Greening FirstAgain

HetzelMeade Communications got me started on this blog endeavour so I guess it is only fitting that my year ends with a great "small world" story involving Sue Hetzel.

Many months ago I talked to Sue about PR in San Diego - she is the best of the best and a wealth of information. Among a lot of ideas (and some margaritas), my green goddess blog was hatched as a vehicle that would help our company Contract Interiors San Diego expand our impact on the green furniture world. We have a ton of expertise on our staff yet there really is not an easy way to promote that unique quality.

So, on with the story....

I got an email from Sue last week about her experience at the new offices of FirstAgain in the Diamond View Tower in San Diego.

"Well, hope your ears were burning today. I was downtown visiting a new client in their posh new digs and commenting to the new VP of marketing about how hip and functional the place was. Being nosy, I asked who designed the space and supplied all the groovy work spaces, etc. So she found Betty Johnson who told me she used Contract Interiors and just loves, loves, loves everyone there including the boss lady. I replied that only AB and her crafty crew could crank out award-winning office space like the one they did for FirstAgain..... Guess it didn’t hurt the execs are all big Michigan fans (the CEO actually included his love for Michigan football in his intro to me)".

Well, the story had another edge to it that I particularly loved. FirstAgain deliberately made decisions about their offices and the design of the space keeping green practices in mind. It started with the demand for incredible views for everyone in the company, furniture that has Greenguard certification for healthier air to breathe and an overall approach that had its footings in take care of the whole team. I like the sign on their website that says they plant a tree with every loan. How great is that?

The small world of San Diego never ceases to amaze me. Have a great end to 2007, happy new year and may Michigan football recover from an awful season with a new coach in 2008.

The Green Goddess

Green Art, Bags and Paper Too

I am looking at a party invitation sent to me from Art Basel in Miami from a couple of weeks ago. The invitation is for workshops featuring art made of re-cycled paper, step stones with re-cycled concrete, re-cycled fabric and art made of plastic bottles. All I could think about was how green everything has become.

I was out clothes shopping with my daughter last week at all of the tweenager spots; Tilly's, Hollister, American Outfitters to name a few. Sure I had to get over the extra loud dose of the Red Hot Chili Peppers music and overpowering perfume but once I did that, I made it through and even had a bit of fun. I don't like to shop at all and find all of it to be a big pain so this was quite an experience for me. As we made our way through the stores, we used our cool nylon reusable shopping bags from www.reuseablebags.com. Each and may I say every time we bought something and told the cashiers that we had our own bag, they all said how much they appreciated not killing another tree and thanked me, yes thanked me, for being green. The only similarity these store employees had in common was that they were all between 18-21. Is it a generational thing?

So my big dilemma this year is wrapping paper for gifts. How un-green to wrap it up, rip it off and throw it away. Yes, of course I save the bows and big pieces but come on, the paper is hard to reuse. So, what to do. I bundled gifts in the reuseablebags.com bags, I used the last of my stash of paper from years gone by and now I am using anything that can be folded and manipulated ( old Nordstrom bags, colored newspaper, cloth napkins etc. ). It challenges your creativity and makes for an interesting collage of presents.

Bringing green into your home this holiday season is now two-fold. Bring in the greenery and bring on the green movement!!

Well written bids, from our perspective

As a furniture dealership, we receive many bids at our offices. They come in all sizes and shapes. Some are easier to respond to than others, from our perspective, and I wanted to share some best practices with this audience.

One recent bid was short, concise and filled with questions relevant to their needs. Instead of a normal section about gauge of steel and how many ball bearings does your drawer suspension have, this bid asked manufacturing questions like this:
1. Please identify any and all components of this product that are manufactured by a third party, and please describe your relationship with this third party. We interpreted this as a way to find out if the content of the product is coming from Asian suppliers or any other off shore suppliers that use harmful chemicals or other undesirable things in the manufacturing process. It allowed us to talk about how the product is made, where it is made etc.

The same bid had great questions about the environment. First off, the section was called "Environmental Health & Safety" - nice heading.
1. Please state the percent of recycled goods that are in the product as well as the degree which this product is itself recyclable.
2. Is this product Green Guard certified?
3. Is the final assembly of this product less than 500 miles from the project site? Please identify the assembly location.
Straightforward, relevant to LEED and open ended so we can answer and add information as needed.

There are a zillion ways to ask for information and then of course, there are a zillion ways to respond - this one worked for us.

The Green Office

The Wall Street Journal published an article entitled "Going Green Draws Talent". The article talks about how the a green office attracts young talent, increases productivity and reduces costs. They site several supporting sources including MonsterTRAK.com data and recruiters for Merrill Lynch and other large corporations. Companies are including their green practices in their literature and websites to help advertise their efforts.

At first glance, I thought the article was going to be another one that discusses what green practices are and what the USGBC says etc. But I was pleasantly surprised because the article talked about the employee experience. Natural daylight, filtered air, energy efficiency, things that are specific to the person and how they experience their work environment. It felt like there was a link between vision, philosophy and walking the talk. It reminds me of unaligned behaviors like serving organic, free trade coffee in your office but putting the coffee into paper cups or Styrofoam cups. It takes a lot of effort to marry up the vision with the day to day - that is an organizational shift. Yes it can be top down or bottom up but it requires both and all - and every individual counts.

Not to get too out there but sometimes the world feels so big and you feel so small and insignificant. Or maybe you feel out of control and you are desperately trying to get control of something. Well, the power of one is incredible. If you change your mind or change your habit, that impacts everything. Think of one thing in your office that could be changed to better the environment. Do that one thing and see what happens. It does not matter if you change someone else's mind or behavior. Do it for you - you have the impact - the world is just a huge amount of individuals, yous, that are making choices every day. Change your decisions and you will change the momentum.

When someone walks into your offices they have an experience. You cannot tell that person what it is supposed to be. Sight, sound, smell, design and energy make up that experience. When that someone leaves your office and calls a friend or family member and talks about their interview, I would bet that there is a comment on the feeling they had during their interview. "Wow, you should see the offices, they are a dump" "Wow, it just felt like a really great place and everyone was smiling". I can go on and on. I find it fascinating that the young talent is looking for stewardship in green from employers and are making their personal decisions using their power as an individual to "not be part of the problem" as one person in the WSJ article was quoted as saying.

Lost in Credits

I find it interesting to listen to manufacturers representatives talk about LEED and how many points their products can bring a project. We had a presentation this week that included a powerpoint slide that said that a chair would give the project 4.5 points. Now, it was not hard to figure out that perhaps it meant that the chair could contribute to credit 4.5 but that is definitely not what was written in the powerpoint or spoken by the rep. When I challenged the rep about the content, I was told that this was the information they sent from the factory and that was that. Hmm. How misleading and misguided.

Products do not bring credits or points to a project.

Products can help to contribute to points but it is not really the product itself, it is the content or the performance of the product that figures into the overall intention. It seems that the easy way out is to make sure you say your company has green products, say the product can give you points and then hope that no one asks you any more questions. The sad part of that is at least twofold. One, whatever happened to learning something new? What harm is there in learning what LEED is and how it works conceptually? Secondly, when we are part of a project team moving through the LEED process, we need a boatload of technical support, quickly. The information is getting more accessible but it is still tough to get everything you need. Some brands actually have their product information spelled out really well where others are just starting to realize that LEED is not going away and they have to jump on board.

There are no points for "cradle to cradle".

There are no points for a Greenguard product - there is a point in LEED- CI (EQ 4.5) that requires "all systems furniture and seating introduced into the project space that has been manufactured, refurbished or refinished within one year prior to occupancy must meet one of the requirements below - Option A - Greenguard Indoor Air Quality Certified, Option B - calculation of indoor air concentrations....
Systems furniture is defined as panel based or desking based products, Seating is defined as task and guest chairs used with systems furniture. All other furniture is excluded from the point.

There are no points for recycled content in furniture - there is a point in LEED-CI (MR4.1) that requires use of recycled content within products that constitutes at least 10% of the total value of the materials in the project. This is a calculation that is taken using all materials, including division 12 ( furniture and furnishings), on the project. You cannot just relate one chair that has recycled post-consumer content to this point, it is a compilation of many ingredients.

It just seems trendy to talk about how many points you can get using certain things and that could not be farther from the truth.

We have all heard the word sustainable over and over and over again in the last couple of years. Sustainability is a characteristic of a process or state that can be maintained at a certain level indefinitely. It has been applied to the environment and is now being used as a synonym for green or LEED. Clearly, these three words mean different things but they are interchanged when used in the environmental conversations.

Sustainable to me means quality. It is not about LEED and it is not always about green. It is about longevity. Or, according to Wikipedia, quality is non-inferiority, superiority or usefulness of something. A sustainable product would then mean that it is a quality product, superior or non-inferior product, and potentially re-usable.

Investing in better quality is a more sustainable practice. I find it equally as interesting that quality does not always mean more expensive. You don't have to go far to pick out a ton of things that are high quality and not high price. The first one that comes to mind is almost every product at Trader Joe's. Very high quality, usually a lot less expensive than other brands and ironically, often environmentally sound.

There is a lot of press about the cost of sustainability. I certainly understand that some sustainable practices cost more than non-sustainable practices. But when you look at overall quality and what you are evaluating, is it really more costly?

Local Green

It has been quite a week in San Diego. The fires are truly unbelievable. I don't have much to say about green furniture, green building, LEED or anything on that topic as my brain has been consumed with fire and destruction.

The ashes are in the air making it tough to breathe and giving the air a strange, very eerie smell and feel. As the particles float back down to the earth, the plants are given nutrients and the cycle of life continues. As the fire refugees return home, they are rebuilding and starting over with their homes.

Recycle and Reuse

My daughter's grade school is having a fund raiser that involves the kids bringing cans and plastic bottles to the school for recycling. The parents are driving up in their SUV's and bringing out enormous and I mean HUGE bags of plastic water bottles and soda cans. We don't have any thing to contribute and it makes me feel strange, like I am not helping our school. But the reality is that I don't buy anything like that - we don't drink sodas in our house and I refuse to buy bottled water. My 7 year old said that it was too bad that we couldn't take wine bottles to the recycling drive because then we would be in the money! The alternative to recycling is to not purchase in the first place and/or reuse something thereby avoiding the need to recycle.

LEED-CI credit 3.3 is all about this concept. Avoid recycling by reusing. The intent is to reuse building products and materials in order to reduce demand for virgin materials and reduce waste, thereby reducing impacts associated with the extraction and processing of virgin resources. The requirement is to use salvaged, refurbished or used furniture and furnishings for 30% of the total furniture and furnishings budget.

The wording of the credit comes into play as you are looking for 30% of the total furniture/furnishings budget. There are many cost studies that address the price difference of reusing and refurbishing furniture vs. buying new furniture. But again, what is that actual cost? Environmental impact, landfill, energy to manufacture and transport etc. Clearly, it seems that reusing existing products is better environmentally then buying new.

What is in the price of green?

When you buy something, do you ever think about what the thing costs to make and where the money is spent in bringing the product to market? When I watch the Superbowl, I always think wow, these companies spend a boatload of money for the ad time - whatever it is that they are selling has to include this boatload of cost in the product cost. So how much of what you spend to buy something is actually spent on the making the product?

When you buy a piece of furniture like a Bertoia chair, a Zody chair or an Eames chair, the designer royalty is embedded in the price of the chair. So you actually pay for the design, materials, manufacturing, advertisement etc. So when you buy a knockoff of the same chair, is the price difference the cost of design? or inferior materials? or lower wages? or less attention to details? or less advertisement on Superbowl Sunday? What is it?

We recently compared the price of a US manufactured cubicle to the price of a Chinese manufactured cubicle. The US product by Haworth has Greenguard certification and all of the needed information to support recycled content amounts and other relevant data pertaining to LEED but more interestingly, the product addresses sustainability. The Chinese product was not Greenguard certified, it did not have any available information about the content of the product and there was nothing we could find that was sustainable about the product. What was the price difference? Not much, if any. So, it got me thinking - what is it that makes up the price? Are the importers of the Chinese made furniture just making more profit and you are actually getting less of a product for the same amount? If the US product has addressed "green" at the same price as the Chinese product without "green", is there a price to green? I think we are quick to associate higher price with being more green however, I am wondering if it is really about what is in the price, like value, instead of the cost of green.

I had 2 emails in response to my topic on movable walls and LEED, both very different. The first email asked me to explain what LEED means. The most comprehensive way to explain LEED is to send you off to www.usgbc.org and have you read their full content website. But in a nutshell, LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. It is a program the US Green Building Council issued with a rating system that anyone can choose to comply with for new construction, major renovations, interiors etc. It is an incentive program for green design, integrated design, elegant design and good design. It is also a recognition and publicity medium. For all those out there, I did have a question on my LEED - AP test that asked what LEED stood for - so don't forget the exact words!!

LEED has become a name for green design and it now stands for a building or space that is constructed in a responsible manner that minimizes environmental impacts of the building on the environment, it's community and on the health of it's occupants. We see LEED written on RFP's as a term for sustainable design. Instead of calling buildings LEED, we really need to be saying that a building is a High Performance Building. After all, a green building is a profitable building, it costs less to run. Or instead of saying you are looking at LEED for your interiors project, why not say you are interested in the use of materials and furniture that are sustainable, use cradle - to - cradle design, are free of gross chemicals, use post-consumer recycled content etc. There are tons of things you can do to make a space green without using a LEED rating system or process. Every little bit helps.

But back to the use of LEED as a word for green design. You can buy and do things that are green and are good decisions for business and the environment. But that is not what LEED is - LEED is really about collaborative design and utilizing a different approach to the cost and price of construction. Is it really cheaper to choose low bid? Or is there value to choosing a team that can work together to build a great product, whether they are low bid or not? That is what LEED tries to address.

The second email I received was from a reader at Affinity Building Products who sent me some really interesting information on their BestBoard building products and how they are green.

Movable Walls - where are they in LEED?

Movable walls, relocatable walls, demountable walls and modular walls are all products that allow tenants, building owners, developers and builders to reduce construction waste while providing for future change. In a nutshell, they are manufactured in a controlled factory setting and shipped to job sites completely finished and ready for a "tilt up" interior construction. After they are installed, they allow changes to happen very easily with minimum waste. At Contract Interiors San Diego, we are often asked about how many points our movable wall products will provide the LEED project. First and foremost, I talk about the fact that LEED points are not obtainable by buying a specific product. There is a whole conversation to be had about what LEED is and and how it works but suffice it to say, there is no point available for specifying or buying movable walls.

The strategy of change and how an interior build out functions in the future, morphing to the changing needs of the owner, are not captured in the LEED rating system. For instance, you are a tenant and you decide to purchase relocatable walls because you want to be able to add and subtract offices and conference rooms in the future without tearing out drywall and having lots of downtime. Using movable walls allows for these changes to happen quickly and without any landfill waste. Seems green and sustainable. However, even though the product inherently is a "green" product, this strategy of being smarter and thinking long term vs. short term is not awarded by the LEED system with a credit. I hear rumblings that the USGBC is considering this point but I have not seen anything formal.

LEED - CI and furniture

Welcome to the Green Goddess - demystifying green in furniture.

Contract Interiors has completed several projects in the San Diego marketplace that are LEED rated or have pursued LEED - Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design. In the LEED-CI program specifically, there are several credits that pertain to furniture however, it is not always crystal clear which ones are applicable to the different solutions available. I know that there are many, many designers, manufacturers, furniture dealerships, project managers and LEED consultants that have experience with the process of LEED and I am hoping that this blog will be a place / forum to discuss what options are available, what credits are relevant and how do you work with the process to obtain the credits.

As a quick example, we recently received an RFP for a project stating an interest in LEED but not pursuing a LEED certification. The user wanted a value priced product solution and they wanted to weigh the cost of green to the cost of non-green. The first thought the project team had was to look at products that were GreenGuard Certified to meet the credit 4.5 EQ for indoor air quality. This is potentially one of the most expensive ways to get a credit. The flip side of this is to use re-manufactured products to meet credit 2.3 MR for resource reuse. The price spread between to the 2 options was substantial. Adding into this puzzle was a play using local manufacturers, within 500 mile radius of San Diego, for credits 5.1MR and 5.2MR regional materials. When we collected all of the information, we were challenged with "how" to convey the information. It seems that the information available to all of us is fragmented and the very synergy that makes LEED an incredible process also makes it tough to say - buy this and get this or pick this and you get this - it just is not that black and white.

Post your experiences and questions - I'd love a chance to see what you know or want to learn.

The Green Goddess

Social Responsibility at Contract Interiors

At Contract Interiors we understand our organization has a responsibility to our customers, employees, community, and to our environment. We encourage employees to volunteer and serve our community and have written this into our mission statement. Currently we are involved with a variety of local and national organizations; including Childhood Diabetes, Family Literacy, Big Brothers and Big Sisters, Animal Rescue, and homeless shelters. We are members of the U.S. Green Building Council, the National Interior Design Association, and serve on various boards.