Green buildings are designed to maximize natural lighting and outdoor views while using renewable energy sources. Furthermore, these buildings prioritize environmental impact reduction through eco-friendly materials and mindful construction site selection.
These structures also incorporate innovative ventilation systems and rainwater harvesting strategies, while prioritizing indoor air quality and comfort to promote health, productivity, and satisfaction among occupants.
Energy Efficiency
Buildings account for a substantial proportion of global energy consumption. This includes both embodied energy used to extract, process and transport materials for building as well as operating energy needed to heat and cool them. Green buildings strive to reduce both consumption and embodied energy through various techniques during design and construction phases.
Passive solar building design, natural ventilation systems and daylighting techniques have been implemented in green buildings to optimize energy use while simultaneously improving thermal comfort, visual comfort, acoustics, productivity and stress levels for their occupants.
Green building practices can reduce toxic chemicals found in construction and maintenance products such as paints by selecting less toxic materials that contain lower volatile organic compound emissions and have more of a natural scent, helping to decrease allergies, asthma, and respiratory ailments, thus saving on health care costs. Furthermore, green buildings may save on heating/utility bills while offering greater appraised value upon resale.
Water Conservation
Fresh water is a valuable commodity that green buildings aim to conserve. Tenants can support these goals by taking an active approach in managing their personal water consumption habits. Sub-meters can monitor trends and prevent waste, while low-flow plumbing fixtures such as toilets, faucets and shower heads can significantly lower consumption levels; additionally flow restrictors are an effective tool in cutting back on wastage.
Many green buildings include water-saving toilets that use less than 1.3 gallons per flush compared to pre-1994 models that could use up to 7! Furthermore, eco-friendly properties may save water through xeriscaping with native plants that require minimal irrigation.
Green buildings encompass an array of practices, technologies, and materials designed to maximize energy, water, material performance while simultaneously minimizing their environmental impact. Such strategies can benefit developers, builders, owners, occupants, manufacturers and the environment alike – not to mention reduce global greenhouse gas emissions while conserving increasingly stretched resources while contributing to improved human health.
Materials Selection
The “Story of Stuff” is well known: raw materials are extracted, refined, manufactured and sold, then consumed and eventually discarded – this process incurring environmental, economic and social costs along the way. Green building practices address this problem by seeking materials and methods which reduce waste production.
Sustainable construction materials typically use less energy during production and use. Their exceptional durability means less frequent replacement needs – helping lower material costs and overall operating expenses of a building.
Selecting sustainable building products requires extensive research. This may involve reviewing information such as Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS), indoor air quality test results, recycled content percentages, product warranties and environmental statements as well as life cycle assessment (LCA) tools that help teams evaluate tradeoffs among various options.
Identification of “negative externalities” – non-project related consequences which affect people or the environment after construction has completed – is of critical importance when considering building projects, LCA can assist with this analysis to uncover these costs or benefits that should be included into project valuation calculations.
Indoor Air Quality
Green buildings take great care to prioritize indoor air quality alongside energy efficiency and materials selection. Proper ventilation systems combine fresh outdoor air with recirculated indoor air for optimal oxygen levels as well as reduced levels of pollutants within.
Green buildings utilize xeriscaping and permeable landscaping strategies that prevent dampness from entering their structures, thus decreasing moisture-related pollutants. Plants add oxygen into the air, which in turn decreases toxins while increasing overall air quality.
Studies have demonstrated that occupants in green buildings benefit from superior indoor environmental quality, which encompasses temperature and humidity control, lighting design, ergonomics and air quality. These factors play a vital role in supporting health, productivity and mood as well as cognitive performance in occupants. Furthermore, recent research suggests that improved indoor environmental quality may even boost cognitive functioning and performance among its occupants.