GreenClips.71 05.07.97 WILKHAHN'S SUSTAINABLE PRODUCT DESIGN With 500 German employees and annual worldwide sales of 120 million DM, Wilkhahn's company culture fosters ecological responsibility, design excellence, and social fairness. The office seating and table manufacturer formed an Innovation and Ecology department in the late 1980s to evaluate what went into the company, what happened inside, and what left the company. Three interdisciplinary groups went to work on materials, production, and communication and organization. Collecting data from suppliers, the materials work group established an eco-material catalog that rates all raw materials, components, and production material — C if ecologically harmless, B if an ecological problem exists, A if it's particularly relevant. The production work group identifies and solves ecological manufacturing problems. After two years of research it developed a technology using water-based instead of chemical lacquers without compromising the performance of wooden parts and table tops. Wilkhahn first applied an ecological design approach to the development of its Picto office chair in 1989. Made of aluminum, wood, and cotton and with fewer than half the usual parts, it's 30 percent lighter than many other office chairs. The chair's joints disconnect easily and its upholstery fastens without glue using a clip rim. Wilkhahn clearly codes all its parts weighing more than 100 grams to ease recycling. — EcoDesign, Vol. V No. 1, p. 8, and The Journal of Sustainable Product Design, April 1997, p. 45, by Martin Charter. CEILING TILES RECYCLED Sellen Construction Company and its ceiling subcontractor Environmental Acoustics, Inc. have recycled 150,000 square feet of acoustical ceiling tile from a Microsoft Corporation renovation project. The contractors worked with Armstrong World Industries on this pilot project to establish best practices for Armstrong's national ceiling tile reclamation project. Sellen shrink-wrapped the tiles, EAI stacked them on pallets, Sellen loaded them onto a truck-trailer, then EAI shipped them to Armstrong's plant in St. Helens, Oregon. Workers there reintroduced them into slurry production for new ceiling tiles. By recycling, Sellen saved $4,250 — landfilling the tiles would have cost $8,200, EAI's labor and transportation expenses were around $3,930. Having Armstrong's plant nearby helped make the recycling cost effective. — EcoBuilding Times, Spring 1997, p. 11, by Lynne King. NEW TOOLS MEASURE ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINTS New tools will help track building design and operational performance by gauging the resources buildings use and the waste they generate — their ecological footprint. Architect Hal Levin is developing a program he calls SEABEP for Systematic Evaluation and Assessment of Building Environmental Performance. SEABEP uses purchasing data on everything from construction materials and energy use to cleaning supplies and computers to produce a building's ecological footprint in seven areas — global warming, acid rain, smog, toxic release, water pollution, resource depletion, and solid waste. The profile often produces surprising results, says Levin. The energy people use getting to and from work, for instance, is often more than they use in an office building doing the actual work. Gregory Norris is developing another program called LCNetBase that looks at the ecological footprint of products in 520 categories. Using LCNetBase, an architect specifying drywall could examine the manufacturer's resource input and waste output, and those of the manufacturer's suppliers. It can trace back as many tiers as its user wants, though Norris says five or six tiers usually yield more than 90 percent of a product's environmental burden. Other ecological footprint tools coming up include Athena covering Canadian building materials and the US National Institute of Standards and Technology's BEES, Building for Environmental and Economic Sustainability [GreenClips.32]. For more information on SEABEP email hlevin@cruzio.com. Email gregnorris@aol.com about LCNetBase. — The Green Business Letter, May 1997, p. 1. NEW BOOK SURVEYS AUSTRALIAN BUILDING MATERIALS Bill Lawson surveys Australian building materials in his new book Building Materials, Energy and the Environment: Towards Ecologically Sustainable Development. Lawson's book describes the raw materials and manufacturing stages for common building materials and gives data on their embodied energy. And it rates the materials from poor to excellent on their raw material availability, environmental impact, embodied energy efficiency, product life span, maintenance, reuse potential, and recyclability. Lawson compares embodied energy data for building assemblies like roof or wall systems and discusses selecting materials for durability, disassembly, and easy maintenance or replacement. He rates eleven Australian buildings, mainly houses and eco-resorts, on environmental criteria emphasizing material use. The Royal Australian Institute of Architects published Lawson's book. For more information email bill@arch.unsw.edu.au. — Environmental Building News, April 1997, p. 14. DEVELOPERS GREENING COMMERCIAL PROPERTIES Developer and consultant Barry Dimson plans to renovate the 23rd floor of New York City's Trump Building for an EcoSmart Building Center, a teaching resource for designers, developers, and tenants. Energy use, indoor air quality, and worker productivity will be monitored at the 23,500 square-foot prototype at 40 Wall Street. Dimson, president of Healthy Properties, will also renovate a 179-room Philadelphia building into a "green" hotel, the first in the US to offer filtered fresh air in each room 24 hours a day. He's also forming a blind investment pool for greening commercial properties. Another developer, the Durst Organization, is finding tenants for 4 Times Square, its 1.6 million square-foot multi-tenant office building in Manhattan. Executives at publishing company Conde Nast and the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher and Flom cited the building's air quality and other environmental attributes as important factors in their rental decisions. Together they will occupy over two-thirds of 4 Times Square. — ENR, April 21, 1997, p. 15, by Nadine M. Post, and Yes, A Journal of Positive Futures, Spring 1997, p. 45, by Carl Frankel. GREEN BUILDING CHALLENGE '98 Lead by the American Institute of Architects, the US team that has entered the Green Building Challenge '98 is looking for US buildings that exemplify energy and environmental performance. GBC '98 is an international effort to improve environmental assessment methods for buildings and encourage worldwide adoption of green building practices. Due July 1, nominated projects must be elementary schools, medium or large office buildings, or multifamily residential buildings, built or under design. Projects involving substantial redesign and reconstruction of existing buildings are eligible. Sponsored by the CANMET Energy Technology Centre of Natural Resources Canada and other agencies, GBC '98 will culminate with an October 1998 conference in Vancouver, British Columbia. For more information visit http://www.eren.doe.gov/buildings/gbc98/gbc98.htm. — Environmental Building News, April 1997, p. 5, and an American Institute of Architects press release, March 24, 1997.