Benchmark Study on Green Buildings - Royal Architectural Institute ...

8.2 Recommendations & Areas for Improvement:
From the review of green building policy and practices in the world’s leading countries,
numerous recommendations can be made to increase the adoption of green buildings in
Canada.
8.2.1 Education & Awareness:
The first and probably the most important suggestion would be to promote green building
awareness more widely throughout society. People are still unaware of the amount of
resources consumed by buildings and homes, and the quantity of pollution and
greenhouse gases buildings emit. Efforts need to be made by governments, cities,
organizations, and other groups to increase public knowledge of the problems with
conventional buildings, and how green buildings and technologies can improve Canada’s
building stock as well as save money and cause less environmental damage in the long
run. If this type of information was more readily and easily available, it could result in the
increased adoption of green building practices in new developments, as well as increasing
amounts of building retrofits. As for a method of promotion, public information
campaigns need to be directed at three types of people: people who would implement
green building practices and technologies to save money and increase their building’s
quality and value, people who would get involved to reduce the negative effects of their
buildings on the environment, and people who would be drawn in for a combination of
both previous reasons. Along with increasing public awareness of green building comes
the need to increase public recognition of the support and resources available to them to
build green or implement green practices or technologies in their buildings. This should
also be a component of any public awareness campaign. Successful methods of educating
the public on green building could include placing advertisements on bus shelters,
billboards, television, radio, and other places of common public access, the creation of
green building resource and information centres, design competitions, demonstration
projects, informational brochures, information sessions and workshops, green building
expositions and tours, webpages, and green labeling programs.
As an often-cited problem about building green is finding a qualified expert to do the job,
the number of green building training programs should be increased. Governments can
work with colleges, universities, architectural schools, and building organizations to
begin various green building training programs to increase the number of skilled
professionals in the industry. A gap analysis of the Canadian green building industry’s
skills would be beneficial as it would provide a more detailed picture of where training
improvement is required.
Many environmental, recycling, and physical activity programs are aimed at children so
that they develop these habits and continue them throughout their lives. Sustainability and
green building programs and concepts should be brought to schools to help students
develop sustainable lifestyles for the future. Many of the countries studied have energy
and water efficiency programs in place in schools where students have a significant
amount of control over the programs and are responsible for how they are run. Fostering
these concepts will help create a generation that is more aware of the problems and issues
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