World Green Building Week - Green buildings for great communities

Recently, the global green building movement reached a momentous milestone: 1 billion square metres of registered green building space.

While this is an incredible achievement, a city of green buildings does not a sustainable community make. It is clear that we must expand our focus beyond buildings to the sustainability of our communities and cities.

From 17-21 September 2012, the global green building movement will unite for World Green Building Week.

This year, more than 90 green building councils representing 25,000 global organisations will come together to highlight the importance of ‘green buildings for great communities’.

Green building councils are hosting events, engaging in debate and shining the spotlight on the central role that green buildings and communities play in decreasing the global carbon footprint and saving money, while also creating jobs, reducing poverty and improving lives. 

Here at the GBCA, we are drawing on the European traditions of flânerie and joining forces with our friends at the Better Buildings Partnership to launch a new Sustainable Sydney walking tour that takes in a selection of Sydney’s greenest buildings. I’ll be hosting a twitter chat with my counterpart from the USGBC, Rick Fedrizzi, and we’ll be staging and supporting a range of other exciting events and celebrations around the country. 

We are also encouraging our industry to show their support for sustainable development by hosting their own World Green Building Week event or activity. Be it a site tour, picnic or cocktail reception, register your event and we’ll help you to promote it via the World Green Building Week section of our website.

If your event is picked as the most creative of 2012, you will be featured in the September edition of Green Building Voice. Last year, the standout event was Australand’s ‘Turn Waste into Art’ competition which encouraged employees to express their creative sides by reusing rubbish. Check out our website for more World Green Building Week event inspiration.

Each year, World Green Building Week helps to remind me just how far we have come in demonstrating to our industry, governments and the public that we can create buildings that are productive, liveable and sustainable.

With the GBCA now in its tenth year, the advent of Green Star – Communities, and a growing global impetus to go beyond buildings, let’s use this year’s World Green Building Week to celebrate our sustainable future, and mark the beginning of our journey to green the spaces between.