LEED by Example: Green building goes mainstream

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Do you think employees must work under your watchful gaze, even though they could be working at home, without driving their cars to the office?

Do you think those good old incandescent bulbs in the conference room are great, because you tried those squiggly ones 10 years ago and they were no good?

Do you think you can’t make an environmental impact because you’re a small business owner who’s not in the position to build a sleek, new green showcase office?

Think again.

Energy prices are shooting up. Customers are demanding more environmental accountability. Green issues have reached a nearly universal level of awareness.

Some businesses have larger carbon footprints than others, but most can find ways to make them smaller, say experts and business owners who incorporate green concepts into their regular business.

Start in the office

One of the first places to look at improving is the business setting. If your office is more than a few years old, chances are it can be made more energy-efficient.

If you own your own building, you can have greater control, but you can still have an impact even if you’re renting or leasing, according to John Erickson, one of four architects at DSGW Architects in Duluth.

“Even if you’re negotiating a lease, you have some leverage,” he says. Example: “You can ask, ‘Am I paying electric? If I’m paying the electric bill, I don’t want incandescent lights.’ ”

Erickson is accredited by the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program.

Buildings can also carry the LEED stamp of approval. Based on a complicated point rating system, LEED rates a building in six broad categories, including building site, materials, and energy and water use. Although it’s voluntary, more and more businesses are asking for LEED-certified buildings.

Not only does the energy efficiency save money over time, LEED status confers immediate bragging rights to green-conscious customers, according to Ryan Turner, another LEED-accredited architect at DSGW.

“They’re doing LEED because they have a conscience, but some of that doesn’t directly affect the bottom line. That could be seen as more of a PR piece or a feel-good thing,” he said.

For example, using recycled content carpeting, steel and ceiling tile and finishes low in volatile organic compounds doesn’t necessarily save money. Sometimes they cost more than conventional products. “But it’s the right thing to do, so it’s still a plus,” he says.

Going for LEED certification is a very high standard and it’s not right for every project, Turner says. Certain features of the LEED point system – for example, minimizing passive solar heat gain – seem to be oriented toward southern latitudes, where cooling costs are high. “Here in Duluth, we might want to maximize solar heat gain, because our heating season is much longer,” he said.

For a building to become certified, LEED inspectors perform a building audit and write a report on whether the building meets or doesn’t meet the standards.

“The value of LEED is a long-term value,” says Erickson. “The fundamental struggle is finding that balancing point between front-end costs and long-term savings.” And no matter how deep a client’s pockets might seem to be, economics are always there. “It’s rare when we get a client who says, ‘Do everything possible, there’s no budget limit.’ ”

Building products evolve

Architects and builders can play a role informing customers of the latest building products, which are continually being improved.

“Everybody’s going green now,” says Randy Larson, owner of general contracting firm Meteek & Co., which was founded in 1978. “We’ve been doing it for a long time.” Larson touts several products that represent next-generation leaps over previous industry standards.

He uses Accurate-Dorwin brand pultruded fiberglass windows, a Canadian product that performs better and lasts longer than wood, vinyl or aluminum windows. His firm also uses an electrochromatic glass from Sage Glass of Faribault, Minn., in skylights and other hard-to-shade windows. “You push a button and a low-voltage charge aligns lithium ions and makes the glass go dark,” he says. That allows a building owner to let in solar heat gain, but control it seasonally or during parts of the day when it’s too intense.

Meteek also uses Viessmann condensing boilers from Germany, which are more than 95 percent efficient, including in a school remodeling project in Maple, Wis. Made with stainless steel and titanium, Viessmann boilers incorporate another sustainable building principle: long life. Some of the early high-efficiency boilers in the U.S. market are failing after only five years, he said. “I hear from frustrated people who are tired of products that don’t work.”

Business owners don’t need to be doing major work to save money on energy costs, Larson says. He recently spoke with a homeowner for whom he had installed a solar water heating system. “The temperature in the tank was 150 degrees in early July,” he says.

And they might even get some assistance from the state. A law that went into effect July 1 provides some financial assistance for solar heating systems. Contact the Minnesota Office of Energy Security: Stacy Miller, (561) 282-5091.

Recycling demolition

If you do happen to be building or remodeling the office, what happens to the waste? “My niche is recycling construction and demolition debris,” says Steve Christen, owner of AA Rolloff Service. AA (“Always Available”) doesn’t own a landfill, so its only way to make money is to recycle aggressively. “We take that waste product back to our processing station and pull out the things that are recyclable for local markets – odd cuts of scrap metal, the wood, and the masonry products.”

Building projects attempting LEED certification need to recycle their waste products. That’s what earned AA Rolloff some business when it worked on a recent building project at Lake Superior College, Christen noted. “I believe the future of our industry is to take a natural resource, be it a tree or whatever, and use it two or three times before sending it to disposal.”

If you’re not building, not remodeling, what can you do? Many small business owners in the area are already making the choice to use more recycled and environmentally friendly products, according to Traci Thoreson, benefits and sustainability coordinator at the Hermantown Sam’s Club.

“I’d say requests for green supplies have doubled” within the last year, says Thoreson. “People are looking for ways to go green and that’s been a huge push for our members,” many of whom include small business owners.

Sam’s Club is owned by Wal-Mart, which grabbed headlines in 2006 when it announced an effort to sell 100 million compact fluorescent bulbs, an average of one to each of its regular customers. It met the goal about a year later. Now, “We don’t even sell incandescent bulbs any more,” Thoreson says.

Sam’s Club stocks pens, paper clips, pillows and even clothing made of recycled materials; some items are 100 percent recycled content. “All of our vendors have been asked if they can revise or think about a new way of packaging for our consumers, so we can have more sustainable products,” she says.

One example of reducing packaging has paid other dividends. Liquid laundry detergents are now sold in a concentration four times greater than before, which means less water content, smaller bottles, less weight for shipping – and less cost per unit, she says.

Sam’s Club also has turned to its employees for ideas on sustainability, according to Thoreson. One employee suggested an electronics recycling drive, which was well received. Another takes it upon himself to sort aluminum and plastic cans and bottles from outdoor trash receptacles.

 Tom Wilkowske is a freelance writer based in Duluth.

This article originally appeared in The Duluthian Magazine.