Answering Questions about Sustainable Building
| |
| Construction Industry Tools |
IHS sells a full selection of ICC building codes as well as Plan Analyst software to check compliance.
To learn more, and for a free quote, please complete the form below. |
|
As concerns about the environment continue to gain momentum, interest in sustainable building is growing at a rapid pace. While the concept has become a hot topic among architects, engineers, builders, building owners, consumers and government officials, it often raises questions: What is sustainable building? What construction practices support sustainability? How do you balance real-world building requirements with sustainability objectives?
To help answer these questions, ASTM International launched its subcommittee on sustainability, E06.71, in 1998. The subcommittee’s chair, Dru Meadows, the founder of strategic environmental consulting firm theGreenTeam, says she had chaired another committee on green building a few years earlier, but interest in the topic wasn’t the same then.
“It was just a little before its time,” says Meadows. Since then, however, the tide has turned. “In 1998 we had an inaugural meeting that really floored me. I thought, I’ve been down this path, I’ll try it again because I do believe this is important. But we had representatives from all the various trade organizations, professional organizations, government, environmental nonprofits, banking, financial institutions. They continue to be very active.”
While the committee currently offers 11 active standards, with many more revised and new documents in the pipeline, one of the first standards it developed remains one of the committee’s most important: ASTM standard E 2432, Guide for General Principals of Sustainability Relative to Buildings.
Meadows says this document acts as a foundation for future work by establishing a common language for sustainable building.
“Often what would happen was that you would get an architect or an engineer or an owner calling a manufacturer and asking, ‘Is your product green?’” says Meadows. “And nobody knew what the other person was talking about. The architect didn’t necessarily know what they were asking for. They just knew somebody was pushing for this green stuff. And the manufacturer may or may not have known, but if they did know, they didn’t really know how to answer the question. Were they asking did they have any recycled content?... So establishing that common vocabulary was very important.”
Having that common vocabulary has become increasingly important as the building industry continues to embrace the idea of green building, a term that is—somewhat incorrectly— often used to refer to sustainable building practices.
According to E 2432, sustainability refers to “the maintenance of the ecosystem components and functions for future generations.” Sustainable building practices therefore must recognize not only environmental concerns, but also balance them with economic and social issues as well.
Green building, on the other hand, typically refers only to environmentally friendly building practices. In addition, it is primarily a U.S. concept. “The U.S. tends to in many areas equate green with sustainable and use the terms interchangeably. Green doesn’t mean anything anywhere else. And where it does and they try to interpret it, it only encompasses the environmental aspect,” Meadows points out.
Now that the foundation documents are in place, committee E06.71 is working on a variety of other standards, including several devoted to green roofing systems, also known as vegetated roofs.
“The wish list for new standards is so long that once we get past the overarching framework, I just treat it on a first-come, first-serve basis,” says Meadows. “I would say that every year we end up with another focus task group.” She invites anyone interested in participating to join the committee by visiting www.astm.org.
|