User:Mcsuelto/Draft:PHILGBC

The Philippine Green Building Council (PHILGBC) is a national not-for-profit organization that promotes the sharing of knowledge on green practices to the property industry to ensure a sustainable environment. The Council is an alliance of building and construction industry leaders from both the public and private sectors that shall be the non-partisan venue to develop a nationally accepted and recognized green building rating standard.

In early 2006, a group of environmental advocates and business leaders convened to form PHILGBC with the realization that an organization is needed to promote greener buildings and coordinate efforts to sustainability. PHILGBC is taking the lead in ensuring an ecologically and economically sustainable industry with the development of a local rating green building rating system, aptly named Building for Ecologically Responsive Design Excellence (BERDE), and with its conference series, Building Green, which is an avenue for showcasing sustainability and green technologies and practices to the industry.

Building Green
Started in 2007, Building Green is the series of conferences of the Philippine Green Building Council that highlights the current green practices of the industry. It features the latest innovative trends in building products, architecture, engineering and construction as initiated by the industry's best and brightest minds. The conference series was started as a venue for green building dialogue and to further develop and promote BERDE, as the National Green Building Rating System.

Building for Ecologically Responsive Design Excellence
BERDE is developed by a non-partisan forum composed of the nation’s leaders in industry, professional institutions, academe, and government. This forum shall be the stage in the ongoing debate on how to measure a building’s sustainability credentials. BERDE will help in determining the correctness of the claims of the project proponents. BERDE shall be a consensus driven; third party certification, monitoring and verification scheme that will enable all property market players to benchmark against a single green building rating system, thus leveling the playing field. BERDE will guide decision makers in industry in designing, constructing and operating greener buildings. Businesses will use BERDE as a recognizable environmental branding tool that will enable property buyers easily identify buildings that are performing environmentally well.