How To Make Commercial Buildings More Sustainable

The construction of a new commercial building is a large undertaking with many factors that come into play during the build. One of these factors is how this new building will affect the environment. Gone are the days when environmental impact was pushed aside for efficiency’s sake. New commercial buildings can take more steps to reduce their effect on the environment if they know what is possible. Here is how to make commercial buildings more sustainable, providing a deeper look into how we can safeguard the future while still growing.

Understand the Surrounding Land

Experts need to inspect the land where builders will erect the new commercial building. Understanding the area and the surrounding land is why environmental consulting is so important. We must understand how the new building will change the water, soil, and landscape that encompasses it. With this information, we can more accurately determine what we can and cannot do to the building to reduce its effects on the environment.

Use Eco-Friendly Building Materials

As sustainability becomes more and more crucial in everything we do, we must consider new building materials to use in the construction of a commercial building. For example, insulation foam is a necessary part of protecting a building from the outside elements, but the foam used is often terrible for the environment when it is disposed of. New plant-based alternatives are giving us the ability to change the way we insulate and allow us to protect the environment while still growing the industry.

Use Prefabricated Construction

We need to reduce the amount of waste that goes into an average construction project. Traditional construction methods waste energy, waste materials, and create a ton of CO2 emissions. Prefabricated construction, on the other hand, is much less wasteful. We are almost at the point where we can prefabricate entire buildings. For commercial buildings, using prefabricated materials can greatly reduce the environmental impact the construction would have otherwise.

Green Energy Alternatives

One of the best ways to make commercial buildings more sustainable is to adopt more green energy solutions. One of the best ways to reduce both utility costs and carbon emissions for a commercial building is to switch to solar energy. Solar energy reduces our reliance on fossil fuels that create unsustainable amounts of carbon emissions.