Green Building as a Solution for Saving Our Environment

Green Building

A sustainable building, or green building is an outcome of a design which focuses on increasing the efficiency of resource use — energy, water, and materials — while reducing building impacts on human health and the environment during the building's lifecycle, through better siting, design,construction, operation, maintenance, and removal.

Green buildings are 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

Furthermore, Green building practices aim to reduce the environmental impact of buildings. Buildings account for a large amount of land use, energy and water consumption, and air and atmosphere alteration. In the United States, more than 2,000,000 acres (8,100 km²) of open space, wildlife SUPS habitat, and wetlands are developed each year.

As of 2006, buildings used 40 percent of the total energy consumed in both the US and European Union. In the US, 54 percent of that percentage was consumed by residential buildings and 46 percent by commercial buildings. In 2002, buildings used approximately 68 percent of the total electricity consumed in the United States with 51 percent for residential use and 49 percent for commercial use. 38 percent of the total amount of carbon dioxide in the United States can be attributed to buildings, 21 percent from homes and 17.5 percent from commercial uses. Buildings account for 12.2 percent of the total amount of water consumed per day in the United States.

The environmental impact of buildings is often underestimated, while the perceived costs of green buildings are overestimated. A recent survey by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development finds that green costs are overestimated by 300 percent, as key players in real estate and construction estimate the additional cost at 17 percent above conventional construction, more than triple the true average cost difference of about 5 percent.

Besides that, Green building brings together a vast array of practices and techniques to reduce and ultimately eliminate the impacts of buildings on the environment and human health. It often emphasizes taking advantage of renewable resources, e.g., using sunlight through passive solar, active solar, and photovoltaic techniques and using plants and trees through green roofs,rain gardens, and for reduction of rainwater run-off. Many other techniques, such as using packed gravel for parking lots instead of concrete or asphalt to enhance replenishment of ground water, are used as well. Effective green buildings are more than just a random collection of environmental friendly technologies, however. They require careful, systemic attention to the full life cycle impacts of the resources embodied in the building and to the resource consumption and pollution emissions over the building's complete life cycle.

On the aesthetic side of green architecture or sustainable design is the philosophy of designing a building that is in harmony with the natural features and resources surrounding the site. There are several key steps in designing sustainable buildings: specify 'green' building materials from local sources, reduce loads, optimize systems, and generate on-site renewable energy.

However, there are some practices that we should take into consideration in order to reduce building impacts on human health and also the natural environment. They are the efficient use of materials, reduced energy use and reduced waste of energy.

The efficient use of materials

Building materials typically considered to be 'green' include rapidly renewable plant materials like bamboo (because bamboo grows quickly) and straw, lumber from forests certified to be sustainabl managed, ecology blocks, dimension stone, recycled stone, recycled metal, and other products that are non-toxic, reusable, renewable, and/or recyclable (e.g. Trass,Linoleum, sheep wool, panels made from paper flakes, compressed earth block, adobe, baked earth, rammed earth, clay, vermiculite, flax linen, sisal, seagrass, cork, expanded clay grains, coconut, wood fibre plates, calcium sand stone, concrete (high and ultra high performance, roman self-healing concrete) , etc) The EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) also suggests using recycled industrial goods, such as coal combustion products, foundry sand, and demolition debris in construction projects Polyurethane heavily reduces carbon emissions as well. Polyurethane blocks are being used instead of CMTs by companies like American Insulock. Polyurethane blocks provide more speed, less cost, and they are environmentally friendly. Building materials should be extracted and manufactured locally to the building site to minimize the energy embedded in their transportation.

Reduced energy use

Green buildings often include measures to reduce energy use. To increase the efficiency of the building envelope, (the barrier between conditioned and unconditioned space), they may use high-efficiency windows and insulation in walls, ceilings, and floors. Another strategy, passive solar building design, is often implemented in low-energy homes. Designers orient windows and walls and place awnings, porches, and trees to shade windows and roofs during the summer while maximizing solar gain in the winter. In addition, effective window placement (daylighting) can provide more natural light and lessen the need for electric lighting during the day. Solar water heating further reduces energy loads.

Finally, onsite generation of renewable energy through solar power, wind power, hydro power, or biomass can significantly reduce the environmental impact of the building. Power generation is generally the most expensive feature to add to a building.

Reduced energy waste

Green architecture also seeks to reduce waste of energy, water and materials used during construction. For example, in California nearly 60% of the state's waste comes from commercial buildings. During the construction phase, one goal should be to reduce the amount of material going to landfills. Well-designed buildings also help reduce the amount of waste generated by the occupants as well, by providing on-site solutions such as compost bins to reduce matter going to landfills.

To reduce the impact on wells or water treatment plants, several options exist. "Greywater", wastewater from sources such as dishwashing or washing machines, can be used for subsurface irrigation, or if treated, for non-potable purposes, e.g., to flush toilets and wash cars. Rainwater collectors are used for similar purposes.

Centralized wastewater treatment systems can be costly and use a lot of energy. An alternative to this process is converting waste and wastewater into fertilizer, which avoids these costs and shows other benefits. By collecting human waste at the source and running it to a semi-centralized biogas plant with other biological waste, liquid fertilizer can be produced. This concept was demonstrated by a settlement in Lubeck Germany in the late 1990s. Practices like these provide soil with organic nutrients and create carbon sinks that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, offsetting greenhouse gas emission. Producing artificial fertilizer is also more costly in energy than this process.

In conclusion, as a mankind on the Earth, we should take our responsibility to save our environment before it being destroyed. So, we need to make full use of green buildings by using building materials efficiently and thus reducing the use and waste of energy. Let's save the Earth!

The Effects of Deforestation

Deforestation is the process of converting forested lands into non-forest sites that are ideal for crop raising, urbanization and industrialization. Because deforestation is a serious concept, there are also serious effects to the surroundings.

When forests are killed, nature basically requires people to renew the forest. Reforestation is one concept that is in the opposite direction as deforestation, but is proven to be a much harder effort than deforestation.

So the rate of deforestation has not been offset by the rate of reforestation. Thus, the world is now in a troubled state when it comes to issues concerning the environment.

Pollution is rapidly growing along with population. Forests are greatly helping reduce the amount of pollutants in the air. So, the depletion of these groups of trees is greatly increasing the risk that carbon monoxide would reach the atmosphere and result in the depletion of the ozone layer, which in turn results to global warming.

Well, because deforestation basically involves killing trees in forests, there are so many effects that can be enumerated as results of the activity. Thus, effects of deforestation can be classified and grouped into effects to biodiversity, environment and social settings.

Effect to biodiversity

Forests are natural habitats to many types of animals and organisms. That is why, when there is deforestation, many animals are left without shelters. Those that manage to go through the flat lands and residential sites are then killed by people.

Through the years, it is estimated that there are millions of plant and extinct animal species that have been wiped out because they have been deprived of home. Thus, biodiversity is significantly lowered because of the savage deforestation practices of some people.

Wildlife advocates have been constantly reminding that several wild animals left in the world could still be saved if deforested forests would only be reforested and the practice of slash and burn of forests would be totally abandoned.

Environment change

Another major effect of deforestation is climate change. Changes to the surroundings done by deforestation work in many ways. One, there is abrupt change in temperatures in the nearby areas. Forests naturally cool down because they help retain moisture in the air.

Second is the long process of global climate change. As mentioned above, deforestation has been found to contribute to global warming or that process when climates around the world become warmer as more harmful rays of the sun comes in through the atmosphere.

The ozone layer is a mass of oxygen or O3 atoms that serves as shield in the atmosphere against the harmful ultraviolet rays from the sun. Because ozone is made up of oxygen atoms, oxygen react with carbon monoxide. Such reaction would use up oxygen atoms.

It follows that when there are more carbon monoxide atoms going to the atmosphere, the volume of oxygen would decline. Such is the case of ozone depletion.

The third effect to the environment would be on the water table underneath the ground. Water table is the common source of natural drinking water by people living around forests.

Water table is replenishing. That means, the supply of water underground could also dry up if not replenished regularly. When there is rain, forests hold much of the rainfall to the soil through their roots.

Thus, water sinks in deeper to the ground, and eventually replenishing the supply of water in the water table. Now, imagine what happens when there is not enough forests anymore. Water from rain would simply flow through the soil surface and not be retained by the soil.

Other than that, the water from rain would not stay in the soil longer, for the process of evaporation would immediately set in. Thus, the water table is not replenished, leading to drying up of wells.

Social effects of deforestation

Deforestation is hardly hitting the living conditions of indigenous people who consider forests as their primary habitats. Imagine how they are rendered homeless when forests are depleted. These natives would be forced to live elsewhere, and are usually left to becoming mendicants in rural and urban areas.

Overall, effects of deforestation cannot be offset by the contribution of the practice to development. While it is logical that progress is very much needed by mankind, it must also be noted that nature knows no defeat. Destruct it and it would certainly retaliate, one way or another.

Last but not least, as we can see, the effects of deforestation can cause a lot of problems and inconveniences to the living things such as animals, plants and of course the people. Hence, protecting our forest is the priority issue that we must achieve and at the same time, to save our Mother Nature. Let's save our environment from being destroyed in order to live with a harmony n healthy life.  So, what are we still waiting for? Just do it!

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