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Ezri Acuna 794 words

Professor Porter

ENGL-1301-31123

20 October 2021

“Going Green” Sustainable construction.

The last few years a lot of information regarding climate change has arrived at the conversation,

these are problems that will change the path that humanity will take in the future.

Probably you’ve heard about recycling plastic, reducing the water we use at home, or change old

bulbs for new long-lasting bulbs to reduce the use of energy; however, one topic that isn’t too

popular is the construction and the damage to the ecosystem that it produces as a result of the

waste of resources that it generates while obtaining raw material and turning it in to construction

products. so, we must ask ourselves.

Why are we still building in the same way if this is destroying the planet?

Every year the population continues to grow and as a result of this, the need to build new houses

also grows; annually 60 percent of the timber cut down is used for building homes, on average to

build a 1000 square foot home construction companies use about 20 grown trees also,

construction projects emit large amounts of carbon dioxide and methane adding that they cause

pollution and produce waste.

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It is well known that the development of new infrastructure products is of utmost importance for

the economic, social, and cultural development of a region. Therefore, it is estimated that in 10

years the construction volume will grow by 80%; although this seems like great news in

economic terms because it will help companies to continue growing and will help the economies

of the countries to continue expanding, we cannot ignore that construction projects emit giant

amounts of carbon dioxide and methane, bringing multiple harmful effects on the environment.

The Energy use during these development projects is one of the biggest problems we face

because the construction industry consumes 36 percent of the world's energy every year.

Let’s talk about deeply about air pollution Air pollution refers to man-made emissions that are

sent into the atmosphere, it is estimated that in the world this pollution causes 4.2 million

premature deaths. Construction also contributes to air pollution and here are listed some

activities related with this issue.

The diesel engines of heavy vehicles that are used during large constructions regularly tend to

work by expelling gases into the atmosphere since they are not regulated like other types of

vehicles.

Demolition is another example of how to pollute the construction of the environment because

large areas of land where trees and vegetation used to be are demolished to build constructions

and this has a huge impact on the environment, in addition to this in already established

constructions that are demolished in large quantities. dust and dirt come to light, this causes

damage to the environment and human beings.

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Being frequently exposed to this type of situation can cause irreversible health damage, such as

cancer. Com the fibers of the dust, such as silica and asbestos are materials that cause deaths

such as cancer.

Through the years there have been many attempts to reverse this situation, like modular

constructiont, but acording to Peng J in his article Analysis on the hidden cost of prefabricated

buildings “There are al least 13 key factors influencing the rise of the cost while trying to build

in a modular process” here are two I consider more related to the topic of this essay

if the taxes of prefabricated materials are higher than the common type of construction. This will

affect the final profit of enterprises. That’s why not many companies try to innovate with other

methods, and they keep damaging the ecosystem.

Other key reason why modular construction isn’t taking a more important place in the industry is

that the installation cost, production cost and transportation cost of prefabricated components are

higher than traditional methods.

As a conclusion I would say that is important to pay attention to other human activities because

there are some of them that are not exposed correctly, a clear example of this is the construction

industry. Before doing research for this essay, I didn’t know how big the problem is and how

dangerous it is for the environment. We need to start thinking in solutions and alternatives so we

can found a way to reverse the damage and restore the resources from earth.
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Works cited and references:

Guzder, Kristin. “Pollution from Construction: What Are the Types & How Can We

Prevent...” The Hub | High Speed Training, 5 Oct. 2021,

www.highspeedtraining.co.uk/hub/pollution-from-construction.

Peng J, Zhou J, Meng F, Yu Y (2021) Analysis on the hidden cost of prefabricated buildings

based on FISM-BN. PLoS ONE

Navaratnam Satheeskumar, Ngo Tuan, Gunawardena Tharaka, et al. Performance review of

prefabricated buildings systems and future research in Australia[J]. Buildings. 2019, 9(2), 38.