Building green schools Published : Thursday, January 19th, 2012 By : Malaya Business Insight

Category : Green Buildings Region : Philippines Tags : construction, energy efficiency, recycling, renewable energy, waste

Sustainable living is covering new fronts in the construction sector as the alternative method of structures gets adopted for school buildings. Recently, the Department of Education adopted the locally-conceptualized Building for Ecologically Responsive Design Excellence (BERDE) as a guideline for projects that aim to be ecologically-responsive apart from addressing the educational needs of students in the Philippines. The standard which continues to be improved by the Philippine Green Building Council now officially covers classrooms and other educational institutions in its designs for green buildings which used to cover only residential and office space developments both new constructions and refurbishments. In a BERDE-certified school project of Dela Salle University, the Henry Sy Hall, PhilGBC will also be taking inputs that could improve the standards incorporated in the present BERDE standard for schools, according to PhilGBC chairman Christopher C. dela Cruz. In the councils recent bulletin, PhilGBC stressed that on a perspective of various scales and intensity of development it is continuously looking through insights on existing projects towards innovating and updating the green building rating system. Through those insights, learning from the past experiences are good milestones set to be able to adapt to the better technical requirements version in the future, it said. Currently, BERDE uses star-rating system where the highest rating a project could receive is a five-star rate. As was in its rating system for office and residential constructions, the BERDE system for school buildings also takes note of a structures level of performance in terms of energy use efficiency, waste disposal, available open space, as well as disaster preparedness, among others. In the DepEds guidelines, it explicitly stressed that green school buildings should encourage and recognize increasing levels of on-site renewable energy self-supply in order to reduce environmental and economic impacts associated with fossil fuel energy use. The school should encourage the development and use of grid-source, renewable energy technologies on a net zero pollution basis, the DepEd also said. In waste disposal, the school should provide an easily accessible place for the whole compound to serves and is dedicated to collection and storage of wastes bound for recycling, including paper, corrugated cardboard, glass, plastics and metals, and trimmings, according to the DepEd. The school should also coordinate the size and functionality of the recycling areas in relation to the expected collection services for glass, plastic, office paper, newspaper, cardboard and organic wastes, according to the DepEd.

Consider employing cardboard balers, aluminium can crushers, recycling chutes and collection bins at individual workstations to further enhance the recycling program, it said. In constructing new buildings, a school should first work to extend the life of its existing stocks in order to conserve resources, reduce waste and reduce the environmental impact of constructing new buildings, according to the DepEd. And if construction is pushed through, the school should reuse available materials to reduce the use of new materials in order to reduce waste, reducing the impact of the project on resource extraction in the environment. In adopting BERDE as its green school building guideline, the DepEd took note how green schools can tremendously impact student health, test scores, teacher performance, retention and cohort survival rates, school operational costs and environment. Far too often schools in the Philippines are built following the National Building Code and we send children to school and spend many hours a day in facilities that just barely meet health and safety standards. Every child deserves to go to a school with healthy air to breathe and conditions that encourage learning. Green schools are healthy for children and conducive to their education since these encourage daylight and views to improve performance; high indoor quality to improve health; excellent acoustics to increase learning potentials; and thermal comfort to increase occupant satisfaction, DepEd said. The DepEd also noted that public and private schools both here and abroad are beginning to realize the cost-effectiveness of going green. If a green school in the US saved $100,000 per year in operational costs, thats roughly enough to hire two new teachers, buy 200 new computers or purchase 5,000 new textbooks, DepEd said. Greening existing schools will not only save money but can potentially pay for itself. Any project that can generate savings possesses a unique opportunity to include and pay for a broad range of sustainability initiatives. Moreover, the reduction of utility costs from renewal efforts may be able to pay for the entire greening project, it added. The DepEd also noted that green schools cost significantly less money to operate and use less water and energy, which frees up resources to spent more on improving student education. If all new school construction and school renovations in the Philippines went green starting today, energy savings alone would total billions of pesos over the next 10 years, it said.