Achieving and Maintaining Healthy Green Buildings

Green Buildings and Productivity

Healthier space need not be new space. In fact, some new buildings are extremely unhealthy as chemicals leach out into the air from glues, carpets, concrete and paint. There is no reason this must be the case. The cost to provide healthier environments is modest compared to the benefits. Healthier buildings reduce sick time and increase productivity, making it easier to recruit and retain emplo...

Healthy buildings, healthy people

When researcher Melkam Kebede started her five-year fellowship at the Charles Perkins Centre at the University of Sydney, Australia, she was struck by the abundance of natural light and design features that encouraged people to move and mingle. “I’ve worked in many places before, but never seen laboratories with so much natural light,” says Kebede, whose research is on the links between type 2 ...

Sustainable Development and Green Buildings

Global sustainability goals have led to the development of the green building movement. The Green Building Program, stemming from the movement, has had unprecedented success as it provides a quantifi able metric to people’s efforts towards sustainable development. Sustainable development and green buildings are often used interchangeably. Although, sustainable development and green buildings ar...

Green Buildings, Organizational Success, and Occupant Productivity

Resilient, Green… and Healthy

The environmental health field has been swept by major changes in recent years. One was the rediscovery of the " built environment " as a key determinant of human health. Community design—including land use and transportation decisions, but extending to such arenas as energy, housing, and food—affects outcomes as diverse as cardiovascular health, respiratory heath, cancer, injury risk, and soci...