Sustainability
The U.S. Green Building Council is a leader in the sustainability movement.
Sustainability to most contractors sounds like one of those things people talk about when they are drinking organic herbal tea and wearing sandals and a T-shirt that says “It Takes a Village.” The problem with sustainability though is that if you ignore it you’ll probably be sorry. More and more governments are dictating that “green” construction be incorporated into new construction and owners are beginning to demand it. A recent study by McKinsey, a consulting firm looking at how to reduce greenhouse gases, concludes that “Almost a quarter of possible emission reductions would result from measures (such as better insulation in buildings) that carry no net life cycle cost—in effect, they come free of charge.” Like it or not, you will be asked eventually how your work contributes to the LEED points of a home.
LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. This is a program administered by the United States Green Building Council (www.usgbc.org), which is not a government agency but rather a fairly new nonprofit organization set up to promote sustainable construction. Under their LEED program a building project is awarded points for various things that contribute to reducing a building’s impact on the environment. Energy efficiency is a big part, but you can also get points for using recycled materials (such as fly ash in concrete) and locally produced materials (like concrete). There are now LEED programs for both commercial and residential construction. The USGBC sponsors a growing annual trade show called Greenbuild.
The National Association of Home Builders promotes a different green points system that they call Green Globes. Operated under the Green Building Initiative, this program awards points for many of the same things as LEED. NAHB recently came out with Model Green Home Building Guidelines, which are worth reviewing and are available on their web site as a free download (www.nahbrc.org/greenguidelines).
The good news in all of this is that concrete has great natural advantages in green construction. It is air-tight, provides lots of thermal mass to help modulate indoor temperatures, and it lasts nearly forever. Concrete floors can’t get moldy and don’t put off toxic vapors like carpet can. Our products are an easy sell to the greenies.
So I encourage you to jump on the green bandwagon and let me know about your experience. Do you love sustainable construction? Hate it? Or are you still waiting for your cup of herbal tea?
5 Comments:
Bill,
I agree entirely with your view that sustainability will become an increasingly important factor when owners choose building materials. Concrete certainly has a great story to tell when it comes to sustainable construction, but our industry needs to get involved enough to understand the issues - it won't be sufficient to just claim that concrete is 'green'. I would encourage our industry to get involved with their local USGBC chapter (see www.usgbc.org) or other 'sutainable' groups to learn more about the issues and about how concrete can provide solutions.
By Alan Sparkman, At May 1, 2007 9:56 AM
• Hello Bill,
The mission that Green-builders are on is absolutely correct. The methods and results of Green-building should definitely be the norm and not looked on as what are those hippy environmentalists up to now. Which I have actually heard used in job site discussions.I was raised to value the land and taught that resources are not infinite.My maternal side of the family homesteaded in the New Pine Creek,OR area.
A great Aunt and Uncle lived of the land and remained against electricity up until the early 1970's when they were getting to old to live out in the woods the way they had since before the turn of the century.We had go get them and bring them off "The Ranch" into civilization when they were in their 90's.They were not thrilled.
What I am getting at is, as kids I could not wait till summer to go to The Ranch and live off what you could grow,raise ,catch etc .We were taught over and over that wasted resources and taking things for granted would not be tolerated.
This mindset has been a very large part of my life. Which is one of the reasons I started designing and developing retractable form alignment braces.For years the lumber that has been cut up to do bracing/aligning is such a waste and the limited use,knowing it would be cut and not be sustainable in its use,can never be justified.And that is the thought process that has to change on a large scale basis. KWICKER-KICKER patent pending retractable form alignment braces completely ELIMINATE the need for lumber for bracing.Adjustable in one inch increments with heavy duty fine tuning ELIMINATES having to cut lumber to length per bracing application .
For example a KW-9' 6"/16' wall form brace retracts down to 9' 6" and extends to 16' and can be used in one inch increments in between. Not counting fine tuning that's 80 different lengths for one brace. That saves a lot of lumber.
We make braces up to 13' 6"/ 24' and as small as 3' 6"/4'. Steel and wood framers use them also for plumbing and aligning walls.
I would like to know how to do my part. We are not developers or builders that will be operating and owning facilities. And of course would like to show the value of our products as Green-building tools that save on the environments resources and as a sustainable product with many uses that will provide the owner many years of profitable and resource saving use.
Looking forward to hearing from you.
Stephen Bruno
Bruno B-A-S
"Saving money with a product should
never stop at the purchase price!"
By Stephen Bruno, At June 8, 2007 2:51 PM
Bill, I would like to clarify one thing you said in your comment about the NAHB Model Green Home Guidelines. The Green Building Initiative is a non-profit organization that promotes green building practices in both commercial and residential construction. It does this by promoting software tools for environmental assessment, education and ratings.
In the case of commercial construction, the GBI promotes a software tool called Green Globes, which has been in use in Canada for a dozen years.
In the case of residential construction, the GBI promotes the interactive version of the NAHB's Model Green Home Guidelines.
The clarification is that the residential product is not called Green Globes.
Seth Miller
Chief Marketing Officer
The Green Building Initiative
By smiller, At June 20, 2007 10:44 PM
Thanks, Seth, for the clarification. After this was posted I realized that I didn't quite have this all completely accurate and clear. And now it appears that the NAHB is muddying the waters even more with their intention to work with the International Code Council to develop a standardized set of green homebuilding guidelines under the ICC's ASTM procedures. Having recenly spent some time reviewing both the LEED-NC 2.2 (for new commercial construction) guidelines and the Green Globes web-based approach, I found Green Globes to be friendlier and to actually be helpful to the designer rahter than just yielding a number. As Wayne Trusty with the Athena Institute told me, with Green Globes, "at the end you have self-assessed your project and learned a lot."
By Bill Palmer, At June 28, 2007 4:19 PM
Bill,
I appreciate the efforts made by various individuals and organizations for sustainable development.
We are working in this area for the last 15 years and have supported several small-scale entreprenuers who are producing bricks/blocks and concrete elements
using industrial byproducts such as fly ash as the main raw material.
More information is available at
www.fal-g.com
I am interested and looking for more interested partners who wish to take up the initiative and promote sustainable building materials.
Thank you again for this blog.
raju_pvr@co2credits.biz
Raju
By Raju, At July 17, 2007 10:41 AM
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