Green Buildings are Smart CSR

Open up a CSR report these days and there is a good chance that there will be some mention of green buildings. No longer a novelty, environmentally-sound buildings are becoming mainstream as firms seek to save money by doing good. In light of this, I thought it would be interesting to spend a few minutes talking about the benefits of green buildings.

Before we begin, I want to spend a moment defining what I mean by "benefits". A natural question for you to ask would be: benefits for whom? This is in fact the beauty of green buildings. Benefits abound, not only for the environment (and the people who will benefit from it), but also for the companies themselves.

From the environment's perspective, the advantages are numerous. According to the U.S. Green Buildings Council, buildings in the United States use 40% of the country's energy and correspondingly give off 39% of the nation's C02 emissions. These results are particularly impressive when compared to the impact of transportation, which many estimate accounts for roughly 30% of C02 emissions.

To echo a theme that I have discussed throughout this series, companies are investing in green buildings for strategic reasons. Again according to the U.S. Green Building Council, "green buildings" can contribute to 8-9% decreases in operating costs, 7.5% increases in building value costs, 3% rent ratio increases, and 3.5% occupancy ratio increases. The cost savings themselves can be attributed to a variety of factors, including water and energy savings; the demand-side advantages stem from improved indoor environmental quality and the fact that is just plain chic to have a green building.

As with any green innovation, cynics exist too, but I will leave such discussions for another time. In the meantime,I will end this post with a question for any CSR or sustainability officers who have worked on a green building project: was it worth it?

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/squeakymarmot/ / CC BY 2.0