Buildings have an enormous impact on the environment.Consuming hundreds of tons of building materials,drawing billions of watts of electricity and burning countless barrels of fuel during each their lifetimes,every home,school,hospital, factory,lab or office that we build will gobble up natural resources and effect pollution for many decades.So when the U.S.Environmental Protection Agency started planning the largest facility in its history,environmental impacts were key considerations.The Agency faced a haunting question–how could EPA build more than one million square feet of labs and offices on a wooded,132-acre site without making sustainability a key consideration?

Available at: www.epa.gov/rtp/campus/environmental/thegreeningcurve-new.pdf