GreenClips.37 12.20.95 ESCOS GUARANTEE ENERGY SAVINGS New or upgraded energy efficient building systems can reduce a company's utility bills. Yet tight budgets, competition, and pressure for increased productivity focus management on marketing, sales promotion, and the revenue stream instead of building maintenance. A performance contract among building owner, a lender, and an energy service company (ESCO) may help. ESCOs help finance and manage building system upgrades and new equipment installations with no up-front capital costs. ESCOs predict savings from improvements under a range of conditions and forecast when the measures will pay for themselves. Financing pays project costs from the predicted savings. The energy savings provide equipment and efficiency improvements for the building owner and a profit for the ESCO. Under the performance contract, the ESCO pays the difference if savings fall short of the owner's debt service obligation. -Energy & Environmental Management, Fall 1995, p. 19, Shirley J. Hansen and James C. Hansen. COMPARING APPROACHES TO CONSTRUCTION WASTE RECYCLING To recycle construction waste, builders should consider three strategies: source separation, time-based separation, or commingled delivery to off-site separation. The choice depends on landfill tipping fees and the recycling facilities nearby, among other factors. Despite increasing value of many reclaimed materials, avoiding tipping fees or disposal costs at conventional landfills or incinerators continues to dominate recycling economics. On-site separation ensures highly valued clean materials, but requires multiple bins, one for each material. Time-based separation recycles materials from each construction stage separately, keeping waste clean without multiple bins. In the off-site approach, a waste recovery facility sorts commingled site waste using manual separation and mechanical processors. This approach requires no additional labor or education at the job site. Peter Yost at the NAHB Research Center says that commingled processing is profitable when landfill tipping fees are at least $50 per ton. - Environmental Building News, November/December 1995, p. 1, by Nadav Malin. LEMNA POND Devil's Lake, North Dakota built a Lemna Pond to remove water pollutants from runoff water biologically instead of chemically. Civil engineer Viet Ngo and the Lemna Corporation designed the water treatment facility. It uses the plant species Lemnaceae, or duckweed, to absorb and neutralize pollutants. Runoff from a 60 square-mile area empties into Devil's Lake. Since it has no outlet, pollutants that reach the lake accumulate. Concerned about the long-term health of the lake and inspired by the Lemna system, Devil's Lake city officials worked with Ngo to design the treatment facility. Their 50-acre winding watercourse divided into nine channels is a work of art – not surprising since artist-engineer Ngo also exhibits large scale sculpture. Constructing and operating the Lemna system costs less than traditional facilities. The US Environmental Protection Agency's Innovation/Alternative Technologies program partially funded the project. - On The Ground, vol. 1, no. 4, 1995, p. 16, by Joe Castiglione. TAKE TWO Each year southern California's movie and TV studios generate about 25,000 tons of waste wood from sets, studio remodels, and pallets. Used briefly, wood from sets is nearly new, and several businesses reuse and recycle it. A company called Re-Sets, for example, dismantled a Culver Studios film set and reused 10,000 board feet of lumber for a local Boys and Girls Club clubhouse. A Woodbury College project explored wood reuse in constructing affordable housing. The Department of Architecture constructed an entire four-room house from studio discards. Reusing wood waste helps studios reduce disposal costs and improve their communities. - Resource Recycling, December 1995, p. 40, by Joan Satt. ECOSPUN FABRICS Wellman, Inc. recycles plastic bottles into Fortrel EcoSpun fiber. The company sorts, cleans, purifies, chops, and melts the bottles, then extrudes a soft polyester fiber. The Glenn Street Studio of Malden Mills Industries, Inc. weaves these fibers into fabrics such as EcoSpun Velvet, a sensuously smooth upholstery for sofas and chairs. The fabric is available in leaf, floral, damask, and tapestry designs at about $12 a yard. [Wellman, Inc. is located in Charlotte, North Carolina] - Better Homes and Gardens, January 1996, p. 56. E-HOUSE PRODUCT DATABASE The E-House product database includes 450 listings of companies and associations that offer low-toxic and healthy building products. E-House focuses on indoor air quality, but also includes materials that are energy and resource efficient. Each listing briefly describes the product or service offered. The diskette, including software to run the database, is $50 for PC or Macintosh. E-House Environmental Building Consultants created the database. For more information, send email to ehouse@omni.voicenet.com. -Environmental Building News, November/December 1995, p. 15. IEDS UPDATE Interest in the International Ecological Design Society (IEDS) has grown since its inception on Earth Day 1995. IEDS is planning activities to bring architects, product designers, planners, biologists, landscape architects, engineers, educators, and others together. The Society is organizing an electronic conference and a Web page, and will publish a Journal of Ecological Design starting in the spring of 1996. Future projects include planning a conference series and developing a Masters of Ecological Design program curriculum. For IEDS information contact - IEDS, PO Box 11645, Berkeley, CA 94712, 510.869.5015, ecodesign@igc.apc.org. - Whole Earth Review, Winter 1995, p. 109, by Stuart Cowan. CORRECTION The WasteSpec telephone number in GreenClips.36 was incorrectly printed in the source publication. The correct number is 919.549.0551.