Green Building

Traditional homes have been slowing hurting the environment for years.  They have been making such a negative impact on the environment that many people have now decided to try to minimize their environmental footprint by switching over to green building and green materials.  Green building is a much healthier life style with more energy efficient homes, more durable, and sustainable.  Everybody recognizes the expression “going green”.  Changing our daily habits to better impact the environment has been a growing priority for many Americans—to help reduce their carbon footprint.  A huge area that is contributing to being resource-efficient and environmentally friendly is green building.  Green buildings are structures that help with the conservation of material through their building’s maintenance, design, and construction.  The whole idea of these green buildings is the help with what the impact could be on the environment and human health.  The most important goal is to reduce the environmental impact that certain buildings have on the environment.  These include being resourceful while using energy and water.  The protection of health and productivity must be present.  The reduction of waste and other environmental pollutants is also considered.  Here is more information about defining green building.

The need for green building comes from a few different perspectives: the environmental, economic, and also social concerns.  With the current buildings that are not considered green buildings and that are threats to these perspectives, a sustainable approach can be implemented to help with the continued life cycle of the building and to begin a green approach with specific practices.   

There are many factors that influence the overall outcome of green buildings.  There are many different stages that need to be carefully constructed when it comes to planning a new green building.  Using a life cycle assessment can help with these decisions.  The life cycle assessment will help to look at all the factors that play a part in green building and will help to fully implement what aspects are important to look at and towards when it comes to the stages of process.  The process is looked at from the beginning to end of a building and decides what factors play which roll of waste, pollution, and environmental impact.  After concluding the culprits, there is an analysis with what to do the change this type of a building to have it considered green. 

Design efficiency is the design of a physical building that helps with fulfilling the sustainability of the social and economic concerns.  The main goal in this design is to completely eliminate any negative impact on the environment through this skillful design.  Water efficiency has also been a concern for years.  There are many acts to help conserve water that help to reduce water consumption.  Sustainable building has a main objective to reduce water consumption and help to keep the water at good quality.  The strategies to help with the water conservation are reducing water loss ad helping to improve the management of water practices.  There are a few ways water consumption can be kept low.  The big issue lies with the demand for water not being enough.  New sustainable buildings are conserving water by collecting water that is used and purified and then reused.  There is also a design that helps to accomplish dual plumbing that takes toilet water and reuses it after flushing while disposing of the waste water. 

The products used for green building is supposed to grow from $2 billion to $60 billion within the years 2005 to 2010.  Regardless of how the economy will turn in the future, green products will be more evident and be making more of an impact with its growth.  The governments at all levels have been involved in the recent green building.  There have been major effects to start implementing energy efficiency, reducing construction waste, and putting other green building materials into effect. 

As of now, most construction, whether it is to build or remodel, is aware of green building and are working with different levels are techniques and materials.

                For the commercial real estate brokers, the idea and implication of green building hasbeen more difficult than expected.  They are in somewhat of a quandary between their business relationships and clients.  There is the ability to add value to future deals but it can be hard, especially for how much the demand has been for green building.  It is considered a fad that more clients are requesting for future purchases.  These current changes of sustainability and green building have been affecting everyone.  Especially when deals need to made at the start of the building process.  Commercial brokers are finding out that knowing basic factual information about the going green movement isn’t enough.  Even with knowing information about the new trends, it’s still difficult to add value to these deals.  

Green building and sustainable properties are becoming more important in the real estate industry.  The incentive policies that insurance companies are implementing are helping to increase the number of commercial buildings that are going green.  Almost 25% of the new material that is used for construction is green material.  The amount of states that have green building policies, standards, and programs, have increased to 31 states from 13 states—within 3 years!  Going green will make such a positive impact on the environment but could possibly be negative for commercial brokers.