Building Green

Three reasons to build green

submitted photo: Melissa Rappaport Schifman’s LEED home.

March 28, 2011 - A personal account of building a LEED-certified home

Our family recently built a new home on the edge of Downtown. I had known from the beginning that I wanted to pursue LEED Certification. LEED is an acronym for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, a rating system developed by the U.S. Green Building Council to define and measure “green” buildings. LEED for Homes is a national, voluntary certification system that promotes the design and construction of high-performance green homes and encourages the adoption of sustainable practices by the homebuilding industry.

Personally, I had been researching healthy building materials, appliances and fixtures, and was well-versed in energy efficiency and renewable energy from my work with a solar energy company. I didn’t need to hire a consultant to help me wade through all these decisions; I wanted to figure it all out for myself. We were going to have a green home. But pursuing LEED Certification, I quickly discovered, requires a little more effort. So why, many would ask me, would I want to incur that extra time and expense? My answer is threefold. {continued}

And in Cyprus, which should be true all over.

Green shoots in the construction sector?

March 28, 2011 - The number of building permits rose in January, raising hopes that we might just be seeing the first green shoots of a sector that has seen two punishing years of contraction in 2009-10.
The number of building permits authorised by the municipal authorities and the district administration offices during January 2011 reached 638, marking a rise of 3.1% over January 2011. This was the first rise in ten months that an increase was recorded. {continued}