5 - The Public and Private Benefits of Green Building

Summary

Ecolabeled green buildings can have a diverse array of characteristics. Their superior environmental performance can include things like energy efficiency or water efficiency; using cleaner and lower carbon energy sources; sourcing construction materials with sustainable practices; or site selection for the buildings so as to reuse and rehabilitate brownfields or encourage use of public transportation or bicycles. The multidimensional nature of “greenness” for green building is an essential feature of these ecolabels and the Green Building Movement more broadly. The holistic approach to greener buildings embraces flexibility, diversity, and innovation over strictly prescriptive or one-size-fits-all approaches. In this chapter we unpack the diversity of green buildings using attributes such as the publicness and the private marketing benefits of an organization’s ecolabeling strategy to provide improved understanding of the manner in which firms certify green. Green building strategies are classified as altruist, pragmatist, green club, and greenwash. By providing better understanding of green building strategies, our understanding of sustainability strategies by firms and organizations is enhanced.