Going Green, Without Going Bust…

Going green, without going bust…

“I am sure these green buildings cost more…. How much more do they cost than the regular building?... Do they actually last long? Are they safe?” are questions that we frequently encounter when we talk of this ‘new-fangled’ things called ‘green buildings’.

There is nothing that is really “eco-friendly” or ‘green’. Anything that you have to create as a building, will necessarily involve destroying something. ‘Green building’ is more like a buzzword. We risk being devoid of meaning if we want to reduce it to a simple set of “do’s” and “don’ts” on green or sustainable buildings.

When you set out to buy a house or to build one, surely many questions surface in your mind which essentially revolve around aesthetics, the visual appeal, the size of bedrooms and other spaces, the garden that you will want to have as part of the home. It is, after all, your life’s aspiration, and a symbol of your having ‘arrived’.

If it is not a house, then, as a professional decision-maker in your company, you set out to create a green building project for your factory or office. So what would you want to look at as values that will help you achieve what people call a ‘softer ecological footprint’.

How do you define such a footprint? Can it be in terms of inputs on use of natural resources in the making of such a building? If you are a hard-headed businessman, you will be wanting to look for a higher financial value that you may secure by doing what people think is ‘green’. There is, therefore, the risk of doing ‘greenwash’ instead of an earnest effort at a green development, if you don’t secure the right directions that meet your commitment to the objective you define as being green or sustainable.

The trouble today with many of us is that we want to be eco-sensitive, but we don’t know how to go about it. We don’t either have access to the right technology or the right professionals who have the right solutions. Or we don’t know, however, well-meaning we are, what to ask in order to get to be green.

Very simply put, a building has floors, walls, roofs, windows and and a few doors. It has some elements that you need to address that are outside the building. Like the human body, a building has things that plug in to it (energy and water) and things that plug out (solid waste, waste water).

When you set out your brief for a building, be it a home or an office, if you came with questions from the context of energy, water, waste materials used for making either the floors or the walls, or the roofs and windows and doors, and if you further thought of the kind of air quality you need in the building, apart from the vegetation that you want to plan in and around the house or the office, you will have achieved some focus on what is green or sustainable.

When you walk in to a builder’s office to enquire about the purchase of a flat, some simple questions that you may want to ask are:

* How many flats per acre does the builder offer in that project? For example, if he has 2 acres and is offering 150 houses, it means 75 flats per acre.
* What is the daily water requirement of the entire campus once the houses are occupied? Typically, a builder will need to have worked a ‘water plan’ in accordance with the density of homes that his project offers. If the builder has 150 homes over 2 acres, he will need to address the daily water need of about 90,000 litres at 150 litres a person per day and 4 persons to a family. In other words, greater the density of homes, greater will be the pressure on finding water for the campus once there is full occupancy. The net result will be, post-occupancy, import of water by tankers at high costs as well as the inconvenience of less water available in the dry months. How does the builder therefore offer you water security, is a question you have to ask before buying a house.
* What is the energy planning that the builder offers? Is the cost of the electricity going to be higher? Is the cost of maintenance of the campus going to be higher because of all the pumps and energy-intense appliances as well as street lights that consume higher energy.

Fundamental to a green building is that you don’t make decisions on building elements without considering the operating costs for the house or the office. This means that you should be careful on the costs of such resources like energy and the cost of disposing wastes that is to put out by your building, both in terms of solid waste and waste water.

In all these directions for planning a building, you will see that central to all planning will be your understanding of the implications of every facility that you want to put into the building.

Some simple elements that will be useful to bear in mind when creating a green building are:

* Use building blocks that don’t transfer heat into your room.
* Build in a way that your house or office does not gain heat naturally.
* Use CFL’s & LED’s for all lighting.
* Use laptops or notebooks in place of the regular PC’s. The laptop can save over 70% of your power against other PC’s.
* Use chemical-free paints for walls, doors and metal works – they reduce the risk of carcinogenic pollutants.
* Use no chlorine for water treatment; instead use ozonators that are chemical-free.
* Use organic fertilizers and pesticides – they keep your land fertile for years.
* Use reclaimed timer or plantation timber like rubber wood, palm wood instead of forest–depleting teak and other timber species.
* Use floors that are natural stones that don’t use high energy in manufacture like ceramic or vitrified tiles; or wood that is sustainably harvested. Natural stones have therapeutic value for arthritics and the rheumatism-afflicted.
* Use gas-based ovens instead of electric ovens.
* Use solar heaters instead of electric heaters.
* Don’t throw away food waste from your kitchen or your plates – toss them into simple composting pits that can give you rich fertilizer for your garden patch.
* Use irrigation systems and water-retaining soil substitutes like wood fibre or saw dust or mulch to reduce water needed for your plants.
* Use aerators in every tap and shower in your house to save on water flow. This can bring down water use by nearly 35,000 litres a year!
* Use compost made of recycled plastics for your furniture, wardrobes and such requirements. There are coir-based recycled boards now available in the market that make for elegant surfaces for your doors and tables and such like.
* Use natural materials like bamboo or cane for drapes and blinds instead of using plastic-based Venetian blinds.
* Avoid use of glass walls for external cladding, for they trap heat and increase the use of air-conditioners--you end up paying through your nose for your energy bills.
* Use materials for your floors or for other building materials that are within the proximity of your building site. It will save transport energy and precious diesels in the carting of materials over long distances.

How BCIL goes about its business

'Technology' at BCIL is not some new-fangled, modern-day electronic wizardry. A 200-year-old traditional system of lift irrigation is as much 'technology' as is a microchip-based motion or temperature sensor that brings lighting efficiency. The key to decision-making in the organization has been a combination of six factors:

Ø Cost (always relative to what you are 'buying')

Ø Aesthetics (should gain acceptance among customers)

Ø Function (must serve the basic purpose and not be there for its own sake)

Ø Ease of execution (skills and material resources must be available within a reasonable distance and time)

Ø Time (else, the building is not delivered at the right cost]

Ø Environment (has to be resource-sensitive and/or bring social value, or must bring domino impact of replicability and scale). Design must recognize the 'Four E's' of Ecological compatibility; Economic efficiency; Endogeneity and Equity.

Architecture, to be green, must adhere to a six-strand approach entailing integrated management of all aspects that relate to:

Ø Earth (avoid bricks that employ precious topsoil and use 400 deg C energy; instead use soil stabilized blocks)

Ø Energy (both embodied energy and active energy use on consumption, while engineering active and passive elements on energy-saving)

Ø Water (infrastructure approaches and plans that help communities grow their own water; waste water management that reduces fresh water use)

Ø Waste (to ensure that communities of corporates in an office block or of homes in a residential enclave assume responsibility for managing the spectrum from degradable to toxic wastes)

Ø Air (with passive cooling and active cooling systems that are energy-efficient and ozone non-depleting)

Ø Biomass (to improve the microclimate of a land zone in a way that reduces demands on cooling).

- Hariharan