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BEIJING -- At a time when China's leaders are urging better protection of the environment, more foreign companies are setting an example by starting to look to international "green" standards to guide their operations here.

China's environmental practices and requirements are unevenly enforced and in flux. But after several high-profile incidents of environmental damage, including a chemical spill in the Songhua River that left millions without safe drinking water for days, Beijing is moving toward stricter standards. Because of the sheer scale of construction and the use of resources, government regulators are paying particular attention to new buildings.

Plantronics Inc., a Santa Cruz, Calif., company that makes headsets, is one of those ahead of the regulatory curve. Its new $23 million factory, near the eastern city of Suzhou, is the first manufacturing facility in China to be certified by the U.S. Green Building Council, a private, nonprofit American group. Meeting the voluntary code, called Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, requires cutting electricity consumption and reusing water.

Plantronics's efforts to go beyond basic environmental requirements helped make local authorities "very enthusiastic for this project," said Terry Walters, the company's senior vice president of operations. "They were in our corner the whole time, fighting for us to get through the approval process, and fast."

A spokesman for Intel Corp., which has an assembly site in nearby Shanghai, said the semiconductor maker is taking "a hard look" at LEED certification and energy-efficiency options for future facilities in China.

In recent years, a few property developers have followed programs to soften the environmental impact of new residential and commercial buildings. This trend reflects companies' calculation that their facilities will have to meet not just today's lax standards but tomorrow's tougher ones, too.

"Clearly, over time the regulations are going to change, and they are going to be forced into doing environmental things," said Patrick Bruce, head of planning and design company Integer China Ltd., which advises on green buildings.

Buildings with a combined floor space of 2.4 billion square yards are going up every year, according to the Ministry of Construction, in a building spree that is consuming more than one-third of the world's annual supply of steel and cement. With electricity supplies tight in some areas and reliance on imported oil rising, policy makers are eager to find ways to manage China's expanding thirst for energy.

Government standards for new buildings require them to use 50% less energy than they would have 20 years ago, and even stricter measures are in the works, said Tu Fengxiang, president of the China Building Energy Efficiency Association.

Still, Mr. Tu said, it has been difficult for the Ministry of Construction to ensure those standards are followed throughout the country, and not just by expensive projects in major cities.

"We come across clients who are genuinely interested in sustainability, but at the moment it's mostly restricted to foreign investors," said Raymond Yau, a director at Ove Arup & Partners Hong Kong, an engineering consultancy.

The government is trying to lead by example, sponsoring a number of high-profile projects with environmentally friendly designs, most notably the facilities for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. A company owned by the Shanghai city government has hired Arup to help design an "eco city," a residential development to be powered entirely by renewable energy, on the island of Dongtan in the Yangtze River.

Proponents of energy-efficient architecture argue that the economic case for such practices is strong in China: As wages are relatively low, energy costs can occupy a proportionately much larger share of expenses than is usual in developed nations. That means energy savings can provide a bigger boost to a building owner's bottom line.

For Plantronics to achieve "gold" LEED certification for its factory, it had to go beyond what was available locally. "A large measure of the building material was local, but some of the key pieces of equipment were imported," Mr. Walters said.

Contractor Bechtel Corp., San Francisco, was brought in to help on a design with some unusual features, including a large insulated glass wall that lets in enough sunlight to significantly reduce the use of electrical lighting and a system that captures rainwater and runoff for other uses.