Video promotes green homes tips

Homeowners are being encouraged to make their houses more green through a new video produced by the US Environmental Protection Agency.


The video, part of the organisation’s Green Scene series, gives practical advice on how to make homes more environmentally friendly.

It has been made as part of a new strategy on green building launched by EPA in April. Among the aims of the strategy is raising public awareness about green building.

Americans spend nearly 90% of their time in buildings, and buildings are currently responsible for nearly 40% of US energy use and about 40% of the country’s CO2 emissions.

Dr. Bill Sanders, director of EPA’s National Centre for Environmental Research, said EPA’s existing green homes programmes such as Energy Star were having an impact, but they needed to be better coordinated.

“What we are trying to do now is to bring them together and we have an overall strategy to try to figure out ways to be more collaborative across the programmes that we are operating right now and remove some of the barriers that we have to green building,” he said.

The US Green Building Council (USGBC), which celebrated its 15th anniversary this year, also relaunched its Greenbuild365 website this month.

It will now feature increased educational resources, podcasts and year-round access to clips from its Annual Greenbuild Conference and Expo.

“The green building movement offers an unprecedented opportunity to respond to the most important challenges of our time,” said Peter Templeton, senior vice president of research and education at USGBC.

“The fundamental driving force in the green building movement is the work of innovative building professionals.

“Such leadership is a critical component to achieving USGBC’s mission of a sustainable built environment for all within a generation.

“Greenbuild365 gives us a platform where that leadership and knowledge from a broad range of disciplines – design, construction, real estate, education and more – can be shared around the globe.”

EPA’s video can be found here.

Kate Martin

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