Sustainable Living Requires a Revolution in Both Building Design and Cultural Practice by Katy Janda
Related Links: • Environmental Studies at Oberlin College		JUNE 16, 2003–More raw materials and energy are consumed in the construction and operation of buildings than by any other single activity in the United States. Increased consumer demand, combined with the growth of the human population, is reducing natural resources worldwide even as technological innovation creates new ways to use and reuse these resources. Americans build 1.5 million houses every year, each requiring approximately three acres of forest. Once constructed, buildings consume one-third of the total energy used in most countries and more than half of the world’s electricity. The amount of electricity consumed by buildings has been growing by approximately 2 percent each year. America's current level of consumption in this sector is responsible for a third of the nation's carbon dioxide emissions. Even destroying old buildings has a costly environmental impact: eight million tons of demolition detritus are delivered to the nation's landfills annually. In addition to the impact that the built environment exerts on the natural environment, buildings affect the health and well-being of people. As members of a highly industrialized and urbanized society, we spend most of our time indoors–either at home or at the office. In both places, we respond to the quality of light, air, and space that surround us. Buildings of various types have been constructed for thousands of years, but practice has not yet succeeded in making them perfect. Modern buildings do not always provide comfortable, pleasant environments for their inhabitants, even when they are designed to do so. Many buildings make their occupants too cold, too hot, or actually ill. Separately and together, buildings have a visual and spatial effect on their occupants. Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but ugliness is often evident in the sprawl of strip malls, big-box construction, and cookie-cutter housing developments. Technical innovations and urban planning decisions can help resolve some of the material, performance, and health issues in the built environment. Green building programs and practices are making it easier to remodel or build sustainably. Recycled and low-toxicity materials–flooring made from salvaged old-growth beams, insulation from shredded newspaper, carpets from plastic milk jugs, low VOC (volatile organic compounds) paints–are widely available from building stores and regional suppliers. Hundreds of energy-efficient components such as low-emissivity (low-e) windows, high-efficiency chillers, and compact fluorescent light bulbs, can improve the energy performance of buildings in economically optimal ways. Infill development, which is redevelopment of areas with existing residential or commercial developments, can help reduce the impact of new construction on land use, and the adaptive reuse of existing buildings can diminish some of the need for new materials. Oberlin's new environmental studies lab, for example, will be integrated into the Victorian house next door to the Lewis Center, rather than destroying the existing structure and rebuilding from the ground up. Demolition practices can simultaneously feed the recycled materials market and decrease landfill input. For any of these innovations to be effective, however, they must be widely implemented. In most cases, changing something as complex as a building is not a simple substitution of one technology for another. Many sustainable building technologies have different attributes than the ones they are intended to seamlessly replace. They may be more or less durable, which could affect the life cycle of other components connected to them. They may be harder or easier to install, increasing or decreasing the need for tradespeople and laborers. Even in the rare cases where the match is virtually identical, the substitution must be preceded by decisions about design, purchase, installation, and use. And who makes these decisions? Each change to the built environment, whether through new construction or remodeling, requires a series of negotiations between different groups with disparate goals. Developers are interested in profit, architects pursue aesthetic ideals, engineers want reliable performance, and owners desire the American dream. Buildings are the tangible result of these negotiations, at particular points in time, realized by contractors with the currently available materials and skills. Even if some builders and owners are changing their practices, bringing these improvements to the industry as a whole is challenging, due to its highly decentralized and fragmented nature. 1 | 2
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