Seen & Heard at EnvironDesign8: A snapshot of trends, resources, and initiatives

This past month, EnvironDesign 8 took place in Minneapolis, MN.  The conference featured prominent keynote speakers such as Janine Benyus, Bill McDonough, and Robert Swan, as well as dozens of specialized sessions where practitioners of sustainable design and construction, manufacturing, management, and product sourcing could convene and exchange experiences.

Resources

The conference featured a number of resources for sustainable business and building practices:

• Greenbuildingpages.com is an online collection of information on products for use in sustainable building.  The directory contains information on the product from throughout its lifecycle, allowing for easy and quick assessment of the product, as well as drilling down for more detailed specifications and performance information.
• Greenmatrix.net.  Ever wonder how to integrate the LEED standard into a traditional firm?  The GreenMatrix assists in that process by providing a navigable guide to LEED based on the aspect of design and the phase of development.  
• GreenerBuildings.com.  A clearing house of information on green building, created by the partnership of the US Green Building Council and GreenBiz.com.
• Cradle-to-Cradle Protocol.  From the work of Bill McDonough and Michael Braungart, the C2C Protocol is a framework for creating environmental and health safe products.  The protocol outlines the criteria for doing so.
• BuildingGreen.com provides online and print resources to help improve the environmental performance of buildings and landscapes and offers a software tool, GreenSpec, and a news service. 
  

Cardle-to-Cradle Ripples

Bill McDonough and Michael Braungart, as well as their innovative C2C framework, were influential in the conference.  Some of the repercussions of their work include:

• MechoShade: a solar shading company (www.mechoshade.com) provides a window shade with a material designed on C2C principles.  The material was being premiered at EnvirDesign and will be launched at the upcoming NeoCon conference.
• C2C Homes: A design competition for homes in Roanoke, VA.  The winning design will be constructed.  Designs are being accepted for the international competition until December 2004.
• Shaw Contract: Shaw has worked with McDonough to incorporate C2C into its carpet and produces a fiber and carpet that can be continually broken down and reused.
• Herman Miller: HM (www.hermanmiller.com) produced the Mirra chair, designed on C2C, with 96% of its materials recyclable at the end of its useful life.  Its Michigan headquaters building was built by McDonough + Partners.
• DesignTex (www.dtex.com) provides carpet made with the C2C criteria that separates the biological and technical nutrients, and its new additions to the line are 100% biodegradable.  
• Eco-intelligent polyester: a fabric by Victor Innovatex (www.victor-innovatex.com/ecointelligence) that meets the Level 4 protocol for eco-effectiveness.
• GreenBlue: the non-profit organization that facilitates C2C-thinking and design (www.greenblue.org)

Initiatives, Projects, and Activities

• Life Cycle Initiative: a project of the UN and SETAC (www.uneptie.org/sustain/lcinitiative), building on the Malmo Declaration and promoting life cycle best practices with a Web site, bulletin, workshops, and more.
• Alliance for Sustanable Built Environment (www.sustainablebuiltenvironment.org) is offering seminars in San Francisco and New York
• Alliance for Sustainability (www.allianceforsustainability.net) is offering a workshop based on the Natural Step framework for sustainability in Minneapolis
• Green Drinks (www.greendrinks.org) is an simple way to get people together socially around ideas of sustainability, and is happening on an international scale. Check the Web site for a group near you.

LEED points, and how you get them, is a major driver for design decisions in green building industry, as well as manufacturing decisions for those supplying the industry.  The success of the LEED principles and certification is now a testiment to how important it is to get those principles just right.  Otherwise, they may incentivate undesired practices.  For example, recycled contentcan earn a pont for LEED certification.  However, as is easily illustrated with the Eco-effective standard for sustainability proposed by McDonough and Braungart, recycled content is not inherently good, and could even be worse than virgin materials in overall impact.  And, as seen in several of the products at EnvironDesign, the products with recycled content often lock up organic materials in a matrix of a technical nutrient, thus complicating the end-of-life scenarios for the products.

If you want to continue with this trend...

• NeoCon, June 14-16 in Chicago, IL
• Design:Green, product design workshop, June 17, 2004 (post-NeoCon).