What is Building Green?
Building green is defined as the practice of increasing the efficiency with which buildings use resources —energy, water, and materials — while reducing building impacts on human health and the environment during the building's lifecycle, through better, design construction, operation, maintenance, and removal.
Green building is no longer viewed as a passing fad or some strange notion adopted by militant environmentalists on the fringe of society. In fact, the editors of Harvard Business Review dedicated a large amount of space in their June 2006 issue to explain how green building is now an established mainstream building practice.
Building green is designed to reduce the overall impact of the built environment on human health and the natural environment by:
- Efficiently using energy, water, and other resources
- Protecting occupant health and improving employee productivity
- Reducing waste, pollution and environmental degradation
There’s nothing mysterious about green building — it’s really just applied common sense.