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Although sustainable design and building has been around for some time now, the pace of the movement is definitely picking. A variety of factors have influenced the growing trend toward going green. Among them are: consumer or end-user demand, fad, awareness of limited natural resources and rising energy costs.
"Some of it is very much customer-driven and end-user customer-driven.
You take companies like Microsoft and IBM, Time Inc. They have
environmental policies that go throughout their companies. That goes all the way down to
folks like us," explains Roger Rutan, vice president of marketing and business development
at Timber Products Co. "They say, 'If we're going to build a building,
this is how we're going to do it. If we're going to buy furniture and equipment,
this is how we're going to do it.' "
The part that is end-user customer-driven is that the man or woman walking into a cabinet showroom and asking the questions, Rutan says. They're asking,
"What's the formaldehyde level in some of these cabinets? Where did the wood come from?"
Only a small portion of the movement is being fad-driven, according to Rutan.
"For a lot of companies, it's doing the right thing and knowing what that means to your individual business and the environment. It's not just Al Gore. We really do have limited resources here, and we've got to be paying attention to what we're using and how we're using it."
The recent jumps in energy costs have also peaked the interest of not only consumers but also contractors and building owners and developers, says Deborah Jackman, Ph.D, P.E., chair of the Architectural Engineering and Building Construction department at Milwaukee School of Engineering.
"I think the reason those folks are finally getting interested in it is the realization of energy costs. Our heating bills, our gas for our automobiles, our electricity costs have been increasing pretty dramatically in the last few years, so everybody all of a sudden is being affected by energy costs, not just the academics sitting around talking about it," Jackman says.
Another major influence on the trend has been the attention of groups who you wouldn't immediately identify as being associated with green building, Mark Rossolo, director of state and local outreach for the Green Building Initiative, says.
U.S. Conference of Mayors get onboard with green building movement
The attention of groups that may not generally be associated with green building is important to the success of this movement.
"I think what's finally happening is we're starting to see a lot of these outside groups who didn't use to be involved in the green building movement really come around," says Mark Rossolo of the Green Building Initiative.
One such group is the U.S. Conference of Mayors, which has adopted the Architecture 2030 Challenge, a call for all buildings to be carbon neutral by the year 2030. This means they will use no fossil fuel green house gas emitting energy to operate, which can be achieved by implementing sustainable design practices, generating on-site renewable power or purchasing renewable energy and/or certified renewable energy credits, explains Rossolo.
"The U.S. Conference of Mayors is made up of all the mayors from all the major, mid-size and even some small cities. They adopted this resolution, and they are going to try to pass policies to meet it within their cities," he says. "Usually you wouldn't think of the U.S. Conference of Mayors as [a group] who would be green building folks, but here they have picked up this 2030 Challenge and have made it a priority. In fact they have made it one of their top priorities."
