Tag Archives: sustainability

Being Green – Pursuing Perfection?

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Hi Folks:

Friday once again, and time for this week’s ‘Being Green‘ post.   I wasn’t going to write about this, but the biggest ‘green’ news of late seems to be the class action suit filed in the US against the USGBC and their LEED certification; after reading the articles and comments surrounding both sides of the issue, I must admit I don’t understand the suitability of this case.  The basis of the suit, as I understand it, is that the plaintiff feels that the USGBC is overselling their LEED standard and not paying enough attention to other ‘green’ standards.  That may not be entirely accurate, but I believe it’s close enough.  Is it ‘true’?  Truth is a complicated word, often dependent on perspective; as the saying goes, history books are written by the winners.  Are LEED-certified buildings more efficient than buildings constructed to other standards or to no standards at all?   That question I can’t answer and is one that could probably only be answered on an individual basis. My post last Friday focused on the world’s first certified ‘living buildings’. So far as I know, the Living Building Challenge offers the most stringent building certification strategy currently in existence. At the same time, it’s not for everyone, and I’ve never been an advocate of any one or any system that seeks to build itself up by putting others down.

However, those aren’t the fundamental questions to me.  Is the LEED system flawed?  That’s possibly a better question, and if LEED is flawed, how can it be improved?  Does LEED measure energy efficiency, and if so, does it do it well?  What other factors are involved in achieving LEED standards, aside from energy efficiency?  If the lower levels of certification, say LEED and LEED Silver aren’t stringent enough, should they be dropped in favour of more stringent qualifications?  Given the costs involved in achieving a certfication for a building, at what point do the achieved improvements fail to account for the costs involved?  Again, that can probably only be answered on an individual basis.

Perhaps the best question is, will the LEED standard be improved by spending hours and possibly years of time in various courtrooms and by spending (?) millions of dollars in fees and other costs that won’t be used in improving LEED (or anything else)?  As I said at the beginning of this post, while I think I have some understanding of the basis for this suit, I fail to see the suitability of seeking such answers in court.  In the end, perhaps it comes down to the motivation behind it.  Some would label it as political, others as frustration, some as a simple ‘money grab’, some may call it a plea to be heard.  William McDonough asks, “How do we love all the children of all species for all time?” To me, if the desired result is to continue to move ourselves and our planet toward celebrating this way of being, personally I don’t see this suit as achieving that aim.  Others are certainly welcome to disagree.  As I said to a friend recently, can you imagine a world where the worst we can do is agree to disagree, while still respecting each other and ourselves?

Okay, the links for this week include:

Okay, that’s it for now.  Have a great week!
Mike.

P.S. Looking for some happier news? Try Happy News!

Being Green – Living Buildings

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Hi Folks:

Friday once again, so T.G.I.F. to all of you!  Actually, Marcia and I believe it’s important to give thanks every day, but that’s another topic entirely.

So, the big news this week is…

“The International Living Building Institute celebrates the world’s first Living Buildings.”
(cue applause)

If you’ve read my ‘Being Green‘ posts before you’ll know that I’ve sometimes lamented the (overly?) many, complicated and often divergent standards and certifications that exist for everything from floor tiles to lighting, and from green landscapes to green travel to entire green neighbourhoods.  For the most part I don’t doubt the integrity of the various organizations involved in creating and maintaining these standards and certifications, it’s just that as someone with more than a basic knowledge of this field I often find them bewildering and conflicting.  However, of all of the standards in existence, there has been one for the last few years that has stood out in my mind as being the most advanced and most comprehensive green building standards of all, and that is the Living Building Challenge.  While many systems work on a series of ‘points’ to achieve different levels of certification, the  Living Building Challenge is different.  Organized into seven ‘petals’ or performance areas (Site, Water, Energy, Health, Materials, Equity and Beauty), each Petal is subdivided into as many as 20 imperatives and each imperative in each petal is mandatory to achieve certification.  Also, the Living Building Challenge certification is withheld until after the building has been completed and operational for a minimum of 12 months before testing to determine whether or not the building’s actual performance conforms to expectations.  An overview of the Living Building Challenge 2.0 requirements may be found here (.pdf).

Is the Living Building Challenge something you and/or your company should consider?  There’s no right or wrong answer for that question.  From what I can see, constructing to the Living Building Challenge standard requires an extremely high level of dedication and commitment from everyone involved in the building project, and a considerable investment of both time and money.  There are a number of other worthwhile building certifications in existence, such as LEED, BuiltGreen, Passivhaus and others, but I don’t believe any of them can meet the overall results achieved by the Living Building Challenge.

Seth Godin posted an interesting blog post today on ‘Heroes and Mentors‘.  Even if this standard remains one of your ‘heroes’, it still provides something to which we can all aspire.

Have a great week!

Mike.

P.S.  If you’ve read these posts before you’ll know that every week I provide a long list of links to other articles of interest I’ve come across this past week.  Well, I invested about three hours in doing so today, but when I switched from HTML to the Visual Editor, WordPress decided to simply delete them all.  I guess I should have listened to that little voice that told me to hit the ‘Save Draft’ button…  And I know better!  Oh, well.

Instead, how about the following talk from Ze Frank on connecting with others through the web (TED video).

Being Green – Playing Games With Sustainability

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Hi Folks:

Friday once again, and time for this week’s ‘Being Green‘ post.  Before I get to that, however, I want to add a couple of things.  First, in last Friday’s ‘Being Green’ post I talked about taking the ‘long view‘ on making sustainable choices.  This past week I came across one person’s critical view of waterless urinals, here: Flush with environmental enthusiasm.  Second, Tim Fausch (publishing director with BNP Media) wrote a blog post this past week titled, ‘Moving On…It’s Time to Share Your Story‘.  In his post he mentioned how he’s getting tired of hearing only negative news on the ‘net, TV, radio, etc. and invites everyone to share postive stories instead.  You can add your story here: Moving On: Thriving in Tough Times.  BTW, if you’re looking for more good news, the following are a few good places to start:

Okay… this week’s topic is about playing games, and I must admit that I’m old enough to remember a time before computer games.  Yes, really.  Actually, somewhere in a box I still have the slide rule I used to use in a world before pocket calculators, and if you don’t know what a slide rule actually is, well, you’re not alone.  Continue Reading →

Being Green – The Long View

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Hi Folks!

Happy Friday!!  The basis for this week’s ‘Being Green‘ post comes in part from a couple of articles I read recently on the  ED+C magazine website.  The first, titled, ‘An Ethical Equation’ was quite surprising to me and begins with the following:

“According to a recent study by the University of Wisconsin, a developer could have saved more than $300,000 and spared the atmosphere more than 850 tons of CO2 (1,885,500 pounds) had he used an organic solvent-borne air barrier rather than a water-based product.”

The article is quite comprehensive and worth reading, but at its heart the author Ulf Wolf suggests that when considering a ‘green’ product or service that one considers everything related to the material or procedure’s ‘carbon footprint’.  Sometimes this may seem like a simple matter, but as demonstrated in the article, such answers are not always simple.

In a conversation I had with a friend recently she mentioned that while incandescent bulbs generate more heat than light, this may be a good thing in cold climates.  Such regions tend to have much longer daylight hours in the summer and therefore more natural light, while shorter daylight hours in winter create more need for artificial lighting but also for heating the space.  Therefore, according to her argument, one might spend less on electricity for lighting by using CFL or LED lighting, but this would be more than offset by an increase in other heating costs.  I don’t know what information she had to support this argument, but it’s something I hadn’t considered until she mentioned it.

Continue Reading →

Being Green – Corporate Responsibility

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Hi Folks:

When I first started writing the ‘Being Green‘ section of our blog it grew out of my own interest in green building and it focused primarily in that direction.  However, as I’ve gone along I’ve expanded this series to include more general ideas concerning living ‘green’, sustainability and CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility).  Now, I’m far from a CSR ‘expert’, but I wanted to highlight a really interesting report put out this year by a group called the ‘International Society of Sustainability Professionals‘ (ISSP).  The report, entitled, “What are the Core Competencies Sustainability Professionals Need to Have?” is available as a .pdf download, here.  It’s 65 pages long, and I must admit I haven’t finished reading it yet, but I have found what I’ve read to be quite valuable.  The report is targeted primarily toward two groups of people: a) those who are working in the CSR field as either independent consultants or corporate employees; b) those who work in HR and who are most likely to interact with those in group ‘a’.  I don’t work in either of those fields, but I think the underlying ideas of communication, financial and environmental sustainability, problem solving, etc. (some of the key findings) really affect everyone, no matter their industry or their position in a given company or corporation.  One thing we continue to discover more and more is that we are all connected, whether we’re discussing a corporation (with its suppliers and clients), an ecosystem or a planet.  In short, I think it’s a valuable report for everyone to read. Continue Reading →

Being Green: Radical Transformations

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Hi Folks:

Friday once again, so that means it’s ‘Being Green‘ day here on our blog.  It seems to me there are basically two ways to progress, and both can have their place.  One is to take an existing technology and improve on it.  For example, virtually every fixed-wing aircraft in the world today is a variation of the ‘Wright Flyer‘ first flown by the Wright Brothers in 1903.  However, when Igor Sikorsky first flew the Vought-Sikorsky VS-300 in 1939, he ‘launched’ (pun intended) an entirely different mode of flight. (NB: The VS-300 is popularly known as the first successful helicopter.  The De Bothezat helicopter did fly some 20 years earlier, but was highly unstable and the project was scrapped.) Continue Reading →

Being Green: Appreciating the Moment

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Hi Folks:

September is upon us and kids have finished their first week back at school… A short post this week, but in last Friday’s ‘Being Green‘ post I added a link provided by my nephew (in-law) about one person’s daily commute by bicycle, and how he stops every day for a moment or two, sometimes longer, on the bridge connecting north and south Edmonton in order to appreciate the world around him.  After posting that I received an e-mail from my nephew reminding me about our experiences at the provincial legislature grounds in Edmonton; we were there in 2003 when my niece and nephew-in-law were married.  It wasn’t something I will forget.

I’ve been to the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa on more than one occasion, and tossed a few coins into the fountain housing the eternal flame.  I’ve been to the legislative grounds in several other provinces as well, including the one here in Victoria, but none of them compare (in my opinion) to the one in Edmonton.  Why, you ask?  Well, simply because instead of the requisite fountain on the grounds (the fountain here in Victoria was surrounded by a 15-foot fence on Canada Day), the grounds in Edmonton have been made into a water park, including a huge fountain and a wading pool.  For the people, by the people, and of the people.  On the warm day in August that we were there, the entire grounds were filled with people playing in the water, having picnics in the shade, walking, reading, cycling, and just generally having fun.  There was a wonderful sense that the locals felt they had a right to be there, that this was created for them.  And so it was. Continue Reading →

Being Green – Car Alarms…

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Hi Folks:

Friday has wound its way around once again, so it must be time for this week’s ‘Being Green‘ post.  Now, if you’ve been around for more than the past few decades you probably remember a time before car alarms were invented.  While these alarms have gotten a lot more sophisticated since they were first invented, what most people associate with them is the screeching siren that accompanies them.  When these alarms first came out people were generally appreciative of them, but that transitioned to annoyance, and now, for the most part, people ignore them.  One poll in England found that car alarms are the ‘most irritating piece of technology ever invented‘.  When a car alarm goes off today, most passersby won’t even bother to lift their gaze from their smart phones. Continue Reading →

Being Green – Consciousness and the Environment

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Hi Folks:

Friday once again, and time for this week’s ‘Being Green‘ post.  I’m going to take a slightly different tack this week (and some people might think I’ve gone off track completely) but if you have a wander through the 14 different post categories on our site you’ll find that we cover scientific topics in some and more esoteric topics such as poetry and spirituality in others.  In truth, however, our lives are a blend of both and we make no effort to separate or distinguish our spiritual lives from our day-to-day existence.

Having said that, in this post I’m not going to be covering the topic of religion per se, but rather what some might refer to as esoteric sciences.  And no, that’s not a contradiction in terms.  Skeptics aside, there have been and continue to be a number of people who are working to combine the fields of science (quantum physics, for example) with fields such as parasychology and different spiritual traditions.  If I was going to pick two names off the top of my head I’d probably go with Dr. Fred Alan Wolf and Dr. Dean Radin, but there are many more, people like Lynne McTaggart or Dr. Marilyn Schlitz, current director of the Institute of Noetic Sciences. Continue Reading →

Being Green – Celebrate!

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Hi Folks:

Happy Friday!  End of the week and time for the ‘Being Green‘ post.  It’s going to be a short post this week, mostly because it’s too beautiful outside to invest too much time in front of a computer.  So, in honour of today’s beautiful weather and in honour of summer in general, I thought I’d just offer a couple of links to things that are worth celebrating (from a ‘green’ perspective):

First is a development I recently heard about in Germany called ‘Solarsiedlung (Solar Village)‘, which has the main building (Sonnenschiff (Solar Ship)) at its heart.  This community  incorporates many ‘green’ standards, including rooftop gardens, rainwater collection, passive solar orientation, a woodchip boiler for winter heating and Passivhaus standards for construction, but the reason for the ‘Solar Village’ moniker is the huge number of solar panels in use in the project.  Not only does their use make the project ‘net-zero’, it actually produces more energy than it uses.  Four times more energy… which definitely makes it energy positive.  The designer of the Solar Village project is Rolf Disch.  You can find out more about this and other projects on his website; he also has a site on what he terms ‘PlusEnergy‘.  In a time when people are wondering what they can do to help reduce their energy costs, this development proves that it’s possible to go far beyond that, in a practical way.

Second, Cree Lighting and Habitat for Humanity have begun construction on the first Habitat house that will incorporate all LED lighting.  According to the Cree website, lighting is the single biggest energy user in the average home, at 22% of energy use.  I did a blog post on lighting a while back, and while LEDs do have some disadvantages, at the moment they’re the most efficient and most environmentally friendly lighting technology.  Continued development can only make them better.

Next, a little fun with a story about three swimming pools on Park Avenue in New York city.  The project was done by the development company Macro Sea, in cooperation with the city of New York.  Each pool is made from a converted dumpster, and completely portable.  Drop it off the back of a truck, fill it with water, plug in the filter and have fun!  The pools opened at 7:00 a.m. daily, and from the images I’ve seen there was no shortage of participants!  Given the heat islands presented by most cities, this is a great idea.

And finally, for now, also from New York, the office tower at One Bryant Park has become the first office tower to achieve LEED Platinum certification.  That’s something that’s definitely worth celebrating!!

Okay, the links for this week include:

Okay, that’s it for now. Have a great week!
Mike.

P.S. Looking for something to do with your summer? How about making some giant soap bubbles? (YouTube video) We’ve had a lot of fun with ours over the years – we even had them at our wedding reception!! You can get them here: BubbleThing The ingredients are non-toxic, and they really are a lot of fun for kids of all ages.