Abstract
Sustainability has been the key driver for decisions concerning building materials. Environmental awareness has increased, and the conscious society and citizens of this world demand more accountability. This has been the driver of the green building movement. The green building programs have been immensely successful—few more than the others. The success has been attributed to their attempt of validating peoples’ efforts toward sustainable development by assigning a tangible metrics. Green buildings, in modern vernacular, have become similar to sustainable development. Although similar, sustainable development and green buildings are not the same rather similar. This paper presents author’s view on how green building is a subset of sustainable development, which is an all-encompassing concept. An explanation of what constitutes a green building material is discussed, while objectively assessing wood with regard to those criteria. Myths and facts regarding the use of wood in green buildings will be discussed using a life cycle approach. Wood is arguably one of the most sustainable materials. However, there are some facets of wood that impede its acceptance in construction. These impediments and their mitigation strategies are discussed in the paper. Statements concerning sustainability require validation, which can be provided by life cycle analysis (LCA). Many green building programs have certain pitfall and challenges—mostly with respect to practices on material selection and lack of performance monitoring. Materials regardless of its origin have a common starting point, neglecting the environmental benefits of certain materials vis-à-vis another. This paper presents how beneficial LCA can be, when included and integrated into the green building rating system and introduces an integrated design concept for green buildings, especially from a material selection standpoint. Since writing of this article, the major green building programs have altered their methodologies to incorporate LCA in their rating program.
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Sinha, A. (2017). How Good is Wood? Facts and Myths Regarding Wood as a Green Building Material. In: Pandey, K., Ramakantha, V., Chauhan, S., Arun Kumar, A. (eds) Wood is Good. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-3115-1_42
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-3115-1_42
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