What is Green Building?
Cardenas Villas is an environmentally friendly single family home community unlike anything you have seen before. What does it mean to be environmentally friendly, or green? Green building is defined as "the practice of increasing the efficiency with which buildings use resources - energy, water, and materials - while reducing building impacts on human health and the enviroment, through better siting, design, construction, operation, maintainance, and removal - the complete building life cycle", according to Wikipedia.com.
So now that we know what the definition of green building is, what does it really mean? There are many organizations worldwide that exist for just that purpose...to try and define green building and institute standards. The organizations most common in the United States include the following:
- The US Green Building Council's Program...LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (www.usgbc.org/LEED)
- The Enviromental Protection Agency's EnergyStar Program (www.energystar.gov)
- The National Association of Home Builders Green Program (www.nahbgreen.org)
- The Enterprise Foundation's Green Communities Program (www.greencommunitiesonline.org)
In addition, there are numerous foreign entities, as well smaller organizations here in the United States that have instituded definitions, standards and guidelines for 'what is green?'
The existance of so many organizations, with their differing opinions and standards leads to a lot of confusion! The bottomline goal is the same though: to increase efficiency of buildings, limit the impact on the environment, and allow for improved human health conditions. As such, there are definetly shades of green when it comes to building. Sure, there are probably homes out there that are "more green", but we have worked hard to combine the most cost effective green technologies and practices into these homes. After all, what good is an environmentally friendly home if you cant afford it! Learn more about what makes the homes at Cardenas Villas green, here. Also, with the ever increasing price of gas, wouldn't it be nice to be 2 miles from downtown Phoenix??