Greening With LEED: Lessons From Leaders
When Adobe achieved the LEED certification , (July and December 2006) it was waves among stalwarts how they can be environment efficient, cost saving and could become another earth saver. The greening journey of Adobe started back in 2001 when it realized how could be the greening of office is effective. It employed the facilities management firm Cushman & Wakefield and implemented various in-house improvement projects. They worked on improving quality of indoor air, proper management of ventilations, drought tolerant landscaping, and irrigation facilities linked to the local weather stations, with a real time adjustment system, monitoring of carbon monoxide and adjustment of exhaust fan accordingly, and maximization in use of outdoor air.
The system designed at Adobe greening projects are very automated, cost effective and environmental productivity increasing. Now Adobe has tree buildings Amladen, West Towers, and East Towers awarded with the LEED-Platinum. Congratulating the Adobe Rick Fedrizzi, founder, president and CEO of the USGBC said, “With the certification of Adobe’s Almaden and East Towers, Adobe has again raised the bar for other companies seeking to introduce sustainable, environmentally-friendly practices into their facilities. The USGBC is honored to congratulate Adobe on its substantial achievements. Not only has Adobe achieved the highest environmental honor for a commercial building with the West Tower Platinum certification, but these two additional certifications make Adobe the only company in the world to have three LEED Platinum buildings.” This process has led adobe to save around the $728,000 against the investment of $650,000 that is a gain of 115% and is an important lesson that environmental efficiency is cost effective and profitable.
Another case of corporate greening is Delta Air Lines’ Terminal A at Boston’s Logan International Airport. Skansas USA Building Inc. handled the Project, valued around $400 million with a refurnishing and refurbishing the area of about 744,000 square feet. According to the Principle-in-charge for the project, Andy Moore,”We are excited and honored to learn about this certification. Terminal A is now a national model for environmentally friendly airport facilities. Our team of professionals is certainly proud to have played a part in it.”
A good example of LEED-Gold certified residential building in the Colorado Court in Santa Monica. The major features of this, 5-high 44 unit structure is
1. Photovoltaic and natural gas used in combination to generate the in-house electricity(The capacity for PV is 25kW and NG Fired micro turbine is 28kW).
2. Storm water retention system capturing the 100%, so no urban run-off.
3. Drought tolerant system automated and adjusted according to the season for drip irrigation.
4. Unit Transoms naturally ventilate air, eliminates need of air conditioning.
5. Carpets, wood furnishings of recycled products and other floor linings are of natural linoleum.
6. The blocks used to construct wall are color coded to maintain uniformity and low maintenance costs.
However, this building project owned by Community Corporation Santa Monica was not so cost effective, but it became a showcase model for other greening projects in the Santa Monica. Corporate greening is not a matter to bring about very abrupt changes to achieve hefty profits by being environment friendly, but a gradual process like the WAL-MART Stores have started with. Wal-Mart CEO H.Lee Scott has planned and started to implement the environmental friendly practices. In an interview with Amanda Grisham Little, Scott has revealed his strategies of making his company 100% environment friendly. Basic and immediate implementations are reduction of green house gases by 20% in seven years doubling fuel efficiency of transportation fleet in 10 years, and reducing the waste from stores by 25% in next three years. Therefore, this example of Wal-Mart Stores is a practical implementation program for ZERO environmental friendly corporations.