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Living Buildings
Society's dependence on green technology and environmentally friendly building practices are at the forefront of the construction industry in today's world. Engineers, designers, builders and trades people are all involved in reshaping the industry to an organization dedicated to help preserving the Earth's natural resources and its own way of doing things.
Sustainable construction is a real and positive force in the building world an it is important to understand how these processes work and are beneficial for communities who practice such efforts. The purpose of this essay is to explain and contextualize the Declare Database which is a segment of the Living Building Challenge. This program is helping construction teams build with confidence that their projects are eco-friendly and are mindful of the damage that these efforts normally have without this emphasis. The essay will first describe the program before explaining how the complex database integrates data and information to help all that work within the supply chain become more aware of their decisions and how they affect the environment.
Green Building
"Green building materials are composed of renewable, rather than nonrenewable resources. Green materials are environmentally responsible because impacts are considered over the life of the product," (Spiegel and Meadows, 1999). Sustainable building should be the goal of every construction project because of the many benefits that accompany this approach. The replacement and maintenance costs of green and sustainable building projects are much lower and the amount of costs that will go into upkeep is significantly lower as well.
Greeen building materials are designed to conserve energy and provide even...
Green building materials should provide layers of flexibility to the project as these types of materials are engineered to allow for extreme changes in the environment.
By using green building materials into building projects, the environmental dangers are significantly lowered and a moral and ethical principle is introduced as another benefit. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) agrees with this stance: "Building construction uses large quantities of natural resources; in fact, construction activities use 60% of the raw materials, other than food and fuel, used in the entire U.S. economy. And the nearly 170 million tons of annual building construction, renovation, and demolition derived wastes (commonly referred to as C&D materials) account for nearly 60% of the nation's non-industrial, non-hazardous solid waste generation."
The Living Building Challenge
Although the benefits of using green building materials has become more and more obvious throughout recent years, outlets that serve this market are still developing. According to its website, The Living Building Challenge "is a philosophy, advocacy tool and certification program that addresses development at all scales. The purpose of the Living Building Challenge is straightforward -- it defines the most advanced measure of sustainability in the built environment possible today and acts to diminish the gap between current limits and ideal solutions." Among this larger project is the Declare Database, a collection of vendors and products who sell green building products. The idea behind the Declare program is to help purchasers understand how to best source and locate products that support regional markets while ensuring that their materials are…
References
Declare Products Website (nd). Declare and The Living Building Challenge. Viewed 3 Nov 2013. Retrieved from http://www.declareproducts.com/content/declare-and-living-building-challenge
Ross Spiegel and Dru Meadows, Green Building Materials: A Guide to Product Selection and Specification, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, 1999
The United States Environmental Protection Agency (nd). Choosing Green Materials and Products. Viewed 3 Nov 2013. Retrieved from http://www.epa.gov/greenhomes/SmarterMaterialChoices.htm
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