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While I am not a fan of everything about social media, I do enjoy the interesting articles it puts in my path without me having to go looking for them. An interesting one I read this past week was from www.treehugger.com on the evolution of LEED. I’ve considered myself an ‘environmentalist’ for over 20 years now, though perhaps not as hard core as I would like to or should be. The 20 plus years ago version of myself would be heartened, however, to see the direction the world has taken towards becoming green. Concepts that seemed ‘neo-hippy’ after a consumer and money driven capitalist decade of the 80’s, have become mainstream. Being ‘green’ is no longer an ‘alternative lifestyle’ that people choose, but in a lot of cases now, a requirement. It seems that the vast majority of RFPs that come across our desk are, if not LEED itself, to follow LEED principles for sustainability.
Not that the article is saying LEED is perfect, but it has evolved and is trying to make the world a better place. Through their evolution, of hits AND misses, a lot of awareness has been created. I find it interesting how negative press can sometimes have positive results, and certainly some of the earlier criticisms attracted attention – from the ugliness of designs, to the irony of a parking garage being ‘green’, and a one point value back rack. But the awareness created brought positive changes, and was far reaching, as LEED projects now span the globe – with over 60,000 commercial projects worldwide. I wonder if when the USGBC started LEED off they imagined or planned for the worldwide impact they would have?
The article also notes that people spend an average of 90% of their time indoors – a statistic that scared me frankly, but I can’t say shocked me. As it is summer, I practically live in my backyard when I am not at work. I live in downtown Toronto, so my neighbors are close enough in proximity that I would know if they were in their backyards, yet I hardly see anyone else outside. So it is important to have healthy indoor spaces to work in AND inhabit – it is heartening when getting the updates in my newsfeed on LEED building certifications to see more and more residential projects cropping up as well.
Having lived my whole life in Toronto, I’ve seen a lot of changes in the cityscape over the years. I feel old when I am constantly telling my kids how much the Toronto skyline is changing everyday, but at least I can look at a lot of the buildings going up now and know they are being built with sustainability in mind. My 20 plus years ago self would be glad that LEED would come along. Although neither the world nor myself are as ‘hard core’ green as perhaps I would have wanted way back when, we’ve still come a long way. Let’s see what the next 20 plus years bring…
Read the full article from treehugger here: http://www.treehugger.com/green-architecture/whatever-happened-leed-green-building-certification.html