The focus of 2016 was all about environment and development. When world leaders adopted the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) on the 1st of January 2016, it was a turning point for mankind as we battled from ever-increasing climate change and economic inequality. The purpose of SDGs was to disconnect economic development from climate change to ensure the environment is protected while development continues.
Today, almost 4 years later, sustainable development is looking more achievable than we initially thought it’ll be, thanks to some new trends in the construction industry. Green construction is one such trend: “A green building is a building that, in its design, construction or operation, reduces or eliminates negative impacts, and can create positive impacts, on our climate and natural environment. Green buildings preserve precious natural resources and improve our quality of life.”
What are the Green Buildings and Green Construction?
You might wonder what is the entire green fuss about? Green buildings are buildings that leave a minimum harmful impact on the environment and green construction refers to the methods used for the construction of such buildings.
Efforts are made to benefit the environment with green buildings. This is achieved in many ways with the help of Eco-friendly building materials, energy-efficient lighting, plenty of greenery and special designing techniques.
1. Rainwater Harvesting
While designing a building, the architect plans it in such a way that the rooftop and other open areas of the building (i.e. lawns/gardens, balconies, terraces) are used to filter the rainwater and store it for later use. This helps in supporting the water cycle, which is essential to fight the increasing problem of drought in many areas, explains Khakharia Gohil.
Reports have stated that the Indian state of Tamil Nadu has been successful in recharging over 8 thousand million cubic feet (tmc ft) of groundwater after the revival of rainwater harvesting in 2016.
#2. Biodegradable Building Material
Gohil believes that construction starts with destruction. Whenever we want to build something new, we destroy what existed before our arrival. Often the leftovers resulting from destruction are harmful to our environment and they end up contaminating our soil, water, air, and other natural resources.
The usage of biodegradable material in construction is one way through which we can combat this problem. Biodegradable materials get decomposed easily into the soil itself by micro-organisms and are not harmful to nature in any way. Here how you can achieve it:
3. Improved Lighting and Energy-efficient Lighting
Lighting is another area where considerable strides have been made by the construction industry. Gohil points out that nowadays buildings are designed in such a way that they allow plenty of outdoor lighting to illuminate the rooms, thus eliminating the requirement of artificial lighting in the daytime. To top that, modern energy-efficient lights are used during the night time, which consumes much less energy than conventional lights.
. Planting and Greenery
Making a building green through planting is also a part of green construction. Open spaces are left where trees can be planted to provide clean air and a cool environment inside the building.
“All sorts of buildings - whether residential or commercial – are implementing this construction idea, and there’s a good chance that you might have seen it already,” she said.
How green buildings are helping in the achievement of SDGs
The 17 sustainable development goals are far-ranging from ‘eradicating poverty and hunger’ to ‘providing clean air and water’ to ‘development of sustainable cities’.
A lot of these can be achieved by green buildings as it only helps in the development of sustainable infrastructure for our cities but increase the quality of life, points out Gohil.
3 Good Health and Wellbeing
Out of 17, this is the third goal. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), lung respiratory diseases caused by poor indoor living conditions are among the top 10 causes of death, worldwide. Green buildings' designs improve the quality of life, give us access to more natural lighting, greenery, and reduced emissions
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