As costs for sustainable materials and products drop, building green is really the most cost-effective kind of design and construction. More and more, you can’t afford not to build green.
Ohio State Students Go Green
As a part of its Get Green Columbus initiative this summer, Mayor Michael Coleman’s office employed several Ohio State students in an effort to make the city more eco-friendly and sustainable. Mayor Michael Coleman’s office employed several Ohio State students in an effort to make the city more eco-friendly and sustainable. Students began working with the city in May on the Sustainability Tools for Assessing and Rating Communities system project, a modern rating scale used to measure the sustainability of a community through analysis in various categories.
The STAR System was developed in April 2012 by STAR Communities, a company who aims to advance a national framework for sustainable communities by creating a more thorough rating system to analyze each participating city and better compare of the cities, according to the STAR Communities website. Cities looking to participate in the STAR System can purchase the technical guide and other basics of the program at an annual cost of $500. The guide gives cities the framework to begin collecting data and comparing it against others nationwide. STAR hopefully is the next big standard widespread across the country for sustainability. It’s a new rating system that rates cities on how sustainable they can be, but it doesn’t rank them like systems in the past.
STAR hopefully is the next big standard widespread across the country for sustainability. It’s a new rating system that rates cities on how sustainable they can be, but it doesn’t rank them like systems in the past. The STAR System aims to achieve goals in seven areas of sustainability – built environment; climate and energy; economy and jobs; education, arts and community; equity and empowerment; health and safety; and natural systems, according to the STAR website.
The program will help Columbus focus its resources more effectively. The interns worked to identify areas where the Mayor’s Office of Environmental Stewardship could focus more resources and used research from other cities to develop ways to achieve this.
Summary
Many architects, builders and clients agree that smart, sustainable buildings are becoming a necessity. Because according to some estimates, buildings account for almost one-half of the world’s material and energy consumption, one-sixth of fresh water use, and a quarter of all wood harvested.
