 What is green building? The term green building is used to describe design and construction of buildings with some or all of the following characteristics. Buildings and grounds that.....
- adapted from Your Green Home by Alex Wilson Consensus as to what is “Green” or green enough isn’t universal. In reality, green building is driven by science not ideology and must result in the construction and reconstruction of our built environment in harmony with the planet’s ecosystems such that we live within the limitations of those natural resources and pass on sufficient resources to future generations. Driven to the absolute by science, the language above would change from “design and construction of buildings with some or all of the following characteristics” to “design and construction of buildings with all of the following characteristics”. While all the tools and techniques needed to do this exist today, a huge educational challenge must be met to get these tools and techniques into use to accomplish this reconfiguration and reinvestment in our built environment.
Recent studies[1] show great interest in green building but significant confusion as to what it entails. In too many cases this confusion and accompanying assumptions that green building requires all of the characteristics described previously (and is thus too expensive), actually impede adoption and incorporation of important and feasible advancements toward sustainability. Debates exist as to whether to label only homes and buildings green when they include all of the previously described characteristics or whether we will move our society farther, faster through applying this label to homes, including some or most of the green building characteristics above. [1] Eco Pulse, the newest national study on U.S. consumers and green affinity produced by Shelton Group, a Tennessee advertising agency on energy efficiency and sustainability. |