Greenbuild, the USGBC’s massive 30,000-person-plus conference, is done for yet another year. But before shouting out a rallying cry of “Greebuild Phoenix 2009!…” here are some last minute thoughts:

• This was my second Greenbuild, and after speaking with different Greenbuild veterans, many were surprised I had returned after the (shall we say) insane conference of the year before. But I did and was pleasantly surprised by the lack of lines, lack of claustrophobia and large press room. Also, there were no green “commercials” or conference sponsors announcements this year before the keynote speaker, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, spoke.
  

  This is only half of the expo room

• Last year, I searched in vain for a place to dispose of uneaten food. This year, the waste collectors were particularly vigilant, snapping to attention to grab my used coffee cup before I accidentally threw it into the wrong container. I had never seen such attention to waste at a conference… or almost anywhere.
• I heard a number of grumblings that the conference attendance wouldn’t hit as high a mark as it had the previous year, due in part to companies making last minute travel freezes. The last time I checked the “official” conference attendance, (Thursday afternoon) it was at 26,000, so even if people did not show up, a large amount turned up to take their place.
• In the sessions I attended, there seemed to be a vast discrepancy between those who believed that leadership in “going green” should come from the top or bottom. Leith Sharp, former director of the Harvard Green Campus Initiative, described how leadership was really only successful after getting out a strong grassroots effort. While a session I attended on CB Richard Ellis’s green commitments said the top down leadership was the only way to go. Most people I spoke with said about the topic said, “duh?! It has to be both!”
• And man, can green people party! I had no idea that there were so many dancers among them. Feel left out? There’s always next year - in Phoenix!

If you want more information on Greenbuild, there were a number of intrepid bloggers there (whose blogging ability was not curtailed by a rogue water leak into their server area). For more, check out Konstrucr, CoStar, or go to the Seattle LEED User’s Group December meeting on Dec. 11. More info on that here.

If you work with LEED at all, you know that this time of year is ground zero, in effect, for announcements regarding different versions of the system. Why? Because it’s Greenbuild of course, so it’s a perfect time to make those long awaited announcements and changes.

To keep you updated, here are some of the more recent developments:

LEED 2009: Perhaps most importantly, the USGBC announced this week that the newest version of LEED has passed member ballot and will be introduced in 2009. The new version of LEED incorporates regional credits, so projects can address the most pressing issues at their location. The system also underwent a scientifically grounded re-weighting of credits, changing allocation of points to reflect climate change and energy efficiency as priorities. The USGBC also says the new version creates a more “predictable development cycle.”

The updates apply to LEED for: new construction, existing buildings operations and maintenance, commercial interiors, schools and core and shell. It does not apply to LEED for neighborhood development and LEED for homes. Retail and healthcare will be aligned with LEED at a later point.

Like anything, the terminology can get confusing. LEED 2009 is part of LEED Version 3, which is also known as LEED v3. LEED 2009 is the actual rating system. Version 3 on the other hand is the “multi-faceted” initiative.

The current version of the LEED AP exam will be available trough the end of the year. After then, the exam will be reflected to reflect LEED 2009 changes. Workshops on the new system will be rolled out in March.

How does one of the biggest companies in the U.S. measure and decrease its carbon footprint? Theoretically, it should be a simple process, but when you’ve got 1.7 billion square feet of real estate space worldwide, that’s quite a lofty goal. The difficulty is made even more challenging when you also set a goal of being carbon neutral by 2010. But that’s what CB Richard Ellis did in May of 2007.

I’m here at GreenBuild in Boston, listening to CBRE speakers discuss the topic. Just to get a basic understanding of it takes an hour and a half!

It all began, said speaker Matthew Arnold of Sustainable Finance, when CBRE, a real estate services company, acquired Trammell Crow in 2006, making it a juggernaut of a real estate player. That deal, he said, suddenly brought a host of new questions like what is the diversity makeup of your workforce and what is your company’s sustainability plan? Arnold was hired to help answer those questions and make CBRE an environmental leader. 

In the end, the firm decided to focus on diversifying the workforce and on lowering its carbon footprint. CBRE formed a task force, which came up with a company policy in three months. Arnold said that is incredibly quick, as banks, in comparison, take about a year to do the same work.

In May of 2007, CBRE committed to being carbon neutral as a company by 2010. The commitment refers to the company’s own operation meaning activities directly owned or controlled by CBRE, electricity or heat consumed by CBRE and activities controlled by third parties that are directly linked to CBRE, though it is urging clients to do so as well. Arnold said, “For CBRE, one of the greatest benefits of all this is being able to bring it to its clients.”

Just measuring the company’s current footprint has been a huge challenge, speakers said. It is concentrating on building operations and on employee travel. In January, the company will launch an internal program to measure company travel as no such metrics had previously existed. It is using 2007 as a baseline for building operations.

At 62 percent of CBRE’s market, the U.S. is the biggest fish to catch. In the U.S., CBRE has 2.4 million square feet of space in 162 locations with 18,000 employees, according to Sherada Sullivan of CBRE’s Chicago office.

The company is working on getting more renewable energy and getting more submetering information from building owners. It will occupy only LEED certified buildings when possible in the future.

Sullivan said the company has issued a number of mandates for 2009 including requiring double-sided printers, switching marketing materials from paper to digital and banning water bottles. It is tracking the green office supplies it buys and is trying to raise that number. Sullivan said the Human Resources Department is also looking at options like telecommuting, flexible work weeks and public transit opportunities. 

But none of those actions will get a company the size of CBRE all the way to carbon neutral. Obviously, the final plan in 2010 will require a lot of offsets. Arnold said the firm is working to ensure it gets the most reputable and honest offsets it can.

For more information, visit CBRE’s sustainabilty site here.

Loyal DJC readers! The Green Building Blog has sadly been offline for a couple days, thanks to a rogue water leak that affected the DJC’s network and servers. So if you notice any quirks (like missing recent posts for example) that is the reason why. I’ll deal with them later but for now, let’s talk about something a little more fun… Greenbuild 2009!

Boston

That’s right I’m in Greenbuild in Boston and the first day of the conference is done. It has been something! First, let me say that organizationally this conference feels miles different from last year’s. Last year, registering took some people hours and me 45 minutes. Today? About 23 seconds. It’s also easy to walk around and doesn’t feel overcrowded. It’s still busy (as evidenced by a 30-minute long-line at the end of the day coat check), but today at least, you didn’t really feel the sheer insanity of thousands of bodies crammed into one space.

This morning, USGBC President and CEO Rick Fedrizzi said, while opening the conference, that 30,000 people are registered to attend. Though at that point the number was only up to 15,000, with 80 countries represented.

Keynote speaker, Desmond Tutu

It was also really easy to get in to hear Archbishop Desmond Tutu. I have never heard Tutu live before, but he is one of the most animated speakers I have ever heard. His talk was punctuated with clapping, wide-eyed expressions and exclamations like “you are one of the craziest countries I have ever known!” It was quite something else. Tutu spoke about a number of topics, from how the world is proud of the U.S. for electing Barack Obama as President to how all the green building representatives are “fantastic people” who are preserving the Earth… but most of the talk hinged on God and the brotherhood between people. Being as Greenbuild is a conference and not a sermon, I heard a number of mixed reviews from people. They seemed either in awe of Tutu and inspired by what he said or turned off by the religious references.

Later in the day, I attended an update on LEED for neighborhood development, which by the way, is currently in its comment period. There are a number of changes in the current version of the certification compared to what it looked like during its pilot, so I would check it out and comment on it if that’s your dig.

I also attended sessions hosted by Leith Sharp, former director of the Harvard Green Campus Initiative. Sharp outlined a number of ways to make sustainability stick in an institution, large company or organization. Distilling it down, she said leadership needs to come from both the top down and the bottom up. Getting that to happen requires grassroots change.

I also received the results of two recent studies - one that looked at whether green building really does pay off, and another that looked at how facility managers are getting buildings energy efficient. More on those later, I’ve got some planning to do for tomorrow!

Oh, and if you’re at Greenbuild, tell me what you think below.

Last year was my first Greenbuild in Chicago and man, was I overwhelmed! Heck, I know I wasn’t the only one, based on the article here I wrote in the DJC. I tell you, me and 23,000 of my closest friends really got to know each other better.

The criticism of that Greenbuild, as quoted in the above article, is that the

This was Greenbuild 2007

conference was “best for beginners,” “too touchy-feely” and too “focused on commercialism.” It will be interesting to see how these issues play out at Greenbuild 2008.

This year in Boston, I’m betting the crowds will be just as big. And thankfully (to my amazing employer), I will be there to witness it yet again and share the experience with you. So if you’re not going, keep your Internet tuned to the DJC Green Building Blog for daily updates on talks, sessions and whatever else comes my way.

If you are going however, and you want to have more than snowball’s chance in a hot sauna of meeting other people from Seattle (last year I recognized a colleague out of the corner of my eye and went running after him, arms flailing so as not to lose sight of him amongst thousands of bodies)… I suggest you visit the Web site Konstructr and sign up for Greenbuild - The Konstructr Delegation. Billed as “the place for construction professionals to connect,” the site is exactly that — plus interesting commentary, events and news articles. If you’re interested in green building at all, you might want to check this out as it seems a great resource.

As for the Greenbuild group, the invitation in my in box cordially invited me to join with this handy description by Vik Duggal:

Anyone who has attended Greenbuild in the past can identify with the
overwhelming number of programs available. And if you are like us, you
probably remember being energized and full of ideas, only to return to
your routine without further discussing or developing these ideas.  We are forming the Konstructr Delegation, which is an offline manifestation of the online community of design professionals we are building, to encourage more interaction during and after the conference.

Sound good? Join up. If you’re going, I’ll see you there (as long as you’re part of this group, that is). And if you’re not, tell me why. And what you’d like me to cover. I can’t promise anything but you never know what you might get if you just ask.

How much trash does a “green” event produce? Evidently, a lot if you’re the U.S. Green Building Council’s GreenBuild 2007. The annual conference, held in Chicago last year, created 44 tons of waste.

Granted, 91 percent of it - or 40 tons -  did not end up in the landfill, according to Dan Bulley, chair of the Volunteer Committee for Greenbuild in 2007. Instead 300 college students sorted through the waste.

Of the 40 tons of waste diverted, Bulley said seven tons were food scrap, and six tons were wood from expo displays in the exhibit hall.

What’s 40 tons of waste? For people around Seattle, it’s all the dog droppings left in Snohomish County over two days. For out of towners, it’s 260,000 items that washed up on New Jersey’s beaches over a year. For the U.S., it’s on the low end of the total waste a person produces in a year.

When you rationalize the numbers out, the mass waste makes some sense…. it was a week long conference and expo with an exhibit hall and 25,000 participants, so Bulley says it works out to about 3.5 pounds of waste per person (nevermind most people only stayed three days but we’ll go with it….).

But does mass waste ever make sense? The diversion fact is commendable. And the image of college students rifling through my waste (yes, I was at GreenBuild) is something to ponder. But did that 44 tons of waste need to be created in the first place?

Think about it… thousands of people gathering together to figure out how to save the environment and how to build green. And yet they still can’t not use things. 44 tons of things. Thrown away. Isn’t green building all about the idea that the little things - like 44 tons of waste - matter?

No wonder right wing talk show hosts call greenies hypocrites.

Remembering back, the hefty 187-page program could have been …. digital! Or it could have been easier to compost food scraps, or recycle nametags.  Those participating in the expos could have used less literature or cards that pointed attendees to a Web site.

Or, as a green building consultant said to me the other day, the entire conference could have been virtual. If 44 tons of trash sounds like a lot, imagine the carbon emissions from the millions of miles of air travel. (I for one met people from the U.K, Japan, Canada….)

This is by no means an isolated event, just a high profile one. But it seems to me an example of the kinks, shall we say, in the green building movement. Do I have something here or is it too much to think that people promoting green … could change the way they do things? It’s like not seeing the forest for the trees (that were at least, diverted).

For more, Building Design + C0ntruction runs the full press release here. FrontBurner asks if green trash is still green here. Or in another scenario from Wired Magazine here, Brandon Keim explores a Japanese city that just stopped waste collection. Now there’s an idea. 

Women and men are constantly compared to each other with touchy results (look no further than the race for the Democratic nomination for proof) and sustainability is no different. So what does this mean in Seattle? A panel at the AIA’s ReGeneration conference Monday will try to find out.

What do you think? Is one gender more prone to green living, building and working? Or are both perfectly equal?

The “Women in Green panel” from 1:30 to 3 p.m. on Monday will bravely delve into the subject of gender and sustainability. Here in Seattle, there’s no question that many of the brightest (and most powerful) green minds are women. Four of them - Anne Schopf of Mahlum, Lucia Athens of the city of Seattle’s Green Building Program, Amanda Sturgeon of Perkins + Will, and Judith Heerwagen, an environmental psychologist, will flesh out the issue.

(more…)