LEED or GreenGlobes? - Solutions for the Built Environment

Buildings and the Built Environment (buildings, houses, highrises, stores, ect.) all have a massive impact on the environment. In fact, they may be the largest impactors of the environment today. Think about it. Buildings require cooling, heating, copious amounts of electricity, gas, and of course all the materials needed to make the building itself. Buildings often need wood, which is taken from trees often countries away. Any plastic used has to be synthesized with potentially harmful chemicals - and cannot be easily disposed of. The steel and metal needs to be mined from the earth in dangerous and unsustainable mining operations. Concrete driveways and parking lots create the issue of rainwater runoff (water unable to permeate into the ground). 

Even more problematic is that we all need buildings. For business, retail, residential, or recreational use, we need buildings. We cannot brave the rain and storms. We need shelter to survive - and that won't be changing any time soon. 

So the best we can do for our planet is to try to make our buildings sustainable. But how do we achieve this, and more importantly, how do we measure this? Currently, there are two main competing methods of measuring a building's sustainability in North America: LEED and GreenGlobes.

LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, developed by the United States Green Buildings Council, claims to be a "green building tool that addresses the entire building lifecycle recognizing best-in-class building strategies." The main factors LEED awards credits based on are the smart and efficient use of water and energy, the use of sustainable building materials, recycling, indoor environmental quality, and lastly the building's site.

GreenGlobes also is a method of assessing a business's sustainability. However, GreenGlobes was orginally developed in Canada by the Green Building Initiative  an American National Standards Institute accredited standards producer. GreenGlobes measures sustainability through energy, water, resources, emissions, indoor environment, and environmental management. Within these subheadings are categories such as haz-mat waste, air quality, noise, recycling, environmental awareness.

All in all, the two sound quite similar. But there are some extremely important differences between the two. First off, the main focus of LEED is certification. Through LEED, companies can prove that their buildings are certified. A company completes reams of paper proving its claims, and then sends them off to the USGBC for approval. GreenGlobes, on the other hand, is primarily a tool for a corporation to use itself to determine its own sustainability, not to flaunt it. GreenGlobes essentially an online survey filled out by the corporation itself - no ridiculous amounts of froms. And if the company wishes, GreenGlobes will send out a person to verify the corporation's claims, for a small fee.

This brings me to the second difference between the two: money. Because of the complexity of applying for a LEED certification, often a company will have to hire an outside agency, such as Jones Lang LaSalle. Application feeds are compounded by paying the agencies, and the cost of registering skyrockets. GreenGlobes is much simpler, as it designed mainly as a tool for companies themselves to use. The forms use more general and easily answerable questions, and mostly no outside agency is required. Also, if a company does wish to have the GBI certify their GreenGlobes rating, the company only needs to pay to have the GBI agent sent out. In short, GreenGlobes is much cheaper and more viable for smaller companies.

Let us also consider the criteria by which each system rates buildings. One obvious difference between the two is GreenGlobes's inclusion of the "environmental management" category. In this category is the most important factor of sustainability: environmental awareness. A company cannot strive to be sustainable if it does not know if it is sustainable, or what quantifies sustainability. LEED does not have a factor strictly based on awareness alone.

Overall, in my opinion, GreenGlobes is the obvious winner of the LEED v. GreenGlobes battle. GreenGlobes is easier, cheaper, and just makes more sense. For smaller companies, a huge evaluation like LEED is almost always impossible. GreenGlobes provides small businesses with an opportunity to evaluate their own sustainability, as well as proving to its customers that it can be sustainable.

I say companies should go green with GreenGlobes.




Works Cited:
"LEED." U.S. Green Building Council. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Aug. 2013. <http://www.usgbc.org/leed>.
"Green Globes®." Green Globes and LEED, a Green Building Certification Comparison. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Aug. 2013. <http://www.thegbi.org/green-globes/green-globes-leed-green-building-certification.shtml>.
"Green Globes." Building Environmental Assessments. Green Building Initiative, n.d. Web. 01 Aug. 2013. <http://www.greenglobes.com/>.