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Sustainable Building | Sustainable Architecture
Sustainable Building - Human Construction And The Natural Environment
Published: 10/11/2010 by BigGreenWeb.com
Nothing has a worse impact on our environment than buildings. Since buildings contribute to a great deal of our land use, water and resource consumption and atmospheric alteration, reducing this influence is vital to maintaining the health of our people and planet.
Sustainable building brings a wide array of materials, practices, and products to the development and design of eco-friendly construction. Such projects often feature solar and/or wind elements for the conversion and creation of energy, alternative building materials, and green building concepts to bring about the goal of low-impact construction.
Current buildings can be retrofitted to reduce their impact on the environment by replacing things like decks and fences made with pressure treated lumber, which introduces harmful chemicals into the wood for the purpose of preservation, with cedar, which is a naturally resilient lumber. Many other components in current buildings can be replaced or modified in order to reduce the impact of human construction on the natural environment.
The construction industry is one of the main areas impacted by the increasing popularity of the green movement. Home building, sustainable design, green building materials and green architecture principles present exciting challenges in the area of sustainable building.
Sustainable building is also known as green building or green construction. Sustainable building involves practices and procedures that range from choosing a site to designing, building, maintaining, and renovating. These practices and procedures address issues such as efficient energy, water, and resource use, and the reduction of waste and environmental degradation, among others.
Sustainable building seeks to lessen the environmental impact of construction. Since buildings contribute to a great deal of our land use, water and resource consumption and atmospheric alteration, decreasing this influence is vital to maintaining the health of our people and planet. Sustainable building brings a wide array of materials, practices, and products to the development and design of eco-friendly construction.
These projects often promote solar and/or wind elements for the conversion and creation of energy, alternative building materials, and green building concepts to promote the goal of low-impact construction.
Some of the main aims of sustainable building include:
While techniques and products in the green building industry are constantly being developed, the aims remain the same. That is to create buildings with an awareness of efficient design, efficient energy, efficient water and natural resources, enhancement of indoor environment quality, and toxin and waste reduction. Optimizing one or more of these standards is the essence of green building.
The aesthetics involved in sustainable building is the principle of incorporating a design that promotes harmony with the natural surroundings and resources. Some key processes in designing green construction are the utilization of green products from local suppliers, reducing loads, optimizing systems, and generating renewable energy on-site.
Sustainable building must also include methods to reduce the building’s energy use. This ranges from solar design to energy conserving window treatments and highly efficient insulation. Designers may orient windows, walls, awnings, and porches to create shade in summer and maximize solar exposure in the winter. Window and glass placement can also maximize the natural light, decreasing energy use for illumination.
A building’s environmental impact is greatly reduced by the introduction of on-site renewable energy generation such as solar power, wind energy, or biomass. The most costly item to add to any building is power generation.
Another key element in sustainable building is water conservation. This may be achieved using several means. The use of low-flow toilets and low-flow showerheads greatly reduces water consumption. In sustainable building, it is a good idea to consider replacing toilets with bidets because the elimination of toilet paper reduces sewer traffic and increases the availability of reusable water on-site.
The use of green materials is vital in sustainable building. Many green alternative building materials are available for all aspects of construction. The building market is one of the fastest growing eco-aware wholesale and retail concerns. The building industry appears to have very quickly grasped the consumer and contractor demand for sustainable construction products. Because of this, it is quite simple to procure eco-friendly construction materials for green building. There are literally thousands of green alternative products available to builders everywhere.
Through the above examples, you can easily see that sustainable building is a thorough and devoted construction process that achieves eco-friendly, low-impact, environmentally conscious results.
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