The PhilGBC recently held its second green building awareness campaign via Building Green 2008 at the Glorietta.  The ever gracious Ms. Bianca Araneta graced the occasion and delivered the opening speech.  It was a welcome change.  The PhilGBC usually brings in speakers whose expertise in green building is admirable. 

This year, Ms. Araneta delivered a speech from a consumers' point of view.  Bianca shared  her experience in her green building project.  Its inspiration and its challenges.  In this industry, we usually talk about the "why" but not enough of the "how".  Creating green building awareness at the consumer level is a challenge for most Filipino Architects.  Having a consumer talk about the challenges of being sustainable makes businessmen listen and act.  The consumer is a powerful force in pushing for sustainability in the industry.  Thanks Bianca for that wonderful and inspiring speech.  I wish you all the best in your new green building project.

Hello and good morning to everyone. Before I begin, I would just like to congratulate the Philippine Green Building Council for putting together this event. It is a spark of hope for a legacy worth fighting for, I believe.

I’m not an architect or an interior designer. I only recently learned about the craft through my own experience with the little townhouse my husband and I are renovating, so I’m definitely not going to pretend that I know as much as you all do when it comes to building houses and doing what you do.
What I do know about are environmental issues because I consider myself an environmentalist, and I’m here because I want to somehow represent the planet. So, I hope you guys don’t mind if I go off a bit on environmental talk because I feel like, that’s my strong point, it’s what I care most about and I think it is integral and appropriate in keeping with today’s event on green building.

I also feel that there is a great need to raise awareness on such issues especially in this critical period in time where our actions can really spell the difference between the survival and the downfall of our species. Now if that sounds very grave—well, it is.

People today are no longer living in harmony with nature. We’ve somehow forgotten that we are a part of it. We, sort of, ingrained it in our heads that we are the supreme beings of this world, like we’re above everything else. We live in a civilization and a time wherein our food comes to us wrapped up in plastic, cut up in pieces unrecognizable to some of us; we’re woken up each day with the ringing of an alarm clock instead of the shining of the sun. We control our climate with airconditioning and heaters, we’ve even managed bring the outdoors inside our bedrooms with the CD of the soothing sounds of the forest coming out of our stereos. Many of us are living lives that are totally artificial and we’ve somehow managed to disconnect ourselves with nature. But no matter what we want to believe, we have to remember that we are not separate from it and will never be separate from it because we live on this planet.

I want to remind everyone about a time when things between human society and nature were a lot more balanced. Before the Industrial Revolution, the only energy we received was the energy that came from the sun. The sun grew the plants; the plants fed the animals. We ate the animals, and we ate the plants. It clothed us and we used these plants to build roofs over our heads and the amount of energy the sun produced annually was the only energy we were going to get and that was it. This system of supply and demand kept everything in balance. It kept our population in check because we only had enough food as the sunlight produced.  But because people have such an incredible brain that set them apart from all other species, we soon discovered little bits of energy that existed beneath the surface of the earth and these are what we now call fossil fuels. Suddenly we were able to utilize more of the earths resources, which, back then, seemed to be limitless. That’s when the Industrial Revolution began and people then started to gear up for what they believed was “progress.”

We invented the automobile in every shape and size, we built factories and produced goods in volume, we built cities and skyscrapers and were now able to house more people. So then, populations grew by the billions in the last 40 years alone.

The big problem with the way humanity progressed though is the fact that we were tapping into resources that were NOT limitless as we originally believed and only realized this fact later on. What’s worse is that we abused our power and our capabilities and we continue to do so and so now, we are faced with a global calamity so big, it will literally take everyone’s cooperation to overcome. We have produced massive amounts of waste-- waste that may never degrade or never be recycled. Waste that pollutes the air we breathe and the water we drink making them no longer consumable to humans. We have produced an incredible amount of toxic chemicals that have affected our environment, our health, and our seas as well as the integrity of the air we breathe.

There are too many people on this planet, all contributing to too much destruction; we no longer have the resources to sustain ourselves. And now it’s like all of humanity is standing on a precipice and is in danger of tripping and falling in.

We have to decide right now if we want to take that crucial step backward in order to survive.

The reason why I am telling you all of this is because when it comes to the state of our planet, everybody is accountable for his or her actions. And because you are all leaders and specialists in your field, you all have the power to make a big difference to our future and the future of the planet. There is a terribly urgent need to rethink about the way we live and how we utilize our dwindling resources. We all must realize that what we do, what we buy, how we manufacture products, how we build….all of that links us to a network of different societal, environmental and political issues.

Now is not the time to turn a blind eye and only think about making money. We no longer have the luxury of irresponsibility.

There is a pretty large-scale movement happening all around the world now to go green and live sustainably and evidently, it is starting to happen here in our country.  More and more people are waking up and realizing that things need to change if we are to survive, you see there is a big misconception when people say that we have to “save the planet.” The planet will survive no matter what we do to it. It will find a way. It’s mankind that won’t, and perhaps a great majority of other species as well.

You guys do a lot of things that can be of great consequence to us and the health of our planet. Because you are builders, your job entails you to utilize a lot of our natural resources. You have to find ways of going back to where we started, in a state of balance with nature.
It really isn’t that difficult, if we can imagine it, we can do it. That is how powerful the human mind is. With technology, I believe we have gotten to a point where we truly are capable to inventing great things. We just have to want to do it. We have to redesign the formula we have created for progress and do it in such a way wherein the conventional methods we have grown accustomed to, is not part of the equation.

To all you land developers, architects, and engineers-- start building greener houses and buildings. You have to make things properly at all times and think of innovative ways to improve your designs; build green roofs on skyscrapers, make good use of passive cooling and cross ventilaton and make use of systems that use alternative sources of energy and help minimize waste. I know we still do not have any sort of certification process here but nevertheless, we have to elevate our standards to that of LEED system. You always have to use the right materials such as those that are both recycled and recyclable and others like energy efficient appliances and light bulbs, non-toxic paints, and please--do not use wood that come from mismanaged forests. Do not support that industry cause let me tell you a little something about a tree and what it does to our environment. We need trees to survive especially now during these times of global warming. Trees sequester carbon dioxide from our atmosphere and when it dies, it releases it back into the air. But there is nothing else out there in this world that can absorb this greenhouse gas the way a tree does. Man has not invented anything like it. To capture as much carbon dioxide as one tree can do in it’s lifetime will take millions, perhaps billions of dollars. And with a tree, that service is given to us for free. Can you imagine just how fantastic nature is and how it’s so perfectly designed? We really can’t beat it. And so it is never a good idea to strip away our forests for any reason whatsoever because its benefits can never be outweighed.

To all of you who manufacture products that we use to build our houses, do it right. Make them all recyclable and biodegradable if possible. Use sustainable materials that do not contain toxic chemicals. I’m telling you, consumers are now becoming more aware of the presence of such chemicals and the dangers it poses on their health and they do not want that. It can only work positively for your business if you do what’s right and do not cut corners with the integrity and quality of your products at all times.

Like I said in the beginning, I’m not a professional in this field, so I’m just kind of throwing ideas your way. I’m only trying to encourage you all to continue doing what you do and stick to doing what is right and necessary and remind you of how important it is to do so.
We’ve done enough to destroy our environment. I don’t need to convince you of that; I think we all feel it’s ill effects. I would like to urge you all to use your expertise and your skills in doing what’s socially responsible and work towards a sustainable future. Like I said earlier, you guys are the ones with the power to help pull us through this. If you do the right thing and produce what is right, then the consumers will only utilize what is right. As much as possible, you don’t want to give them the option to make the wrong choice.

It really is the only way to go now. The other path we were headed, well, it’s a dead end street as we can all see.

And before I close I want to tell you all about this dream I have wherein we live in this fantastic, modern, sustainable existence. We have well-built homes that are completely powered with alternative energy; totally off the grid. Even the cars we drive, and all the trains, planes and automobiles are fueled using renewable sources of fuel. We no longer rely on anyone else but ourselves. The food we eat is grown in our own backyards. Every toxic chemical is banned therefore there is less disease, the soil is rich, the seas alive and teeming with fish. The furniture in our homes are healthy, they are cradle to cradle, meaning they’re sustainable and completely recyclable or biodegradable. Everything just coexists in such a fruitful, balanced way.
It’s a dream. It’s a beautiful, idealistic sort of dream but whatever it is, I can imagine it. Therefore I know it is possible to achieve. And wouldn't you all want to get there?

The time to do it is now. A new era is about to begin and we are actually extremely lucky to be alive today, to be able to really make a difference in this world. We owe it to our children to do the right thing. We need to leave them enough resources to enjoy and to live. We have to leave them a world that is still natural and a civilization that can sustain itself. We need to leave behind a legacy.
We all have to redirect our skills and knowledge now and point it in the right direction. So please join me in my plight to help create a better world by doing what you do best—by building green.
Thank you for inviting me her today and I hope I was able to enlighten you all a little bit about what needs to be done.

Have a good day….