MARKETING THE GREEN MARK SCHEME: A STUDY ON DEVELOPERS' PERCEPTION AND DISPOSITION TOWARDS GREEN MARK CERTIFICATION

Abstract

To move toward sustainability, the construction and real estate industry requires significant changes in the way it currently delivers building projects, and also in the way manufacturers and vendors supply the building technologies, systems, products and materials it uses. Specifically, sustainability goals, concepts, principles, and guidelines need to be explicitly and systematically integrated in a project, at all stages of its life cycle, particularly the early funding allocation, planning and conceptual design phases. The newly launched building environmental assessment tool - Green Mark for Buildings addresses fhe abovementioned concerns. It sets out good practice criteria for a range of issues related to the design, operation, maintenance and management of buildings and provides comprehensive criteria for assessment against global, local and indoor environment issues. It presents the opportunity for developers to get their buildings certified according to their environmental impact. The certification presents an avenue to transmit information and make known the presence of environmentally friendly buildings to the public, therefore raising the level of awareness of such buildings. To effectively promote Green Mark to developers, the study aims to determine their perception of the Scheme and its receptivity. The study showed that sustainability development remains a relatively new topic in Singapore. Even though the developers claim that they are aware that the design, construction, maintenance and disposal of buildings have a tremendous impact on our environment, it has not been translated to actual implementation behaviour in term of building green developments. The main obstacle to Green Mark is the financial concerns. To encourage more applications for the Green Mark certification, more data concerning the costs and benefits of certified buildings will be needed to convince for the prospective applicant to act.