Green building is the practice of increasing the efficiency with which buildings use resources — energy, water, and materials — while reducing building impacts on human health and the environment during the building's lifecycle.  This is accomplished through better placement, design, construction, operation, maintenance, and waste removal. Green buildings are designed to reduce the overall impact on the environment on human health and the natural environment by.

The related concepts of sustainable development and sustainability are integral to green building. Practitioners of green building often seek to achieve not only ecological but aesthetic harmony between a structure and its surrounding natural and built environment.

Effective green building can lead to 1) reduced operating costs by increasing productivity and using less energy and water, 2) improved public and occupant health due to improved indoor air quality, and 3) reduced environmental impacts by, for example, lessening storm water runoff and the heat island effect.

The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), has developed The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System.  LEED provides a suite of standards for environmentally sustainable construction. The technical criteria proposed by the LEED committees are publicly reviewed for approval by the more than 10,000 membership organizations that currently constitute the USGBC.

Investing in Green Building can be achieved through investments in companies that build according to LEED design standards.  You can invest in Green Building by investing in companies that manufacture Green Building products and also companies that provide Green Building services.