In Your Office orWorkplace
There are many things you can do where you work to promote green
buildings and sustainable design.Here are a few brief suggestions you can
implement right away.
Reducing Your Carbon Footprint
In early 2007 Swiss Re, amajor global insurance company, announced that
it would be supporting investments and purchases made by employees
that contribute to reducing carbon dioxide emissions. The new “COYou2
reduce and gain” program is part of Swiss Re’s commitments supporting
the Clinton Global Initiative. In 2003 Swiss Re declared that it wouldmake
its own operations carbon neutral by 2013. Now, as part of the Clinton
Global Initiative, Swiss Re has decided to support measures taken by its
employees that contribute to the reduction of CO2 emissions.
The “COYou2 reduce and gain” program supports employees’ investments
in measures that contribute to reducing greenhouse gas emissions,
particularly in relation to mobility, heating and electrical energy. Such
measures, which vary according to regional circumstances and preferences,
include low-emission hybrid cars, use of public transport and the
installation of solar panels or heat pumps. Fromnow until the end of 2011,
Swiss Re plans to rebate each employee one-half of the amounts invested
in these measures, up to a maximum per employee of 5,000 Swiss francs
(about $4,000) or the equivalent in local currency.
According to Ivo Menzinger, Head of Sustainability & Emerging Risk
Management,who is in charge of the “COYou2 reduce and gain” program,“Swiss Re is actively engaged in mitigating climate change and its consequences.
This program is an investment that will encourage our employees
to make a personal contribution and further raises awareness of the
issue.”1
Take action with your company or business. Some easy steps to take
include:
• If you operate a šeet of vehicles, convert them all to hybrids and cut
your normal gasoline consumption by 35%to 50%.
• Subsidize employees’ use of public transit, at least 50%ormore.
• Discourage single occupancy vehicle use by not paying for parking.
• Provide secured bicycle storage in your building with shower facilities
or nearby health club passes to encourage people to ride to work in
good weather. (This is also a great “wellness” initiative.)
• BuyGreen Tags or other “carbon oªsets” to cover 100%of your annual
travel mileage by car, bus, ferry and airplane. (There are a large number
of organizations that cater to this need.)
• Buy green power for the electricity consumption of your workplace;
wind-generated power is widely available froma large number of reputable
organizations;make sure it is “Green-e” certiŠed fromthe Center
for Resource Solutions.2
• Begin the journey to sustainability by examining all of your operations,
to see how to reduce their environmental footprint; this activity
can involve everyone in the organization; even simple steps like eliminating
wastebaskets under individual desks in favor of paper recycling
boxes sends a simplemessage, as does having the IT department set all
the printer default setting to “duplex” so people will stop printing on
one side of the paper for internal use.
• Undertake a LEED-EB assessment of your existing building operations;
LEED for Existing Buildings is a comprehensive evaluation and
benchmarking system that will help you “green” your operations and
engage the entire workforce in the eªort.
• Buy laptops and šat-panel monitors for everyone to cut energy use
from “plug loads,” often 20% or more of the total energy use of an
o‹ce.
• Re-lamp and install lighting controls, so you are using only the most
e‹cient Šxtures and lights don’t operate when people aren’t using a
roomor o‹ce.
• Join the US Green Building Council as a corporate or agencymember
and become part of the solution; once you join, everyone in the company
or agency can enjoy themembership beneŠts.• Study all of the other aspects of your business operations and work to
change each aspect, over time, to more sustainable options, then encourage
employees to take those same principles home.
In Your Home or Apartment
The most powerful agent of change is your own personal experience.
Think of what you can do to promote green buildings and green operations
where you live.Here are a few examples:
• Start keeping track of your gas, electricity and water use, along with
the number of gallons of gasoline purchased and airlinemiles šown.
• Try to cut down on energy and water use by 10% in the next year by
examining all of your habits and seeing where you can combine trips
or cut down on optional travel.
• Go even beyond 10% reduction: create a “year of living sustainably”
that commits you to dramatic changes in lifestyle tomeet sustainability
goals; if you have kids, enlist their help and creativity. It will
strongly supplement the education they’re typically getting in school.
• If you can’t stop traveling, because of your job or family needs, then
start by purchasing “carbon oªsets” or Green Tags for all of your
mileage, so that you’re oªsetting their impact with clean power or tree
plantings somewhere else.
• Buy a hybrid car or a more fuel-e‹cient vehicle; you can Šnd the top
ten green cars each year listed by the American Council for an Energy-
E‹cient Economy.3
• Look into state and federal incentives for installing solar electric and
thermal systems on your home; if you’re a renter, discuss the beneŠts
of doing this with your landlord ormanagement company.
• Call the local gas or electric utility company and ask for a home energy
audit to Šnd out what are the “low-cost/no-cost” things you can
do to cut down on energy consumption; in some areas, the local water
company will oªer technical assistance or free kits for cutting water
consumption.
• Install dual-šush toilets to cut water use fromtoilet šushing by half or
more; install other water-conservingmeasures such as drip irrigation.
• Form a neighborhood “sustainable living” group to engage the creativity
of others in Šnding additional ways to cut energy and water
use, reduce the use of poisons in landscapemaintenance and enhance
local recycling eªorts.
• Consider your purchasing patterns and their “upstream” impacts, including
waste in production, transportation costs (if made far fromwhere you live) and embedded energy of production, distribution,
use and disposal.
• For home remodeling, try to support local retail stores that specialize
in sustainable products, such as healthy paint and carpet and reclaimed
or salvaged buildingmaterials.
Your Town, City or State: The Power of Local Initiatives
Just as “all politics is local,” a statement famously attributed to former
speaker of the US House of Representatives Tip O’Neill, all successful sustainability
eªorts have their roots in local action.Withmore than 16 states
and 60 cities (as of early 2007) oªering local initiatives to promote green
buildings, there is ample precedent for you to engage your local school
board, city council, country board or commission and even state representatives
in this eªort.Drill down into each green building success story and
you will Šnd just a few local people, some in government, some in business
and some plain citizens, whose energy and foresight have made the diªerence.
Some of the initiatives already enacted, on which you can model
your eªorts, include:
• At the local level, secure a commitment from a school district, city or
county to build all future buildings and schools to at least the LEED
Silver level; some communities have committed to build LEED Gold
projects (the earliest on record was the City of Vancouver, British Columbia);
this may take some doing because you’re going to hear the
old familiar refrain “it costs too much,” and you’ll have to convince
people otherwise by using the examples in this book; among theNorth
American cities making this commitment are Seattle, Sacramento,
Portland (OR), Tucson, San Francisco, Calgary andMadison (WI).
• Some cities are taking the next step after greening their own operations,
requiring larger private-sector projects to meet LEED certiŠed
or Silver-level certiŠcations within the next few years. (Large cities
such as Boston andWashington, DC, have done this, and more cities
will be requiring such achievements or incorporating LEED requirements
and Architecture 2030 milestones into the building code in the
next few years.)
• If you have a municipal electric utility or public utility district, convince
it to oªer incentives for energy conservation and solar energy
systems; often the large cash šows of a utility permit it to oªer incentives
that will, over time, allow it to oªset expensive purchases of additional
generating capacity in the future; in Texas,Austin Energy, amunicipal
utility, has been promoting green homes since the early 1990sand has one of the most successful green home rating systems in the
country.
• Convince your mayor or city council to sign onto the USMayors’Climate
Protection Agreement, which commits cities to becoming carbon
neutral within the next decade, or sooner, in their own operations;
4 at the global level, former US President Clinton’s Climate
Change Initiative is engaging the 40 largest cities in the world to become
carbon neutral over the next 20 to 30 years.5 (Already, London
has signed on to this initiative.) In Denver,Mayor John Hickenlooper
has been aggressively promoting the Greenprint Denver plan for
sustainable development,6 and in Chicago, Mayor Richard Daley has
vowed to make Chicago the “greenest city” in North America by promoting
green buildings, green roofs and street tree plantings.
• Convince your city council or country commission/board to oªer incentives
to private sector projects that commit to building green; successful
incentives include faster processing of building permits andincreased“density bonuses” for high-rise o‹ces, apartments and condominium
developments; if you know a state legislator, talk to them
about sponsoring state initiatives to promote green buildings and renewable
energy; successful initiatives have included personal and/or
corporate income tax credits (Oregon and New York, along with 23
other states); property tax abatements for LEED Silver or better certiŠcations
(Nevada); sales tax elimination on solar systems (Arizona,
Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Massachusetts, Maryland and 12 other
states); and rebates for purchase of solar systems (California,Arizona,
Colorado and 30 other states).7
• Have the governor or state legislature require the state utility commission
to have all investor-owned utilities collect a tax on utility bills and
oªer “public purpose” funds for investments in conservation, onsite
power and renewable energy; in 2007 the California Public Utilities
Commission adopted an incentive payment system in the form of a
consumer rebate, to encourage people to install photovoltaic systems
on their roofs; the goal is “amillion solar roofs”within ten years.
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