Polymers in Construction
Designed to provide a wealth of information on the use of plastics in construction, this handbook gives insight both to newcomers to the industry and to personnel already working in the construction sector.
TABLE OF CONTENTS Polymers in Construction
Chapter 8: Sustainable Construction
Charles J. Kibert
8.1 Introduction
The rapidly growing sustainable construction movement is affecting the design and construction of buildings in many countries worldwide. Sustainable construction is simply the design and operation of a healthy built environment using ecologically based principles. It is alternatively referred to as green building, ecological design, and ecologically sustainable design. It has two key components: environmental protection and resource-efficiency. Contemporary sustainable construction considers five categories of resources: land, materials, landscape (biota), energy, and water. These are the stuff of the built environment and the essential components that are used to create and operate it. Using these resources efficiently means that the need to extract material resources from the biosphere is minimised, that energy as much as possible is derived from renewable sources, that land is used to preserve biodiversity, biological function, and natural system services. Resource-efficient design is the process by which planners, architects, engineers, and others describe the location and content of buildings to use resources efficiently.
8.2 Resource-Efficiency and Sustainable Construction
Sustainable construction is defined as ...the creation and operation of a healthy built environment based on resource-efficiency and ecological principles . In fact resource-efficiency and ecological principles are coupled and must be considered together. Sustainable construction is in effect the efforts by which the construction industry supports sustainable development. Clearly, and as is spelled out in its definition, sustainable construction is of primary importance for achieving sustainability in this industrial sector. In most industrial countries, buildings consume in the order of 40% of the...
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