LEED Cerification

This fall I was involved with the application process to get my firm's building certified under the U.S. Green Building Council's (USGBC) LEED for Existing Buildings program. LEED for Existing Buildings is a program that recognizes a building owners attempt to be "green" in its business practices. As part of this process we had to make some changes to the way we do things such as increasing our energy and water efficiency, improving indoor comfort, purchasing sustainable and recylable products and evaluating our waste stream. That last part was my responsibility. I wrote up a policy to describe how our waste is recycled or disposed of and make recommendations for improvement. Then was the fun part. I had to conduct a dumpster dive to evaluate what is really in our waste stream and what could be diverted through means of the three R's; reduce, reuse, recycle. It was filthy fun!!! (Glad that's over)

Anyway, back to the LEED process, we orginally aimed for a LEED silver certification and we are still hoping that we'll have enough points to acheive that. The certification ranking goes: certified, silver, gold, platnum. We just got word bad from the USGBC that we definatelly achieved a certified ranking. Some of our credits are still pending, meaning we can still achieve the Silver Certification (fingers crossed). In the process, we also became an Energy Star building because of the power saving strategies we were able to accomplish.

This is a really big deal for our firm. It will mean that we are actually walking the walk and not just talking the talk. We have been trying to convince many of our clients to go this route and we have had some success but if we can set an example we can really make a difference.

And what kind of person would I be to mention a dumpster dive and not include a couple of pictures. Enjoy!

Look what I found! YUMMY!