Green Buildings Will Improve The Way You Live, Work And Sleep

Oliver Wendel

Green buildings — structures that have been built using sustainable materials and operate using resources in an efficient and environmentally conscious way — hold the key to improving our home lives, sleep habits and even our professional careers, according to a national study from Harvard’s school of public health and SUNY Upstate Medical.

Christos Barbalis

The study found that participants’ scores for cognitive function went up by a whopping 101 percent in buildings that were optimized for green efficiency. During testing, researchers looked at measures of cognitive function like crisis response, information usage and strategy, all of which saw improvements between 97 and 299 percentage points.

Researchers also saw a dramatic improvement in productivity and output in participants when working from green buildings, with efficient ventilation strategies that cost as little as $14 in energy per person per year. In the next part of the study, researchers measured these same factors across a number of real working environments.

Jeff Sheldon

In this section, called “Buildingnomics,” researchers observed a 26 percent increase in cognitive function scores. Employees working from an environmentally sound structure had 73 percent higher scores for crisis response, 44 percent higher ability to “gear decision-making toward overall goals,” 38 percent stronger ability to pay attention to situations at hand, and 31 percent better ability to strategize.

These same green building-dwellers reported better sleep and fewer health problems than those in high-performance, non green-certified buildings, with 30 percent fewer “sick building” symptoms — things like humidity, air dryness and chemical odors. These findings point to a substantial difference in the quality of life between those who live and work in green-certified structures and those who don’t — not to mention a direct economic impact.

“We’re advocating for… a new approach that examines the totality of factors in the building-related environment that influence the human health, well-being and productivity of people who work in buildings,” said Dr. Joseph Allen, a principal investigator for the study. “Through Buildingomics’ multi-disciplinary approach, we aim to better understand the building-related factors that influence health in buildings and unlock the ability to optimize buildings for cognitive function and health.”