Efficiency of Green Design

Efficiency of Green Design in supporting 

Social, economic and Ecological sustainabilities

Ranj Mufti

Reduce, Reuse and Recycle are the most popular words which authors and environmentalists use in the ecological books and journals when talking about green design. To realize the green design importance, the harmful problems which the earth suffers from should be explained first 

Why inefficient design concerns us! 

The important thing to be known is

 there is no survive without adopting

 efficient green design in the built 

environment.  

   Implementing the notion of green design is very important to be pre-wired of the catastrophic disasters that all the systems within the environment will face in next few decades. Shortage in energy and food and a radical change in our current life style may happen. With the beginning of the 21st century, the Earth has started to be in the worst situation has ever seen since its creation billions of years ago with nonstop giving, it is getting older and older. There are many evidences show the impact of the human consumption of the earth resources starting with air pollution by burning gases for different kind of energies, ending with population growth problems which means more food and variety in life styles . Day after day more destruction happens to earth nature by human being which sometimes are as more catastrophic as natural disaster such as what happened in Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1991 and in Gulf of Mexico by BP recently. ‘Nature doesn’t have a design problem, we do’ (McDonough and Braungart suggest 2002)Because of all these negative human behaviors, environmentalists and engineers invented the notion of green design.       Consuming less and differently, redesigning our life style so as to remain green by efficient use of earth resources which means efficient green design, may be the only way to keep the ecosystems work properly and cut down carbon emission. Below are the highlighted arguments to that green design keeps the environment safe and sustains economy:1-    Green design reduces and decreases the use of resources or will use them efficiently, that is getting the same power or product by less use of the resource. As McDonough and Braungart suggest (2002) ‘used resources should be recycled by the notion of cradle to cradle’.

2-     Occupant satisfaction can be used as an argument because of the life cycle economic benefits.

3-    In the green design, power generated by not using valuable and non-compensable resources of the earth; for instance Solar and wind power could be used as clean power production. 

4-    Giving positive results in research made by universities and companies indicates that ‘In the Life Cycle Assessment, the green design works properly on environmental and economic sustainability. Sustainability is on the agenda of most organizations, and particularly cities’ (Peuportier, Thiers and Guiavarch 2012). 

5-    Occupants of green buildings are much healthier than those in conventional ones (publicservice.co.uk 2012)

6-    A masonry brick in conventional buildings allows solar gains to be stored, affecting in the heating and cooling load. While insulation materials have a good role in consuming energy.

    Nevertheless, like any other notion in the world, adopting green design faces disagreements and obstacles. The most common counter arguments of the notion have been counted below:First; the profit based industries in the world do not like the change idea generally, because it needs new learning and hiring someone to teach employees how that new technology does or process works. Another major problem against adopting green building design is because it lasts for long time which affects the construction market. And most of the profit based industries do not care of environment and saving the planet. McDonough and Braungart (2002) suggest to ‘give a motto to the industrial revolution, it is a joke but it visualizes the reality “If the brute force doesn’t work, you are not using enough of it”’.Second: Green design cannot solve the problem of Overcrowded countries such as Far East and southern countries of Asia are suffering from the uncontrolled population growth. More people mean more food, consequently leads to more in everything including land use and food transporting problems for instance).Third: It is not easy for many people to go off the notion of the dream house, they cannot easily resist when they see and read about a dream house in a magazine. Even if they care too much about the environment and sustainability, they cannot build a green castle for instance. Because green design does not mean bringing and using materials brought from another planet. What should be mentioned in this point is that Architectures such as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, LE Carbusier and Walter Grupius have a great role in the development of green design in buildings to be an international style.Forth counter argument is Technology; using lots of technology may not assist green design idea in buildings, industries and transportation for example. because as Tony FRI argues (2008) ‘In this respect, all technology is immersive. Certainly there are no visions of futures that are not technologically inflected. The point here is to understand that less technology is not necessarily anti-technology. We are already technological beings’ and he continues to explain that there will be no survival without technology but equally there will be any survival with too much of it. Using control system for whole the building makes the building more power efficient and prevents fire and huge damages to the buildings while using more technology runs counter to environmental criteria.Fifth: Paul and Taylor (2008) doubt if there would be any difference regarding occupants’ satisfaction between the green and conventional buildings, as they had stated in their research ‘All aspects of comfort including aesthetic, serenity, lighting, ventilation, acoustics and humidity, were not perceived differently by the occupants of the two types of  buildings’.    The best way to reduce negative impacts on environment is not adopting the recycling process only, human mast start to dispose and produces less. It may be true when environmentalists believe that the environment improvement ability by green design has been exaggerated however what should be kept in mind is that without applying this idea [green design] in most of the sectors and by governments, what expected from it should not be too much even if the process is hundred percent efficient, occupant satisfaction and social issues represent another challenge. Strong M. who is a Canadian business man who co-initiated in the 1992 Rio Earth summit, explains his attitude about the summit and explains the countries’ representatives that they are lead of state but not real leaders which means there are a lot of responsibilities that consumers should care to.   ‘The utilization of sustainable/green building strategies and practices offer a unique opportunity to create environmentally sound and resource-efficient buildings’ (Kubba 2010).  The general Eco-design idea may enter a new era of development because as Building Journal states ‘there is intervention of a quite number of companies in to the international eco-system protection process’ (2012). What to be sure about is that there will be no ecosystem working properly with continuing with our endless needs.       Economic, financial profits and saving up money are what companies and people generally are seeking for. According to research, the green building up-front cost of construction is almost the same as for the spendthrift buildings while the (LCA) in the green building is very economic. Some authors and researchers may combine the calculations of energy with the Life Cycle Assessment so as to make a model for the LCA for the whole building. It is important to take the LCA in to consideration during the design face of the project. As (Peuportier) in (Peuportier, Thiers and Guiavarch 2012) shows, the European project Eco-housing defines an example set of sustainability objectives to elaborate a set of environmental issues to be studied. See table 1. A conventional building should be defined as an reference to compare the concept of the passive house, see fig 3,

Table 1. List of considered sustainability issue

(Peuportier, Thiers and Guiavarch 2012)

A conventional building should be defined as an reference to compare the concept of the passive house, see fig 3, this reference is called the reference house which has the same geometric shape and dimensions of the passive house but it corresponds technology to be economic and eco-friendly house, consequently there are two types of houses to be compared in researches (a passive house vs. reference house), each of these types has been sub-divided in to economical and spendthrift. The comparison could be seen in figures 1 and 2.

  Reusing and recycling wastes has another good economical point, doing such a process means finding market to do recycling and reusing, here you are creating a movement in the market and employing more people as it vanishes the pillars of hazardous wastes. Figures 1 and 2 show that as the LCA longer as the green house negative impact on the environment will be less.

Fig 1.  LCA results, comparison of occupants’ behavior

From (EQUER) as showed in (Peuportier, Thiers and Guiavarch 2012)

Fig 2. LCA results, contribution of the life cycle stages

From (EQUER) as showed in (Peuportier, Thiers and Guiavarch 2012)

Thinking twice before throwing problems for next generations may be a wise idea while the human beings do not know how to manage their problems so far. If people now are the victim of a very near past generations bad use of resources, what about others who follow! They will suffer from global warming problems more than the current generation in fact.

 Fig. 3, An example of passive house details

From Passive House Institute-U.S.asshown in The New Yor Times (2010)

Why the green design should be efficient and what are the effects on our life? What if we continue using natural resources inefficiently? What’s at stake? UN’s world commission on environment and development department (1987) warned in the report titled our common future ‘if we do not make more efforts for pollution control, the health of human and environment would be threatened and urban life would be unacceptable and unlivable’ we are living in 21^st century, more than two decades after the report [our common future] and there are no tangible changes. Millions of barrels of oil which needed millions of years to be created have been extracted from the earth core and burned in to gas, hundreds of forests have been cutted out and thousands of unique species of animals have been vanished.  If not our environment, our life is at stake in fact, most of us may not live the next century, but next generation will face catastrophic disasters for sure. If you are still reading these words, means you concern about the environment and you know what the global warming means for sure. Most predictions show more severe weather; hotter hot, cooler colds. A warmer atmosphere results rising in sea level, damaging cities consequently, we may see cities such as Venice, and some parts of Netherlands disappear in a near future. Thinking that earth and the atmosphere absorb our wastes safely is wrong. The waste itself should be safe and biodegradable, thus the ecosystem ingredients cannot transform the waste from the level of unsafe to safe. What should be kept in mind that recycling process means down cycling or lowering the quality of materials and resources by time.

      It is not easy to ask G8 countries, for example, to stop polluting the environment by power production instantly which is necessary for sustaining technology. This issue encourages eco-friendly institute to accelerate in implementing the green design concepts. Since ninetieth of 21^st century, Wide range of corporate and institutional clients has taken part in researches, architecture, industrial products, process and urban designs. Ford motor Company, Herman Miller, Monsanto, Du Pont, Jonson and Jonson, Nike and SC Jonson with many other municipalities and educational institutions were among those to implement the green design principles. ‘When you hear that a company like Du Pont has cut off cancer causing chemicals emissions by almost 70 percent since 1987, you feel better’ (McDonough and Braungart 2002: 53).

   Depending on what have been written about green design in books, Journals and the valuable academic websites, green design is efficient to keep environment safe however it depends on in what range are the governments and organizations are using it. As its clear in figures shown in this essay, the economical passive house has less consumption of power for heating and cooling the space per meter square, while all types of houses cost the same regarding construction, renovation and demolition.

Soon or later, we have to recognize and look at green design as the only path through social, economic and ecological sustainability and to survive of course. For the next few decades it may be next to impossible to compete in business without being eco-efficient and taking green design in to consideration. Most of the industries should show full respect to the materials and resources they are using, they have to use less first and then recycle.

‘The most basic, obvious and important action just does not get a look-in – this is the need to eliminate the need for so much energy! The starting point is demand reduction. Turn it off’ (Tony Fry 2008:186). The list of changes needed, is a long one.