws all paint manufacturers have generally gotten rid of their VOCs. They are at or below the legal limits. So further claims will become greenwashing because they will simply be complying with the law.

6. Other chemicals you want to avoid : acetone, ammonia, formaldehyde, formaldehyde formation during the curing process. I called the big 3 paint companies, all of them have none of these except trace amounts of ammonia.

7. I could find no testing where someone took the exterior house paints, green and non green, and actually measured some performance or compared them. Consumer Reports has a long term study - 3, 6, 9. 12 years - of paints. Most of the green paints came out in the past 3-5 years, so they are not in the consumer reports study.

Note: I have personally bought items highly rated by CR and been very disappointed. I think a second opinion is needed.

Bottom Line:
For exterior house paints, for greenness, all of the various brands of paints are the same. Also, I think that green and non green exterior paints are basically the same. You buy based on Quality, not on greenness. If you buy high quality, you will paint less often, which will use up less resources. High quality paints are 2x more expensive and there is little or no info on whether they really are higher quality. For this you have to rely on word of mouth from painting contractors.

Note: Paint company warranties are WORTHLESS. The cost of painting is in the prep and labor, not the materials. So if you pay $10K for a paint job and you pay $800 for the paint, and the paint fails - you still get to pay $9.2K. Even then, you have to provide all kinds of proof that the paint was used according to manufacturers specs, etc. etc.