Why the Most Environmental Building is the Building We've Already Built

From: The Atlantic Cities, Place Matters by Emily Badger

“Reusing an old building pretty much always has less of an impact on the environment than tearing it down, trashing the debris, clearing the site, crafting new materials and putting up a replacement from scratch. This makes some basic sense, even without looking at the numbers.”

“Retrofit an existing building to make it 30 percent more efficient, the study found, and it will essentially always remain a better bet for the environment than a new building built tomorrow with the same efficiencies. Take that new, more efficient building, though, and compare its life cycle to an average existing structure with no retrofitting, and it could still take up to 80 years for the new one to make up for the environmental impact of its initial construction.” Click here for link to article

What many people never realize is re-using an existing building is virtually always the most environmentally healthy thing we can do. Consider if the building was a warehouse or a school and we are re-using it as offices and residential it will still be “Greener” than a new building.
The existing building may or may not be a designated historic building. The reason for saving the building may not be for historical purposes. There may be other reasons including Zoning, economics or sentimentality. When a new building is built, a lot of natural resources are depleted to provide the construction materials and manufacture and ship everything. When an existing building is renovated there is environmental saving in a steel, wood or masonry structure that already exists. The exterior brick or siding is already there. There may even be interior walls that can be re-used. Also there may be a combination of thousand of smaller items that can be saved and re-used – hardware for example.
It is much easier for Architects, Engineers and Contractors to say “always build a new building”. Of course for them it is easier because they are starting with clean piece of paper. It is less complicated than trying to measure and evaluate an existing building and adapt it to a new user. But these professionals don’t have to pay for the total cost of construction and pay for the utility and maintenance expenses over its lifetime. On rare occasions it does make sense to start new, but this is acceptable when, for example, Target wants to build a store where an ice cream stand or gas station is.

Definition: Greenwashing

Greenwashing (green whitewash) is the practice of companies disingenuously spinning their products and policies as environmentally friendly, such as by presenting cost cuts as reductions in use of resources.[1] It is a deceptive use of green PR or green marketing. The term green sheen has similarly been used to describe organizations that attempt to show that they are adopting practices beneficial to the environment.[2]

Definition of "Greenwash/Greenwashing" from Wikepedia

Link to site: Greenwashing Index, evaluate and news

Healthy Living and Working 1

Today’s media has picked up on the new term “Green”. In the 1980’s the word green was always associated with a color. Now when someone mentions green people usually think about things that are good for the environment. It is seems that the marketing gurus all over the nation have decided that it is trendy to be “Green”. You can now buy such things as eco friendly “Green” disposable plates. Or you can buy “Green” (partially recycled) PVC decking for your back porch.

Being “Green” does not mean going to the store to buy anything labeled “green” just because some marketing team decided that it had recycled content in it. Being green is all about lifestyle. If you are truly concerned about the environment you will never buy disposable dinnerware. You will also not purchase PVC anything for your house. Going back to those first days of environmentalism of the 1970’s, I remember all those little things I learned in school and I have built upon that with all my life decisions. In the future I hope to write topics that will enlighten everyone on how to be environmentally responsible in the built environment. Keep checking back…