Blogs / Climate Change Fellows / Building Green & Debunking Greenwash
28 April 2011 | 5:55 PM | Tags: Green Building, LEEDS Building
Everything is greenthese days, even green tea. So how do you know you have a real green building, not just ‘green wash’? Austin tackled the problem in the mid 80’s with the development of the Austin Energy Star Program. By the mid 90’s Austin had a mandate for all municipal buildings to be green and the Green Building Program developed a commercial building sustainability checklist. By the late 90’s the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) program had emerged nationally with input from Austin’s green building program.
Nowdays, all City building must achieve a minimum of LEED Silver and key City buildings such as the City Hall required a new rating category (LEED Platinum) to be established.
The ratings programs provide a point score system which consider everything from recycled building materials, water efficiency, embodied energy in materials and usually with a large focus on building energy use. The ratings are carried out independently by qualified independent assesors, so you can drink your green tea knowing that you are not being green washed. LEEDS Platinum building Austin City Hall, built in 2001
LEEDS Platinum building Austin City Hall, built in 2001
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Director of Infrastructure Services, Shire of Augusta Margaret River
International City/County Management Association 777 North Capitol Street NE, Suite 500Washington, DC 20002-4201
202.289.ICMA | fax 202.962.3500
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