Greening the Building Supply Chain

The public, architects, and contractors are all beginning to understand the importance of green building. While there is a large amount of focus on high efficiency buildings, there has been little focus on the resources used in the building supply chain. Few attempts have been made to assess or reduce the environmental impact of a building over its life cycle.

The Greening the Building Supply Chain task force was created under UNEP-SBCI to identify opportunities to achieve greater resource efficiency in the building supply chain. It is also designed to contribute to larger socio-economic goals and to give recommendations for a specific focus in development of future work programs.

The UNEP-SBCI has made recommendations regarding more progressive public and private green building policies. For public projects, they recommend advocating for better public policies through UNEP efforts with governments. They also suggest conducting additional research to identify which government policies and support structures can encourage green improvements in the design and construction of new buildings.

The UNEP-SBCI has recommended that private sector stakeholders become active in developing and implementing strategies for the application of green intervention at all levels of the building supply chain.

They also recommend increasing communication between UNEP-SBCI and UNEP-Finance Initiative to create strategies that address the financial challenges of energy and resource efficiency in the building and construction sector.

The UNEP-SBCI suggests promoting the benefits of incentives in the permitting process to governments and local authorities. UNEP-SCBI and their partners are well positioned to support policy changes to support green buildings.