Even as the architectural and construction industries all over the world are scaling down traditional projects in the light of this global economic downturn, the numbers are showing that green building construction practice is on the rise. This may be partly due to the significant returns on investment that green building represents, thanks to greater energy efficiency dividends. Yet, as always, there are even more opportunities to be gleaned from the pursuit of green building practices, even if some of them are ‘rubbish’.
What I actually mean is that the area of waste management is a burgeoning area of development. According to this article from eponline.com, waste management comes second to energy efficiency in terms of project goals. Yet, only 28% of materials on average are submitted for recycling and re-use. The importance of waste management being second to energy efficiency will continue to trend as more technologies develop, and as more project managers realize the cost-savings potential in this practice.
The article in turn quotes a McGraw Hill report on waste management on construction sites, which highlights some key areas. Here are some of them, quoted in the article and from the McGraw Hill press release about the report.
Most contractors place sustainable waste management (61 percent) and responsible use of materials and resources (57 percent) as two of the three most important aspects of green building, behind energy efficiency. This importance is expected to increase in five years to 80 percent and 78 percent, respectively.
Waste diversion activity is increasing despite the recession; 20 percent of firms are diverting half of their construction waste on 60 percent or more of projects, and 25 percent of firms expect to do so within the next year.
The biggest drivers behind sustainable construction waste management practices include client demand (82 percent) and government regulations (81 percent). Competitive advantage (77 percent) and increases in education and awareness (75 percent) are also cited as major influencing factors.
Already, 57 percent of contractors have set sustainability positions and diversion goals, and 43 percent plan to divert more than 50 percent of waste from projects this year.
A main driver here is cost savings and competitive advantage. Yet another aspect that comes into play as shown by the above, is client demand as the importance of green building emerges as a cultural phenomenon. The construction industry is traditionally looked upon as being somewhat conservative and immovable when it comes to new ways of approaching problems. Yet, meeting client demand is also a traditional business value. And it seems that clients are demanding green at every stage, including the way that waste is managed on site.
With this issue in particular, a connection is being made to incorporate the old ‘reduce, re-use, recycle’ mantra on a commercial scale, rather than as a tagline aimed at individual consumers. To me, this is an indication that minds are being changed, driven by numbers, by imposed regulations, and by traditional economic realities. But it shows too that at heart, it is a change in priorities and consciousness on the part of decision makers and property owners that plays the greatest part in making a change in approach to construction projects on a commercial scale.
This is what happens in a healthy industry and its relation to the marketplace; good ideas are embraced, shared, and implemented across the board, to everyone’s benefit. And the ones that no longer make sense are trashed.
Items he touched upon included green building mandates, the effectiveness of USGBC leadership, calling out greenwashing, and the folly of unsustainable dependency on fossil fuels as a means of stabilizing our economies and ways of life all over the world. Ultimately though, Gore’s perspective is that with innovation and technology, the future need not be the dystopian nightmare that, perhaps, his book and film An Inconvenient Truth may suggest to many people.
Al Gore image courtesy of Tulane Public Relations. Click image to view Flickr Stream.
Part of what is tied up with this is the idea that sustainable futures don’t just refer to natural resources or stable climates. They also refer to global economics as well, which of course go on to affect many other important areas of global and of local concern. Once again, making that paradigm shift between one economy and another is as culturally important as it is commercially important.
Here’s a video excerpt of Al Gore’s keynote speech:
As it has been mentioned in our Greenest Place in America article, the city is not known for its environmental friendliness. But, this perception is uninformed. There is a great deal of work that has gone into making city life, and city planning, into a pursuit that is not only sensitive to the environment, but is actually active in addressing environmental issues like better air quality, greater energy efficiency, and global climate change.
One method which has been in place for a number of years in urban settings is ‘green roofing’. But, what is that, exactly?
Green roofs are designed to incorporate the physical placement of living vegetation into a building’s design, most often planted in soil that is bedded in the roof itself. Green roofs are designed to allow for self-contained growth, complete with drainage systems to sustain vegetation, and to manage storm water runoff. They have a number of benefits which have an impact on the reduction of harmful factors and promotion of green building best practicees, such as:
Natural insulation which allows for greater energy efficiency and heat retention in winter months
Overall temperature reduction in summer season, reducing need for HVAC cooling systems
Reduction of rainwater runoff, and promotion of rain harvesting
Natural pollutant filters that contribute to better air quality
Natural filters that remove heavy metals in rainwater
The scale of green roof technology varies from farmhouses in Iceland that use green roofs to retain heat, to green roofs in the United Kingdom that incorporate them to provide greenery to urban dwellers who otherwise don’t have access to natural green space. And some green roofing projects have been legislatively mandated, as they are in Toronto, for many residential and industrial buildings.
Recently, a green roof was installed in one of the tallest buildings in the world, The Willis Tower in Chicago, formerly the Sears Tower. And yet many other high-profile green roofs, like Chicago City Hall, Canary Wharf In London, and the Dearborn, MI Ford Motor company plant, have shown that green roofs are viable elements in city planning and green building in a number of contexts.
Along with the other benefits of city life that make green living a matter of course (widespread public transit use, local consumerism that encourages walking and biking to access amenities, greater use of resources through apartment living, and more), green roofing is a green building technique that has been used for centuries in rural settings, but seems to be an indicator of where we should be heading in 21st Century urban development, too.
Although green roofing has its pros and cons, the benefits they present seem significant enough to hope that city planners, designers, and local politicians to take a look at the viability of roof gardens.
Here in Vancouver, the city is abuzz with pre-Olympic enthusiasm, as the 2010 Winter Olympic Games brings our athletes, and our city, into the international limelight. It should be said that not everyone is on board with the Olympics, some arguing that there are more important issues to look at, and toward which to spend municipal and provincial monies. Yet, for me, the events represent more than just a two-week tourist attraction.
The Olympics is a tradition that is many thousands of years old. Yet one of the things that typifies it is a way of showing the world where technology and innovation is taking us. In the realm of green building, the Olympics, and the infrastructure that the events demand, there is a chance for green builders and designers to strut their stuff on the world stage, and to produce buildings that shine as beacons of modernity that reflect the times in which they are built.
To a greater degree, it is a chance to show how green building isn’t just a novelty to show off a world class event. It’s a chance to demonstrate how green thinking and design can transform our ideas of how to manage resources more efficiently, while still keeping an eye on what is attractive, too.
In this particular case, I’m talking about the Olympic Village, being designed and built on a 100 acre lot in the False Creek area of Vancouver. Some of the features of this LEED platinum certificate project is:
optimum use of natural light through passive design
A big issue in Vancouver is that of homelessness, and affordable housing in general. This is as true here as it is in many major cities. I think this lies at the crux of a lot of anti-Olympic sentiment.
Yet, what if we can take what we’ve learned in creating building projects that exemplify optimal energy efficiency and best use of resources? And what if we then apply those principles of efficiency to make housing more accessible and more affordable in all future projects? If this were the case, which is hope it is, I’d like to think that we don’t have to choose between a serious issue like affordable housing and a chance at worldwide attention.
For more information about the Olympic Village project, including timelines and more detailed green building information, investigate the Vancouver Park Board website.
When we think ‘green’, maybe we have certain associations that float around our minds. Maybe we think of a solitary hemp-clothed peacenik living on a grassy rolling plain, at one with nature, and uncluttered by the accouterments of the city. And maybe Edvard Greig’s ‘Peer Gynt’ is playing somewhere in the background, too.
Yet, according to recent research it seems that, when it comes to the greenest place in America, we should change our vision from a bucolic rural scene of a solitary man with Greig floating all around him, and change it to the bustling metropolis of New York City, with its teeming masses, apartment buildings, and maybe put on a little Talking Heads, Ramones, Blondie, or the New York Dolls.
David Owen, staff writer for the New Yorker, writes this article about New York City as a green capital of America . The argument is pretty compelling, and some of the many reasons Owen cites are extremely interesting, yet not really all that surprising. In New York City, it is the size of the place measured against the number of people in that space which really drives a tendency toward greener living, and more green building too. For instance:
car ownership is lower than in other places - emissions and gas consumption is also lower
public transit use is the norm, not the exception
walking to local amenities is easy practically everywhere in the city
apartment living is more energy efficient- New Yorkers consume less electricity than any other place in the country
One of the most interesting things about this is the cultural expectation question. As Owen points out, most people think of cities as the’ great dispoilers’ of the environment. The image of the densely populated city is often just the image used to portray the antithesis of green. Yet, Owen is suggesting that in terms of consumption, use of building resources, and use of energy as well, the exact opposite is true.
Once again, I really think that perceptions play a huge role when it comes to the shifting paradigms needed to make green living, and green building. Yet, when communities are made with a public transit system close by, and with plenty of locations to walk to instead of having to drive, and when populations are forced to make more with less in terms of space, changing of habits fall into place without much of a change of mind.
It makes me wonder how this information will have an impact on city planning, and in the curtailing of suburban sprawl, which practically makes a multi-car household a necessity. It kind of amuses me that with an anti-urban sentiment in the rhetoric of a lot of people when it comes to environmental degradation has been shown to be extremely questionable at best.
Perhaps cities serve the environment best by keeping more people self-contained and provided for while also keeping them out of the natural world, too. It’s an interesting idea.
About a year and a half ago, we launched our green building guide and green flooring guide. The reason for these pages was to get information out thereabout our specific products, and also about the very idea of green building materials as options for ethical renovations.
Even at that point, not too many consumers knew too much about things like LEED points, for instance, or even about post-industrial tile, or strand-woven bamboo floors. I think that has changed. And I hope we’ve been a voice in helping to bring that change about.
By now the average consumer is more educated than ever before. And I think resource pages like this really help to round out the decision-making process when it comes to home renovations. They also provide a basis for the decision-making process for those whom we call BIYers (buy-it-yourselfers).
These are folks who purchase green flooring and other building materials and then inform their hired contractors about their advantages. The contractors then realize how durable and easy to work with a strand-woven bamboo floor is, for instance. And then that wisdom is passed along from consumer to professional, and perhaps then to another consumer.
It seems that making buying decisions centred around ethics as well as practicality and look is becoming more and more the norm in any case, which to me is a credit to the awareness of buyers where issues of sustainability are concerned. It’s kind of a chicken and egg scenario in many ways, I suppose, what with a multitude of DIY TV programs such as Building Green TV and others that are having an impact on buying decisions.
But, I think it’s also a credit to manufacturers and designers, who have created products which make the decision to choose green a pretty easy one. Buying a green materials means you’re getting look and durability as well as sustainability, and the idea that these are mutually exclusive is now a thing of the past.
For another example of an exemplary green building materials guide, I’d encourage you to check out Planet Green green materials guide, which is an accessible and informative set of pages that gives buyers an overview as to what some of the main advantages are with modern flooring and other building materials.
Before being introduced to the world of building materials and construction, it never really occurred to me to think that the process of designing and constructing a building should be any different from location to location. Well, I suppose there is a question of greater heat retention in a place like Winnipeg, or North Dakota, where winters are more severe than they would be in, say, Palm Springs. Yet, even in these cases it is assumed that we’ve got large scale HVAC systems to account for extreme temperatures and other climate conditions.
But, given the major concerns about dwindling resources, and the threat of global climate change, many designers have sought to rethink the way that they approach their jobs. The thinking when it comes to green building is about separating from the dependency on these systems in favor of looking at and building toward the prevailing environmental conditions of a site before foundations are laid. This concept has been referred to as passive design.
Passive design involves using as little technology as possible to heat and cool a building, with a reliance on building placement in relation to the sun more so than on HVAC systems.
In this article from Palm Springs CA The Desert Sun, an interview with San Francisco-based green building architect Eric Corey Freed reveals that part of the problem in recent energy inefficiency is not down to bad practices of residents so much as it is down to when Freed considers to be bad design. Here’s what he says from that article:
“We cover buildings with stucco that makes them hotter; we put on tile roofs that store up heat,” Freed said. “We build potentially hollow wooden boxes and don’t concern ourselves with how they face the sun.”
And,
If we’re not careful, in the next 10 years, we’re not going to recognize the environment. The whole thing is tied up with bad design. We’ll plunk down a big air conditioner, and we externalize the cost to everyone we can. We externalize it to the homeowner; we externalize it to the environment. We’re externalizing it to foreign countries.
In the context of this article, he’s talking about the desert climate, which has a set of conditions which do not apply in the Pacific Northwest, for instance. And where I don’t think he’s advocating the abandonment of HVAC systems, I think he is saying that greater energy efficiency and physical placement of buildings are directly tied, and that it is this which should drive design, not dependence on external systems and the outside economies it takes to run them. It is a compelling idea that convinces me that green building really is just common sense when it comes to design.
Take a look at this interview with Freed, talking about the green building approach in general, appealing to the consumer’s perspective:
In addition to his pursuits in design, Freed has founded Urban Re:Vision, which is a passive design, green building organization that seeks to find ways of greening urban areas at the city block level.
One of my favourite stories is J.R.R Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, and its prequel the Hobbit. Tolkien, who had it in for progress and the industrialization of England, wanted his main character to be one who demonstrated a life of simple pleasures, and being at one with his surroundings. And to show this, he described the homes of the Hobbits as being integrated with and not intrusive on the natural world.
When directed to this article about a self-built, earth sheltered home, I was instantly reminded of the home of Bilbo Baggins in J.R.R Tolkien’s the Hobbit. Click the link to read the article and take a look at the incredible pictures taken by the family who built the house.
Built in Wales, the home was conceived by a low-income family with two children and constructed using natural raw materials and items ‘from a rubbish bin somewhere’. The cost of building? $5000. The tools? A chisel, a chainsaw, a hammer. The materials? Fallen trees, rocks and mud from diggings, plastic moisture barriers, and turf, among other things. Power? Solar panels that provide enough energy for lighting and appliance use. Incredible.
Simon Dale and his family and friends built this house from the ground up, using fallen timber, earth, and items from a scrap heap.
Overall, I think that stories like this show us that there is more than one way to build, and more than one way to establish a comfortable living space that celebrates non-intrusive, sustainable living. This may seem like an extreme case, but it is interesting to see that the idea of ‘progress’ which Tolkien detested, doesn’t necessarily mean destroying the natural world to provide shelter.
My question of course is how can we take the example that this young family has provided, and create our own vision for sustainable construction as an industry on a larger scale. The fact is that natural resources have largely been spoken for when it comes to access to land and to reliable water sources off of the grid. It is an interesting question, and proves once again that sustainability practices tend to drive creativity.
Thanks to @EcoInsight on Twitter, I was directed to an article in the Epoch Times about the cost of green building. For a while now, one of the big barriers to a developer looking for LEED certification was greater upfront cost. A part of this is the cost to hire consultants and designers who are themselves LEED certified in order to see that the resulting project can be rated according to bronze, silver, gold, and platinum status.
Yet, according to the article, there are some early indications in the New York City development community that these additional costs are not adding as much to the budget as was previously thought. It is admitted in the article that the numbers require a more in-depth review across the board, and that much of the data is anecdotal. Yet, I wonder if we’re reaching a point in history where the real barriers to building green are becoming less about balance sheets, and more about perceptions. From the Epoch Times article:
“I think if you ask the average developer, they would say it [green building] costs more,” said Russell Unger, executive director of the Urban Green Council. The results from “The Cost of Green in NYC” study debunked the cost myth with a comparison of the average cost per square-foot for certified green and non-certified construction.
Throughout 2008, data were gathered on 107 projects throughout the five boroughs of New York, 63 of which were either pursuing or had achieved Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification, the report said. Surveys were conducted for buildings with and without sustainability goals. Data points included construction costs, design fees, LEED design fees, LEED additional fees, and commissioning fees. The average square-foot construction cost for a high-rise residential building without LEED certification was $436; while the average cost with certification was $440.
I think a great deal of work needs to be done to prove this data for all time. More examples in more urban centers are needed in order to express this trend in a budgetary context to decision-makers. I think this will do much in terms of changing people’s perceptions of the short term, upfront costs which have often been a prohibitive force to affect decision-making thus far. Yet, I also wonder how many decision-makers have balked on green building and LEED certification because it is simply perceived to be more costly upfront without even considering a comparative analysis.
NYC image courtesy of Joe Schlabotnik. Click image to view Flickr stream.
Once again, it seems that cultural perceptions and commerce are inextricably tied and both must be examined if sustainability and best construction practices are to move permanently into the mainstream and become the standard. Perhaps for many decision-makers who are paying close attention to the comparative numbers, economic proof will be all that is needed to change their minds.
Perhaps soon, decision-makers won’t even need to pore over the numbers to make the right economic, and environmentally-responsible choice. Soon, responsibly managing resources and building with low environmental impact in mind will come to be the perception that rules the roost.
A colleague of mine pointed out an interesting survey by the University of British Columbia. It’s the sustainability calculator, which is really two surveys which measure eco-footprints as well as general attitudes surrounding the issue of sustainable living.
You can take the surveys here where your answers will be stored in the database. Be prepared to be surprised by the results, particularly the eco-footprint survey which tells you how many ‘earths’ it would take if everyone lived the way you’ve described your own habits.
The surveys feature a few leading questions, the most leading being “do you think that sustainability is your responsibility or someone else’s” with only those two answers available. I mean, I know what they’re getting at with that question. But as it is, the question comes off as being entirely rhetorical which weakens the impact for me.
Yet, I think the main point of the survey, beyond some clunky wording here and there, is that sustainability is about the examination and revision habits, and accepted social norms. For instance, most of the questions centre around your choice of diet, your daily means of gettting from A to B, and your general habits as a consumer overall.
There are all kinds of nuances here that are certainly open to discussion. For me, there are shades of the old 70s ‘Give a Hoot, Don’t Pollute’ campaign creeping in, which despite its good intentions, puts the burden of ecological health solely on individual consumers, without mentioning big business.
Image courtesy of Fuzzy Gerdes. Click image to view Flickr stream.
The burden of a sustainability mandate can’t rest entirely on individual results. Revising consumerist or dietary habits is certainly a part of the equation. But, there has to be more to it than that. There must be ubiquitous mechanisms in place which make more sustainable living a matter of course, rather than a hardship complete with accusatory finger-waggling at ordinary people. Let’s make it easy and attractive for people to use their cars less than they do, to buy locally produced food, to eat less red meat, and yes - to buy green building materials, too. This to me is a major area of discussion, and where the biggest room for growth is.
Examination and revision of social norms and societal expectations when it comes to lifestyles are a huge part of sustainability. This seems like a necessary step in moving toward a civilization which requires only one earth to sustain us, even as we sustain it. But, we need the support of those systems which currently manage resources, and the support of distribution channels that allow consumers access to them.
“Is sustainability your responsibility or someone elses’?”
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