Issues for Buildings and Construction 

Buildings form a major element of the environment in which millions of people live and work every day. Most of us spend an important part of our lives in and around buildings.

Few buildings today are conceived without the extensive use of glass both inside and outside -- as construction material, as a functional element and as a decorative embellishment. Glass products find a place at the heart of modern architecture, engineering and construction. They have a positive, beneficial role to play in dealing with some of the major environmental challenges of buildings, old and new, particularly in the context of energy efficiency, cutting CO2 emissions and reducing climate change.

Buildings are places of work, such as shops, offices and factories; places of leisure such as auditoria, museums and sports facilities; places with a social function such as hospitals, schools, universities and churches. And then, of course, many of us choose to make our homes in buildings...

As a major focus of human activity, buildings have for centuries been a motor of economic and social development. As such they are also responsible for a large proportion of the environmental outputs of that human activity.

Today, policy-makers have begun to realize how important the quality of our buildings is to the quality of the environment and, indeed, to the overall quality of our lives. As a result, there is an increasing amount of policy and legislative activity which addresses the building sector including the glass products that are used in buildings.