Green building – an environmentally sustainable building, designed, constructed, and operated to minimize the total environmental impacts.
The ideology of green,
positive or sustainable construction appeared in the United States and Western Europe back in the late 1970s, in the 1990s it gained particular popularity largely due to the famous UN conference in Rio de Janeiro, dedicated to environmental protection. That’s when the Green Building Council was created in the United States, which supports green technologies, and evaluates and certifies buildings and facilities in terms of their impact on human health and the environment.
In the U.S.
the benefits of green buildings are considered obvious: in green buildings energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions are reduced by almost 70%, water consumption can be reduced by up to 50%, etc. Accordingly, operating costs are also reduced. American experts have proven that in offices with a favorable environmental situation the productivity of employees increases by 30%. Natural light, clean air, the pleasant view out the window, and proximity to nature have a positive effect on human well-being and, consequently, on their productivity.
The green building standards and regulations are more than 1,000 pages long and cover a wide range of principles: from rules for parking bicycles next to office centers and residential buildings to how much sunlight is reflected off the roofs of buildings; from the characteristics of the required distance from a residential building to a bank, temple, post office, etc. to specifying which international standards should be followed for the timber to be used in construction.
