Green Building
The construction and maintenance of our built environment consumes land, resources, and energy, in addition to generating wastes. “Green building” is a rapidly expanding alternative to traditional building that optimizes resource and energy use. With its emphasis on renewable materials, green building reduces a building’s environmental footprint (e.g., by reducing energy usage) and is better for human health (e.g., by using materials low in toxicity). The current standard for green building is the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design® (LEED) system. Organized as a checklist for builders, the LEED system has six main categories: Sustainable Sites, Water Efficiency, Energy and Atmosphere, Materials and Resources, Indoor Environmental Quality and Innovation and Design Process. Credit 7 under the Materials and Resources category addresses the use of certified wood. The credit requires a minimum of 50% of wood products on the project to be certified. By encouraging the use of certified wood in green building projects, the LEED system is also encouraging responsible and sustainable forestry.
Examples of green building are starting to multiply in Vermont, from the Echo Lake Aquarium and Science Center on Lake Champlain (Vermont’s first LEED certified building) and LEED certified NRG Systems corporate building to the residential front with the new LEED certified housing project on the Burlington waterfront and the Vermont Builds Greener program for homes. With the proliferation of green building projects around the state comes the opportunity to locally supply certified wood. By encouraging certification of local forests, supply will be able to meet the increasing demand (especially for dimensional lumber) that is beginning to appear in the architectural and building sectors.
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