Green Building

A green building is a structure designed to reduce its environmental impact as compared to a standard building of its type, based on the construction and operations of the building. This impact includes the use of resources such as energy, water, and materials, as well as the reduction of outputs such as storm water runoff, construction waste, and indoor emissions. Because of the holistic nature of this approach, green building projects generally require closer collaboration between designers and builders than traditional projects. Green buildings have grown rapidly since 2000 as a result of voluntary certification systems such as Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) and Green Star. Because of their technological rather than social focus, these structures are also sometimes called high-performance buildings. Cutting-edge ...