GreenClips.32 10.11.95 WILKHAHN DESIGNS FOR THE ENVIRONMENT Wilkhahn's definition of good design includes environmental concerns reflected in the Swiss contract furniture manufacturer's product and facilities. The company makes their long lasting, recyclable furniture with water-based paints and few composite materials. Two new energy-conscious Wilkhahn factories feature daylighting and natural ventilation. Chairman of the board Fritz Hahne's philosophy - "To build is to assume responsibility for the future. A building is located in its setting and takes effect there: it shapes its environment and the people who occupy or pass through it." Manager's responsibilities at Wilkhahn include innovation and ecology. The company sponsors environmental education workshops and forums and publishes a monthly in-house magazine called Eco-Recommendations. - Metropolis, October 1995, p. 93, by Elizabeth Manus. INTERFACE'S EVERGREEN LEASE Instead of buying carpet for their 45,000 square-foot Energy Resource Center, Southern California Gas Company leased it. Under Interface, Inc.'s Evergreen Lease program, the Atlanta based carpet manufacturer agreed to provide the services that carpet offers - color, texture, warmth, acoustics, comfort, beauty, and cleanliness underfoot - over the term of the lease. Interface takes back worn carpet tile and recycles them - ideally into new carpet to complete a closed-loop, cradle-to-cradle manufacturing process. But carpet manufacturers are a few years away from cost effectively turning old carpet into new. The biggest obstacle is cleanly separating the nylon carpet face from its polyvinyl backing. If the industry can overcome this, it could recycle recovered nylon into new carpet an unlimited number of times. Other challenges include the cost, energy use, and emissions from recycling nylon compared to using virgin nylon from petroleum. - The Green Business Letter, October 1995, p. 1. MORE CARPET RECYCLING PROGRAMS Other fiber and carpet companies including DuPont, BASF, Monsanto, Collins & Aikman, and Milliken Carpet also have carpet recycling initiatives. DuPont will recycle all old carpet - any fiber, any manufacturer - from purchasers of its Antron carpet. The collected carpet becomes automotive parts, marine-grade boat materials, and building board. BASF recycles commercial carpet made with Zeftron nylon 6 into new commercial carpet. Monsanto grinds up old nylon carpets and turns them into automotive parts and other goods. Collins & Aikman recycles used vinyl-backed carpet into parking-lot bumpers, industrial flooring, highway sound barriers, and marine bulkheads. Milliken recycles various types of carpet through DuPont's program and through its Earthwise Ennovations program that refurbishes older carpet by cleaning, mending, redesigning, and recoloring it. - The Green Business Letter, October 1995, p. 7. BOEING RESTORES NATURAL SITE FEATURES When The Boeing Company decided to build its Long acres Park office campus in suburban Renton, Washington, they faced a site with an obliterated natural landscape. Underground pipes carried several creeks. Some of its natural wetlands survived, but were badly polluted and separated. Boeing decided to restore the site's natural features. Skidmore Owings & Merrill's master plan restores creeks and marshes. It adds richly varied meadows, a rush-lined pond, a new lake, and a forest of native evergreen and deciduous trees. And Boeing is taking steps to ensure that the site will remain pollution free. Landscape specifications limit irrigation and fertilizers. A three-step filtration process treats storm water runoff before it reaches the creeks and wetlands. Longacres Park will not be a typical automobile dominated office park. Boeing actively sponsors rideshare and vanpools, and peripheral employee parking preserves the scenic character of the site. - Urban Land, September 1995, p. 12, by John Kriken and Philip Enquist. INDUSTRIAL ECOLOGY IN DENMARK Industrial Ecology is a new approach to industrial design and processes that shifts pollution control away from "end of pipe" fixes to cleaner processes modeled after nature. Industries in Kalundborg, Denmark illustrate industrial ecology principles. A power plant, an oil refinery, a pharmaceutical plant, and a wallboard manufacturer exchange their waste materials similar to food webs in the natural world. For example, the power plant's stack scrubber converts 90 percent of its sulfur emissions into calcium sulfate, or industrial gypsum. The plant sells as much as 85,000 tons of it per year to Gyproc to make wallboard. - Audubon, September-October 1995, p. 70, by Robert Frenay. MATERIAL DATABASES UNDERWAY Two coming computer databases will help practitioners identify and compare environmentally sensitive building materials. Both will evaluate environmental performance using life cycle assessment, or cradle-to-cradle analysis. Building for Environmental and Economic Sustainability (BEES) is a joint project of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the EPA. They intend to release BEES at the end of 1997. BEES uses multi attribute decision analysis (MADA) techniques to compare dissimilar environmental impacts. It establishes a single environmental score for each material and includes cost information. Athena, the second database, is a Canadian project sponsored by Forintek Canada Corporation. Athena will evaluate various combinations of building structural systems in steel, concrete, and wood. It will provide environmental data in six categories and by four impact indicators - ecological resource use, greenhouse gases, other atmospheric emissions, and water pollution. Athena will be available late in1996. - Environmental Building News, September/October 1995, p. 4.