gb-07 Journal Stories from Greenbuild

What's a Green Conference, Anyway?

Conferences are usually models of “efficiency” time and money-wise, to the complete exclusion of energy or water efficiency. Here at Greenbuild, though, that is something that we and our attendees take seriously. I’ve overheard numerous attendees point out when someone wasn’t taking the greenest action. It may have been because they wanted half of that last cookie, but either way, I was glad to hear people in that mindset.

I’ve been very proud to see how much emphasis has been placed on recycling throughout the convention hall. See my photos of how easy they made it. I even learned something new about Starbucks’ materials — although I try to re-use cups and decline coffee carrying sleeves and trays, I never knew that they were all recyclable. Our conference services company focuses on reusable, recyclable, and natural materials, and encourages exhibitors to reduce and reuse their waste as well. Even with all the activity around me, I constantly breathe sighs of relief.

A Healthier Learning Environment

Here’s an interesting fact I picked up at Greenbuild: Last year, there were more LEED-certified prisons than schools. The existence of green prisons is really exciting, but 20 percent of Americans spend their days in schools. That includes the youngest, most vulnerable members of our communities. Their growing minds and bodies deserve the healthiest, safest, most nurturing places to learn. That’s why I’m thrilled to see the increasing number of green schools. Schools are the physical embodiment of our hopes for the future, so green schools go a long way in showing our commitment to a sustainable, prosperous tomorrow. Be sure to visit Build Green Schools to find out what you can do to advocate for green schools in your community. And read about the exciting news from the U.S. Green Building Council and the Clinton Climate Initiative, which former President Bill Clinton announced at Greenbuild on Wednesday.

Green Home Makeovers

Green homes are definitely the future. Every year, they represent a greater and greater percentage of the new home market. But that’s new homes. What if you want to live in a green house, but you like the neighborhood you’re in now? What if you live in the house you grew up in and have no intention to leave – even if the walls leak heat and the refrigerator guzzles electricity?

 

That’s why green renovations and retrofits are a vital part of the residential greening movement. At Greenbuild this morning, builders and interior designers were buzzing about a session discussing some exciting tools in the works that will help renovation professionals and savvy do-it-yourselfers fix up their houses to reach their full green potential, whether a room at a time or a whole-house gutting.

The U.S. Green Building Council and the American Society of Interior Designers have teamed up to create REGREEN, a collection of tools to help you focus your renovation projects toward sustainability, durability, comfort and style. And as Peter Yost of Building Green Inc. in Brattleboro, Vt., pointed out, all those pieces are important to the whole picture: “You can build a good design that’s not green but you can’t do the reverse. It can’t be green if it doesn’t have good design.”

A green renovation can turn your home into a true dream home – clean, healthy and environmentally conscious, of course, but also a more comfortable and nurturing place for your family. Victoria Schomer, an ASID interior designer with Green Built Environments in Ashville, N.C., said that by making the best use of every square foot, green homes can help families connect in better integrated working and living spaces. A focus on durability also means Americans can start “aging in place” – staying in the same home year after year, even from generation to generation, rather than picking up and moving every few years when you need new space.

The ideas behind green renovation are exciting and revolutionary, and there are many things to think about, from the early-stage planning to the processes and product choices to the way those products are used on a daily basis. REGREEN helps identify project-specific issues, offers some innovative strategies, and illustrates through case studies.

And speaking of case studies, Eric Doub of Ecofutures Building Inc. in Boulder, Colo., had a great renovation success story he shared this morning. His renovation of a 1,000-square-foot 1970s ranch-style home in Boulder has so dramatically cut down on energy use – and then made smart solar and photovoltaic choices to produce that energy – that the home not only creates enough energy to power itself; it also stores enough extra energy that it could charge an electric car for 12,000-mile-a-year use.

REGREEN will officially be launched at ASID's Interiors '08 conference in March. It's not online yet – it’s truly up-and-coming – but it should be soon, so check back at www.regreenprogram.org often. And don’t forget to visit the Green Home Guide, from USGBC and Newland Communities, especially the Guide for Green Renovation.

Clean Air Inside and Out

As anyone who’s ever attended Greenbuild knows, it’s filled from morning to night with nonstop opportunities for learning, idea-sharing and networking. Amid all the action, I’ve had a lot to see and do – and, as of yet, not a lot of time for journaling. But this afternoon, I finally got a chance to stop into an educational session, and I definitely picked a fascinating one.

The session, which was on the public health impact of building green, was an eye-opening, concrete example of just how beneficial green homes are, not only for the environment but for the people who live in them. As Mary Brown of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention pointed out, green homes don’t just reduce their residents’ utility bills. Done right, they can also help you save big on medical costs.

And that’s not just a theory. The savings were made clear by presenter Tom Phillips of the Seattle Housing Authority. The Housing Authority recently finished its first phase of the 1,600-unit High Point community renovation. High Point was built in 1942 as military housing, and by the 1990s it was in bad shape – buildings were dilapidated and filled with mold, unsafe and unhealthy for residents and the environment. The new High Point, by contrast, is filled with all kinds of great green features.

Probably the most interesting part of High Point is its 35 “breathe-easy” homes, which were built for families with children who have asthma. In addition to features like energy- and water-efficient appliances, the breathe-easy homes implement a host of strategies to keep in interior air healthy – a key part of green building.

The breathe-easy homes use positive-pressure ventilation to circulate stale, dirty air out of the homes. They are equipped with moisture-removing fans and insulated foundations to help control the interior climate efficiently. Walk-off mats are an especially cool feature: They are doormats that trap dirt and grime off your shoes when you walk through the door so the gunk doesn’t end up in the air and in your lungs. And, of course, the walls are all covered with paints low in volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and the cabinetry and adhesives are also low-VOC.

The results speak volumes. The average number of symptom-free days for the homes’ asthmatic residents in a given two-week period went from 7.6 days in the residents’ old homes to 12.4 days in their new homes. In their old homes, 61.8 percent of residents had unplanned urgent clinical visits during the test period; in their new homes, that plummeted to 20.6 percent.

What's Your Idea?

This theme of Greenbuild Chicago refers to what people are doing to reduce their impact on the environment. As USGBC staffers, we definitely aim to practice what we preach. The easiest way to do that as an individual is to cut down on waste. All of the Greenbuild hotels and our main host location, McCormick Place, are participating in the spirit of things by not creating waste or unnecessary packaging. In keeping with that, one of the first things Doug and I did when the USGBC store was stocked was buy reusable coffee mugs to take with us on our many Starbucks runs this week. They’re pretty, they’re green (literally), and most importantly, they say (again, literally), “I am not drinking from a disposable cup.” Make sure you stop by the store in the front of the expo hall if you’re in Chicago—it’s like being a kid in a candy (or USGBC) store!

The Greenbuild to top all other Greenbuilds begins . . .

Greenbuild 2007 started off big. We hit the 20,000 mark early and that was obvious everywhere I looked. In keeping with the Woodstock comparison, which I imagine at the time was viewed as both chaotic and thrilling, people were everywhere, energy was high, and for those who made it to the stage, they got what they sought.

The opening plenary started off with an update from USGBC’s President and CEO, Rick Fedrizzi. He began where we left off last year with some immediate, measurable steps we had committed to take. Some of the results: LEED has had two points added for the energy optimization credit, USGBC’s headquarters are now 100% carbon neutral, and we’ve started an ongoing Carbon Webinar series on how to reduce carbon footprints.

Rick had encouraged the building community to change the minds of those who say that building green is too costly, saying “go green and thrive!” That concept was echoed by former President Bill Clinton, who said we need to move from a carbon economy to a green economy.

Rick introduced President Clinton by presenting him with a LEED plaque for upgrading his presidential library in Little Rock from LEED Silver to LEED Platinum. Clinton acknowledged that he was “preaching to the saved,” but he had a few key things for the green building community to take away from his speech. He reminded us that we just started reducing greenhouse gases without yet measuring our impact, so we have no idea what we can achieve. He advised us to keep score by developing standardized emissions tracking, keep in mind the “staggering economic opportunity,” and prove to the country that building green benefits the American dream for all of us.

Clinton reflected back on how he lost the Kyoto Protocol “vote” before it ever reached the floor of Congress, and, in his particular way, said that the current Administration’s attitude seems to be that since the world is ending anyway, “we better have fun while Rome burns.”

Watch the video for some other pretty incredible moments too:

• Right before introducing Clinton, Rick brought out George, a young adult from Youth Speaks who gave a powerful spoken word poetry performance on the climate.

• Phil Bernstein with Autodesk explored the question of whether a design team could immediately measure their carbon, energy and water usage impact, as well as track their LEED credits in real-time. We got the answer in the form of a futuristic demonstration of Building Information Modeling that allows designers to change their plan on a touch-screen AND prepare their LEED documentation. Historic data allows designers to immediately see the result of their design and adjust it to maximize LEED credits. Rick issued the challenge to have this commercially available for Greenbuild 2008 . . . !

Chicago Welcomes Greenbuild

As USGBC staff, I thought I’d arrive to find Chicago a blank canvas that we would transform into Greenbuild from the ground up. Apparently I underestimated how much work had already been done by our Greenbuild staff and the host committee. On Monday, the signs were all over the city welcoming Greenbuild, the canvas Greenbuild bags were already popping up on attendees, and even our hotel keys had been branded with the Greenbuild logo.

I was prepared to feel excited and overwhelmed by the sheer scope of my first Greenbuild, but now that I’m here, I have started to believe that we’ve actually taken over the city. Greenbuild 2007 hasn’t even started yet and I already feel a renewed sense that fundamental changes can happen here. That feeling actually started before I even boarded my plane for Chicago. While we’ve known for months that we’ll see an attendance of over 20,000 people and that Bill Clinton is the most well-known speaker ever to address Greenbuild, neither of those things really triggered any overwhelming feelings. For me, that came on Monday morning when a few of us noticed that the Today Show had launched a Green Week with correspondents in Antarctica, Ecuador, and Greenland. When the Today Show dedicates a week to something, it’s definitely reached the public consciousness. Change is in the air.

Now, as more and more people continue to arrive and fill the halls of McCormick Place, the expo hall opens, and the shuttle buses grow crowded, I no longer have to imagine how overwhelming Greenbuild will be—it's here and it's huge! Bill Clinton’s speech on Wednesday morning will be held in the largest ballroom in North America in front of 7,000 people. Thousands more will be watching from overflow rooms, and that still excludes a large portion of attendees. Long story short, we’re comparing this to Woodstock 1969 when the fences came down and everyone was welcome. But in this case, we really can change the world (or at least transform the market).

Welcome to Greenbuild 2007

We’ve all watched as green issues and green building have become increasingly mainstream. Much of the time, we wonder if all the talk is mere “green-washing,” or viewed as the latest passing trend, but for those of us who have come to Greenbuild, we know that we’re among a dedicated group. In our daily lives, we rarely have such a unique opportunity to share ideas, network, learn, and evolve our understanding of what it means to be green. That’s why we created Greenbuild365 in the first place—because 3 or 4 days at each year’s Greenbuild is not enough time to learn about all the new innovations, see all the exhibits in the expo hall, or meet the thousands of other like-minded people in attendance. And besides, not everyone can make it to Greenbuild every year, and we want them to be a part of it too.

So, please read the Greenbuild365 journal this week to keep up on everything that’s happening at Greenbuild. For people interested in Green Homes or Green Schools, keep an eye out for Doug’s journal entries, as he’ll be focusing on the consumer aspect of things.