Green building, building with recycled materials

Joshua James Bridges

Sally Spear

April 2, 2019
 As a certain movie villain once said, “it’s a simple calculus. This universe is finite, its

resources, finite… if life is left unchecked, life will cease to exist (Thanos, Infinity war).” Lucky

the Earth's situation is not that dire, but he brings up a good point. Society's resources can only

go so far, and the environment has paid the price for cities expanding and the increase of

pollution. We use the resources we have left day in and day out but for energy, we found

alternatives. Scientists found ways to harness energy from the sun, use wind turbines to take

advantage of strong winds, and even use Earth's heat as an energy source. With alternate power

sources being used, greater focus was put on reducing the amount of waste we create. One of the

ways to reduce waste is to recycle products such as paper, metal, and plastics. This same process

was thought of for building, reusing certain products to help diminish the harmful effects of

building. Thus, the Green building project was created to help make these buildings more

efficient and even help improve the environment. In the long run, this will make these buildings

more energy and resource efficient and improve human health within the building.

Conventional buildings can leave behind waste after construction and can pollute the

surrounding area. The area will also experience more flooding then usual due to the ground being

covered with asphalt and concrete. Ultimately, the environment will degrade without receiving

maintenance. To help mitigate some of these problems, contractors might want to include reused

or recycled resources and create healthy indoor spaces that reduces harmful emissions. Buildings

that use these designs are called green buildings. The definition of green building is “the practice

of creating structures and using processes that are environmentally responsible and resource-

efficient throughout a building's life-cycle from siting to design, construction, operation,

maintenance, renovation and deconstruction. This practice expands and complements the

classical building design concerns of economy, utility, durability, and comfort. Green building is
also known as a sustainable or high-performance building” (archive.epa.gov/greenbuilding). The

practice of using local or renewable resources can be traced back a millennium ago with the

Native Americans. The focus on finding a renewable source of power and inspired research to

help find ways to improve the efficiency of energy started to pick up speed in the United States

in the 1970’s. That coupled with the environmental movement going on at the time would lead

the U.S. into experimenting with green building. The green building field formally came together

around the1990’s and some of the notable things that they have done was the introduction of the

first local green building program in Austin, Texas in 1992, the founding of the United States

Green Building Council (USGBC) in 1993, and the USGBC launching their pilot program

named Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) in 1998. The federal

government also got involved in the research of green buildings by implementing acts, policies,

and even executive orders to improve and strengthen standards of building for green buildings.

Research into green building was and still is being done by private companies, national

lads, and universities. According to a U.S. Green Building Council report in 2006, “over 70

percent of the green building research is focused on energy and atmosphere research. The next

largest category of research is materials and resources. Indoor environmental quality, including

issues pertaining to air, is also being studied” (archive.epa.gov/greenbuilding). The

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is an organization whose mission is to help protect

human well-being and the environment. It has many programs that can provide plenty of

resources to help you learn more about green building such as the components of green building

and how to include these concepts into different types of building. Some of the concepts of green

building include renewable and efficient energy, efficiency with water, reduction on waste and

pollutants, air quality inside the buildings, and building materials that are environmentally sound
and/or preferable. The EPA has a green building focused workgroup that has many different

programs that work in building and development sectors to improve the environmental

performance in the area. The EPA strives to improve buildings in public sectors as well as

schools, labs, healthcare facilities, and more. They also try to be an example for their mission

and goals to improve the environment by improving their buildings.

Even without the EPA assistance, people are using reused materials to build or add to

their homes. Jennifer Popovec writes, “Materials with recycled content are available both for

exterior and interior uses… there are even more choices when it comes to flooring. From wood

flooring manufactured with recycled wood chips to carpets made from old soda bottles and

recycled fibers,” (Jennifer Popovec, Architect). Some families want their homes made of

materials such as taking plastic bottles and other plastic waste and building houses with them.

One good example is a movement going on in Nigeria where homes are being built from plastic

bottles. The bottles are packed with dirt and sand, making them eighteen times stronger than

normal bricks. The building can withstand earthquakes as well as bullets. With the low cost of

plastic bottles, which are pretty much free, can provide the Nigerian government a low-cost

method of building homes for those who need it and a way to clean up their streets. When the

building is complete, around fourteen thousand bottles would have been used. The people of

Nigeria are not the only ones building houses from plastic waste, specifically bottles. There is a

school in San Pailo, in the Philippines, made from these plastic bottles and filled with adobe.

Some other examples are the Hotels in Tepoztlán, Mexico where the rooms were converted from

concrete sewer pipes and a ten-floor tall building in Seoul, South Korea that is covered different

color doors (Vincze Miklo`s, gizmodo.com).

 Home owners can do change things in their house to make it more energy efficient and

environmentally safe. One of the ways to make a house more energy efficient is to replace the

roof with cool roofing. In densely populated areas “heat islands” can appear due to the drastic

increase in temperature in the area. “Cool roofing is emergent and powerful technology used for

occurrences of building and areas. A cool roof prevents heat absorption by reflecting the sun’s

heat and emitting its radiation back into the atmosphere (go-gba.org).” the concept of the cool

roofing is not a new one. Research started back in the 1980’s for a project about “solar radiation

control coating” that would be put on the roof. The project revealed that energy costs decreased

where the coating was used. But at the time, the researchers did not find this information relevant

to their project. Another study was going on where they studied the impact of lighter color

coatings on the rooftops. They found that solar-reflection roofs and venerated roofs could lower

the overall air temperature in an area. The use of cool roofs resurfaced back in 2001in California

where they were having problems with power outages. Today, cool roofing is used just about

everywhere from rural area to the cities around the world, it has been used to lower temperature

and save energy. The cost of using the cool roofs does not outweigh out weigh the benefits. They

are affordable and total energy cooling costs decrease by 7%-15%. Although costs may vary do

to the location of the project, size of the project, the climate, and accessibility to the roof.

Depending the project, the installation would be low with little to no cost in maintenance.

Materials for cool roofing can vary with the type of building, the type of roof, and the location. A

home will typically have use asphalt shingles on the roof because it is easier to install and do not

cost very much. A trend that has come about is using metal roofing, metal roofs can reflect the

sun’s rays and lower the temperature and energy costs. The metal is rather durable and

lightweight, weather-resistant, can be recycled at the end of its life. A roofing technique used
down in Florida and the west coast is using tiles. The tiles have a high solar reflectivity and are

extremely durable. There are also coating that can be used on the roof to reduce the temperature

and energy costs. Some examples are using pigmented, an aluminum coating, membranes, and a

white roof coating.

Another way that green building can lessen the impact on the environment is using

renewable sources of power. One of the few sources of renewable power it the use of the suns

solar rays. Solar energy is the least used energy sourced used in the United States, being only 1%

of the nation’s energy consumption. But the use of solar power has been growing over the past

few years. According to the Green Building Alliance, “the US now has over the 8.5 gigawatts

installed solar capacity, which is enough to power more than 1.3 million average home!”

Countries in Europe are the current leaders in installed solar power. On its own, Germany has

more than 32.3 gigawatts of solar panels installed, that is about a third of the world’s solar

panels. Italy comes in second with around 17 gigawatts of installed solar panels. China has

efforts to use solar power has progressed, the country now has 8.3 gigawatts of solar panels. In

fact China became a world market leader on making solar panels, having over 400 companies

dedicated to it. There are two different types of solar power, active and passive solar. According

to the Green Building Alliance, “Active solar technologies are used to directly convert solar

energy into another form of useful energy, such as electricity or heat conversion… Passive solar

technologies take advantage of the sun’s light and heat without the use of any mechanical or

electrical devices. Also termed ‘daylighting,’ this method allows for the walls, windows and

floors of buildings to collect the sun’s energy during winter months, and reject it during the

summer months.” Some examples of active solar technologies such as concentrating solar power

(using mirrors and lenses to track the sun and its light), solar heating and cooling (using the sun’s
heat to provide warm water), and solar photovoltaic (PV) energy (converts the sun’s rays into

energy through solar panels).

The Green Building project has the promise to change the world for the better. If society

continues to change older buildings, the negative impact on the environment will slowly decrease

and hopefully get better. The improvement of our cities will help our future generations breathe

better air and to live healthy lives.

https://archive.epa.gov/greenbuilding/web/html/about.html

https://www.architectmagazine.com/technology/products/building-with-recycled-materials_o

https://www.epa.gov/aboutepa/our-mission-and-what-we-do

https://io9.gizmodo.com/these-ingenious-buildings-were-all-built-using-recycled-

16881https://www.go-gba.org/green-building-methods/72285