The Costa Rican Chamber of Construction, the Costa Rica Institute of Technology Regional Program and the German technical cooperation agency GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit), through its Platform for Cooperation in Latin America North (COPLAN) gave everyone involved in the value chain of the industry the Guidelines for Sustainable Construction and Efficient Management and Building Materials.
Both documents are intended to provide ad hoc measures, as a manual of good practices, to promote construction with sustainability criteria and mitigate the adverse effect that constructive practices have on the environment.
The Guidelines for Sustainable Construction aims to become a reference for the promotion of civil works under sustainability criteria. In its pages the concept of sustainable construction based on the development of a model for the construction industry to face and propose constructive solutions, always respecting the environment. All of this, without sacrificing technological solutions available and meeting the needs of users of buildings.
According to the authors, the goal is to provide basic tools to promote the use of sustainability criteria in the construction of buildings, and the use of efficient technologies that reduce energy consumption during use of the building.
The guide contains a review of constructive aspects with sustainability criteria, such as cross ventilation, daylighting, modulation and spatial orientation of buildings, use of vertical gardens as green areas, improve insulation and air conditioning of buildings
It also offers advice, warnings and suggestions for efficiently using water and energy-efficient technologies to reduce waste from construction works.
The management of materials is one of the most important aspects in the development process of a building, even more than their quality. Therefore, the guide is very useful for guiding management actions and disposal actions, but also for the positive impact of reducing waste.
The authors, engineers Lilliana Abarca and Ana Gretel Leandro share aspects as classification of recoverable and non-recoverable solid waste, best practices and strategies for handling, and even formats for formulating plans for waste management in various companies from the sector.