GreenClips.189 04.10.02 HERMAN MILLER USING SUSTAINABILITY TOOL TO ASSESS NEW PRODUCTS Herman Miller, the $2.2 billion Michigan-based furniture company, appears to have taken on design for environment (DfE) as a core business strategy. Last year, the company began developing three components of its new DfE project: an environmental rating tool for new products; a materials database that prioritizes existing environmentally friendly materials and spurs the development of new ones; and disassembly guidelines and related training procedures. In partnership with McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry, Herman Miller developed a "protocol for sustainability" that is integrated with the company's existing product development process. Each product evaluated by the system is rated in three different areas -- disassembly, material chemistry, and recyclability. (Material chemistry refers to the human health and environmental factors associated with each product component.) The three rating scores are compiled and the product is given an overall score. Scott Charon, with Herman Miller's New Product Development group, says the company is using the sustainability tool to assess all new launch products -- roughly 10 a year -- as well as existing products as they are updated and relaunched. The overall goal, Charon says, is to continually improve each product's score by finding better alternatives to problematic components -- less toxic dyes, for example, or reduced-VOC particleboard. The Green Business Letter, Apr 2002, p 1. [More: http://www.hermanmiller.com/CDA/News/0,1259,c47-n187,00.html ] MINNESOTA SCHOOL DISTRICT CONSIDERS PRODUCING ITS OWN WIND POWER The Wayzata School District, a Minneapolis suburb, wants to erect a 170- to 220-foot, three-propeller wind turbine near the high school tennis courts and practice fields. It would cost about $1.5 million, but supporters say it would generate as much as 1.5 megawatts of electricity and could bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in electricity sales and savings. Renewable-energy grants offered by utility companies such as Xcel Energy make it easier for schools to finance such projects. Dan Carlson, the Wayzata schools technician who got the ball rolling on the wind-turbine project, said that a 9-mile-per-hour wind is needed to start making electricity and that the wind has to be blowing 20 percent of the time to make the machine profitable. "The day the turbine starts turning it needs to turn a profit," Carlson said. "We can't take money out of the classroom to pay for this." The plan is for the district to sell the energy to Xcel, then buy back what's needed for the school. At the Lac qui Parle Valley district in western Minnesota, a 225-kilowatt turbine completed in 1997 makes one-quarter of the electricity used by the district's secondary school. The turbine brings in about $20,000 a year in savings and energy sales, but that gets plowed into paying off the loan needed to put it up. More: http://www.me3.org/issues/wind/ Minneapolis Star Tribune, 11 Apr 2002, p 1, by Norman Draper. PROJECT ELECTRIFIES HOMES ON NAVAJO RESERVATION Four years ago, Gregory Kiss of Kiss + Cathcart founded the nonprofit organization Native American Photovoltaics (NAPV) to bring electricity to homes on the Navajo reservation in northern Arizona. In the project's initial phase, photovoltaic units were installed in 20 Navajo homes, funded by a grant from the US Department of Energy. Constructed out of photovoltaic panels and recycled utility poles, each unit generates one kilowatt of electricity -- enough to power lights, a telephone, a small television, and a refrigerator. Families pay $50 per month toward the purchase of a unit, which they own at the end 10 years. The monthly fee includes maintenance, which is performed, along with construction, installation and bill collecting, by Navajo working for NAPV. With the first phase of the NAPV project completed, Kiss is drafting two business plans to continue electrifying Navajo homes. The first plan involves additional grants and would function as phase one did, in blocks of 20 or 30 systems. The second plan would enlist a down payment of $1,000 to $2,000 from subscribers and ten years of $150 monthly payments -- from people whose average income is $6,000. If there are enough subscribers, the plan could finance not only the individual units but also the construction of a solar-panel factory on reservation land employing Navajo, 50 percent of whom are currently without work. Metropolis, May 2002, p 93, by Ken Shulman. [More: http://www.napv.org ] NEW STANDARDS MAKE COMPOST MORE RELIABLE FOR LANDSCAPE USE Compost for landscape use can be produced from many source materials, including yard trimmings, biosolids, municipal solid waste, and agricultural, food and industrial byproducts. Overall compost quality is less dependent on the source material (as long as it is of decent quality and safe) and more dependent on the skills of the composter. Any compost that is specified by a landscape architect should be properly tested. In 2000, the United States Composting Council developed the Seal of Testing Assurance (STA) program, a first step toward the establishment of national compost standards. The STA program is encouraging standardization within the industry -- it requires consistency in product sampling, lab testing methodologies, and product labeling. Some composters, however, do not believe the program is necessary, while others don't want to invest in program participation. This is where landscape architects can be proactive, requiring the compost products they specify to be "certified" through the STA program. More: http://www.compostingcouncil.org Landscape Architecture, Apr 2002, p 42, by Ron Alexander. [Full text: http://www.asla.org/nonmembers/lam/lamarticles02/april02/ecology.html ] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . GreenClips is free of charge thanks to individual members and these sponsors: BUILDING ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECH http://www.energybuilder.com So, how green is it? B.E.S.T provides consulting services to designers and builders of high-performance housing and light-retail developments. 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