Green Options

It wasn’t exactly a quite hush that settled over the San Francisco’s Moscone Center for the 50th PCBC convention but the crowds and exhibitors for this annual builders convention came in about one-half of last year. Nonetheless, in this era of minimalism and slimming down the show offered an array of notable speakers and some innovative products. Now of course, with the slogan “The New Age of Innovation” we hoped for more progressive Green products and not just in a marketing sense.

On the creatively intriguing side, we walked into the Icynene Inc. display booth only knowing that they create their Icynene LD-R-50 spray foam insulation partially from Castor oil. Honestly, we didn’t exactly know the origin of Castor oil. Castor oil comes from Castor beans (not true beans from Castor plant) and don’t serve a normal food source, so not food for insulation here. Castor crops don’t require pesticides or fungicides or even water to grow and are rapidly renewable. For this insulation, they use 15 percent castor oil (and unfortunately 85 percent polyglycol, which in our eyes is like using B15 biodiesel. Fifteen percent is better than zero percent but still a long way to go. This product helps eliminate dust, pollen and contains no VOCs as it is water blown. Most traditional cellulose insulation comes from 80% newspaper (up to100% post-consumer recycled) and 20% binders and fire-retardants, commonly borax, boric acid, sulfuric acid, ammonium sulfates and/or other chemical compounds. Smell the goodness.

LEED, for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, has become the alpha acronym when referring to green, or eco-friendly, buildings. The standard, from the U.S. Green Building Council, recently went 3.0.

Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, is taking the green diploma to an even higher degree. University officials are betting a new Living Learning Center will meet the Living Building Challenge, the world’s most stringent green building rating system from the Cascadia Region Green Building Council, a chapter of the USGBC and its Canadian counterpart.

The U.S. Green Building Council is unveiling a new system for evaluating health care facilities that is less stringent than normal LEED ratings. Will it work?

If it works for one San Fran hotel then it must work for another. No, we’re not talking about more upscale mini bar items but Greening a hotel. In this case, the Orchard Garden Hotel’s (which garnered LEED-NC certification) sister property the Orchard Hotel just nabbed LEED-EB certification.

The Orchard represents San Francisco’s only hotel to earn this honor, the Orchard Hotel is the second hotel in California and fourth hotel in the world with this certification. The inspiration from these green hotels comes from its 85-year-old owner, Mrs. S.C. Huang, who has pushed her environmental agenda and created more environmentally safe and sustainable hotels after the untimely cancer-related deaths of three family members.

New York City’s Empire State Building is the latest poster child for green innovation. Earlier this week, Anthony Malkin, president of W&M Properties, the company that owns the building, announced that they would begin a $500 million self-financed program to renovate the world famous landmark – $100 million of which would be used to reduce the building’s energy consumption and carbon emissions.

While your immediate response to the headline may have been “Yeah, the economy’s tough,” or “Hmmm… they must’ve been English, art history, or film studies majors,” Florida Gulf Coast University graduates Kylee Snyder and Michael Brinkman aren’t cleaning “country clubs, fitness centers, office buildings, restaurants and vacation rentals” because they had no other options. Rather, after winning a university business plan competition in 2007, they invested the $500 prize into a new venture: Green Leaf Cleaning.

Two years later, they’re not only still in business; they’re profitable.

In a brief interview with the Naples (Florida) Daily News, Snyder and Brinkman note that green cleaning isn’t just about jumping on a bandwagon: Snyder notes that their services can contribute to better indoor air quality (and fewer employee sick days), and can also contribute to LEED certification points. In the end, though, their most effective pitch involves cost savings: the two entrepreneurs have made sure to keep prices affordable while maintaining high green standards for their clients, and in their own operations.

This post was originally posted on Eco-Libris blog on March 24.

Green buildings have never been so popular, at least when it comes to public policy. Looking at the stimulus plan you see how a concept that until lately was relatively marginal suddenly becomes a significant policy tool, which is expected to stimulate the economy, lower energy consumption, create jobs and support the environment, all the same time.

But what does a green building or a green home actually means? well, for most of us it would be difficult to get into specifics as so few had the chance to experience it personally, but for Avrim and Vicki Topel know the answers.

They have built a green home (LEED Silver Certified) at Kennett Square, PA and they’re sharing their story in a new book entitled “Green Beginnings: The Story of How We Built Our Green & Sustainable Home“. This book is a valuable book for anyone interested in going green or building a green home. It is also part of a greater effort of the Topel’s experience to share their experience with others, which includes tours in the house and a documentary video. And last but not least, as we reported earlier, Eco-Libris is collaborating with the authors to plant trees for the copies sold of the book.

As we wanted to learn more about the authors’ experience and their book, we asked Avrim Topel to join us for an interview.

Follow the process of designing and building a green home from the homeowners’ perspective in the recently released “Green Beginnings” book and video.

If this had been announced before I wrote the Top 10 Dumbest Green Buildings on Earth, it would have easily taken the number one slot.

Yum! Brands has asked the United States Green Building Council to LEED-certify its Northampton, MA Taco Bell/Kentucky Fried Chicken location because the building includes rainwater collection, solar panels, LED lighting, and recycled building materials.

They neglect to mention in their press release that all food will still be packaged (regardless of whether patrons dine in or take out) and that they’ll still be serving lots and lots of factory-farmed meat — the number one known cause of global warming.

The LEED certification has been the standard of green building certifications over the years, but has it lost it’s luster?

The rapidly growing wine industry in the Finger Lakes Region of New York has been attracting a good deal of attention for the quality of its wines. One winery is looking to make a name for itself both for its wines and its commitment to the environment.

Red Tail Ridge Winery, in Penn Yan, N.Y., will break ground this spring on a new wine making building designed to meet the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED standards. It would be the first New York winery building to earn LEED certification, according to a search of the USGBC’s online LEED project database. Husband and wife owners Mike Schnelle and Nancy Irelan opened Red Tail Ridge after moving to the region from California, where Ireland worked for Gallo wineries. Their tasting room opened in August 2007.