Retrofits have been a major focus recently, but according to some experts, "it's better to build a 'green' house from the ground up," at least financially:
It may make more financial sense to build a green building from scratch than invest your money in an existing building with limited or no environmental credentials - or so say a growing band of experts in the building and property trade.
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And, while one might think erecting a new green building has a bigger environmental impact than buying an existing one, it is a myth, says Smith: "The argument that it's better to buy an existing building than build new - since the ecological impact of a building project is supposedly greater - is not true. The traffic of maintenance teams having to return to a site for ongoing work is much higher over the life-span of an old building than its new counterpart.
"A well-designed contemporary building also incorporates an open-plan approach, allowing varying internal layouts and impacting on its desirability in the marketplace."
Buying a building rather than putting up a new green structure will initially save you up to "15% in upfront costs, but may end up costing you and the environment much more than you had thought", Smith says.
Manfred Braune, a technical executive at the Green Building Council of South Africa, agrees that eco-minded buildings are beginning to make financial sense, although he offers a more conservative appraisal.
"Saving on water and energy means you have a less expensive building to operate. And an office with more daylight, for instance, improves people's productivity, so here, as an employer, you get more bang for your buck," he says. "But in a new, green building you might have more expensive systems, like a hi-tech, on-site sewage-treatment plant that saves you water but costs you more to maintain."
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