Today we headed over to Waiheke Island and let me tell you, I landed in heaven.. At dinner, we sat around and discussed Loretta’s and Nicole’s Beacon articles. The key discussion points that came out of them are:
· The best way to get sustainability to gain traction with the general public is through education.
· Educating kids is the easiest way to get to a group of the population before they have preconceived notions about how things are done and before they get “corrupted” by the naysayers of sustainability.
· Local and federal governments mandating LEED or Green initiatives are actually counterproductive to encouraging sustainability. Instead of designers and developers actually wanting to incorporate green products and designs into their facilities, it is construed as just more red tape that they must go through to obtain a building permit.
I personally believe that government intervention is necessary to get the ball rolling on incorporating sustainable measures into a new/renovated building. Most building owner and developers these days are looking to make a quick buck by building a new building, leasing it up and selling it off for a profit. In their mind, including these green measures into their building is decreasing their margins. So if it was up to them, they would throw up the cheapest building they could that still meets the minimum code requirements. By the government mandating a certain degree of sustainable aspects into a design, there is at least SOME energy saving measures that will be installed no matter what the owner’s prerogative is.
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