What is Green Building?
Green building emerged from a stark realization that the building industry has a major impact on our environment. In April of 2009 the EPA published a paper called "Buildings and Their Impact on the Environment: A Statistical Summary" outlining how buildings contribute to Energy Consumption, Water Usage, and other relevant areas. We encourage you to click the link above and see some of the statistical data. One that stands out is Energy Use. "Buildings accounted for 72 percent of total U.S. electricity consumption in 2006 and this number will rise to 75% by 2025".
With this in mind, many building professionals, homeowners and businesses began to evaluate how we can minimize the enormous environmental impact of the building and construction industry. Professional organizations were developed that created guidelines and various rating systems to manage the process. The main goals that emerged are the following:
- Conserve Natural Resources - I imagine we all want to have clean drinking water and trees in the future.
- Reduce energy consumption or use sustainable/renewable energy sources - we would like our children and grandchildren to still have the luxury of electricity and easy transportation.
- Improve Indoor Air Quality - this means we would like to breath non toxic air in our homes.
- Create and support livable communities that intrinsically use less fossil fuels and natural resources.
For more information on what each of these mean, please see “Our Sustainable Practices” for details on how A D Construction implements these sustainable practices. We provide examples and strategies that can help you achieve these goals.
