Construction of Schools: Future Possibilities
Just as private sector businesses and residential construction developers are being challenged to use environmentally responsible, sustainable, and eco-friendly building processes and materials, so are public schools facing this challenge as they move forward into the twenty-first century. Scott Lafer (1)commented that integral to this challenge are such issues as design features, functions, costs, resources, and availability of commitment to the idea of green building. Schools are, said Lafer (2), an ideal locus for the use of green building techniques and materials; they can serve not only as examples of how efficient and effective such techniques are, but also as educational "labs" in which communities can learn more about the importance, safety, and sustainability of eco-friendly construction practices and site management.
Designing eco-friendly schools, as described by Evantheia Schibsted (1-2) as involving a number of green features including the use of recycled materials, alternative energy sources, wood products obtained from an environmentally responsible manner via sustainable logging practices, and other naturally occurring materials as opposed to plastics and other polymers. New school construction can and should embody the use of these materials as well as other aspects of green building technologies with the goal of reducing the environmental footprint in the school.
In the United States and elsewhere, schools are being given funding assistance in developing green schools with multiple green fixtures that may be initially costly to install, but which generate long-term savings. Schibsted (4) described Tarkington Elementary School in Chicago - a totally green school with many of the features briefly identified above - as costing $23 million or about six percent more than a non-green school would have cost.
Studies conducted by the California Sustaina...