Green sustainable and healthy buildings explained

This video was created for use on the UK's Multi Comfort website - https://multicomfort.saint-gobain.co.uk/

Transcript of video
Green building and sustainable building – are they the same thing? Although the terms can sometimes be used interchangeably, there are some key differences.

A green building is one that helps reduce the impact it leaves on the environment - both from that building’s construction and from its use

This typically means buildings that have included energy efficiency measures, including taking a ‘Fabric First’ approach to the building

This means maximising the performance of the building fabric to not use energy in the first place and the additional use of renewable energy sources such as wind, water or solar

More than just Green, a sustainable building is one that looks to reduce the impact it leaves on the environment through its total lifecycle, after construction and use, it looks at the whole life of the building including its demolition or ‘deconstruction’.

A sustainable building also looks to use resources to build it that have low embodied energy, they have been sustainably sourced, and can be used in another way or recycled at the end of their useful life as part of that building.

In addition to talking about buildings being green and then sustainable, there is a growing body of work and research into Healthy Homes and other buildings

Healthy buildings have the ethos of protecting the health and improving the wellbeing of those people in that building at the heart of the concept

So healthy building design doesn’t just look at minimising negative impacts on the environment, but looks to maximise the positive health and wellbeing impacts that buildings can have on the people that use those buildings

With urbanisation, growing health costs and other social consequences – we should all consider how buildings can have a positive impact on people as well as reducing the impact on our environment