Workshop 10 - Evaluating Environmental Margins, Part 1

Evaluating Environmental Margins: The El Moore Project

The following slideshow presents a framework developed for the El Moore project. It helps them evaluate the actions they are taking to improve the project's environmental margins while allowing them to report regularly on outcomes. This is a framework that can be applied to any business hoping to reduce environmental footprint. ('The slides on this page are only a sample of the entire slideshow. To see all the slides, click on the link.)

Evaluating Environmental Margins - Slideshow

As with any business, the energy you put into it, in the forms of effort, ideas, money and love, produces a business with a sustainable future. The triple bottom line is a window we are all walking through to get to that sustainable future.

Sustainability is bigger than you think. Start small and grow as you are able.

Five areas of Environmental Sustainability to consider: Energy, Waste, Water, Toxicity, and Habitat

• What are we extracting from the earth and what are we returning to the earth?
• How do we restore destroyed habitats as urban sprawl goes on?
• On an industrial scale, we are destroying complex native habitats, bringing in invasive plants and replacing the natural systems with monocultures. Why are we doing something that requires a lot of intervention to maintain and keep alive?

ENERGY

• Get facts, real data so that you know where you’re starting, what you’re working with and where you need to go.
• Go after the largest energy users (in this case, heating and appliances) Go after the BTU’s!!

The El Moore goals:

• They want to be at 25% demand of the typical residential building.
• They want 25% of that to come from renewable sources
• They want residents to be accountable for what they are using.

Determining your target goals takes some experience and a lot of learning. Working on the Green Garage project, the goal was to get to net zero energy, but it wasn’t doable. So they set a goal of 25% of demand (based on industry standard) and then, over time, they might be able to lower that demand even more.

On the project side, you will need to work with people who have some experience because you will be putting infrastructure into place and that is very complex and expensive. On the process side (business already in place and you’re just improving, making changes) then you can do it in increments and learn as you go.

Actions Taken:

• Reduced demand by:
  • Super insulated building
  • 0.25 Infiltration - measures the amount of air exchange that happens per hour (outside air that is coming in ) and tells you whether you’re heating Detroit or just your building.
  • Installed low-e windows - amount of sunlight that comes through windows
  • Installed on-demand lighting; light on only when being used.

Options to achieve 25% renewable energy:

• Solar photovoltaic panels
• Solar thermal panels (used at the Green Garage)
• Geothermal heating system
• ERV

You can approach goals in two ways:

• Start by taking some actions and see how effective they are in reducing your energy use.
• Set a measurable goal that you know is doable. For example, you might set of goal of a certain percentage of renewable energy for your building.

Payback:Calculating payback in your efforts to reduce energy use is extremely helpful. At what point will savings from your reduced energy use cover the costs of investment in materials and/or technology?

Reduce - Reduce - Reduce: Before you invest in anything, begin by finding simple ways to reduce your energy consumption.

• Accountability works: People will reduce their use by 10-20% if you give them feedback - it's a way for them to see how much they are using
• Electric Meter
• Hot Water Meter
• e-Billing

WASTE

* How can we best reduce the amount of waste we send to a landfill? How much can be reclaimed or reused?

* Once building is built, what percent of the normal operating waste can you work with?

For the El Moore project, the following goals were set:

• Produce only 50% waste of the average building remodel.
• 25% of incoming materials should be reclaimed.
• When building is completed and operating, produce only 10% waste of standard hostel/hotel/apartment building.

Remember that you, as the customer/consumer, have a lot more leverage than you might think with the people you work with. You can influence how they work and their level of commitment to environmental responsibility. Vote with your dollars.

Did you know that 75% of waste from a typical residential remodeling project can be either reused or recycled?

WATER

Goals for the El Moore for water use:

• Use just 1/3 water of a standard building.
• Use no city water for property and landscaping.
• Property should be able to absorb rain water from a 25 year storm - keep as much water as possible out of the storm drains.

Educate yourself about water use in a typical building or residence. Once you've identified the biggest water users in your house or business (toilets and washing machines are usually top on the list), you can then focus on those areas and find ways to reduce you water consumption.

TOXICITY

Three areas of focus for toxicity are: Air, Water, and Materials.

• Having healthy water is vital - it will be used for watering plants on the property and in the greenhouse. This will be achieved by putting in a new water main, using green pipes, no-lead faucets and harvesting rain water.

• Clean air, using Energy Recovery Ventilation system, opening windows and no or low-VOC paints.

• Materials: For any materials brought into the building, find out what they are made of and how and where they were manufactured.

HABITAT

We need to leave the planet better than we left it.

• Goals for the El Moore project with regard to habitat focus on the building's surrounding gardens and the adjacent property with a desire to move from dead to living habitats:
  • 25 species of plants
  • 50% of species would be native to Michigan
  • Improve soil conditions
  • Provide habitat for birds and insects
  • Have less than 10% lawn

Other Thoughts

• Sustainability goals are reached through leadership, education, learning, and teamwork.

• All of this is a learning process. As you make changes, you don’t try to do them all at once and don't make decisions too quickly. Be thoughtful and intentional.

• Pick areas that you can really have a positive impact on, things that you can really do. You have many opportunities to make changes that don't involve a lot of complexity.

• With your business, you may not be able to affect or change all these areas discussed above. Take actions, make changes where you can. Example: If you are considering renting office space, you can ask them to provide a year's worth of utility bills so that you can see how much energy /water is used in the building. You can't change someone else's building's HVAC system, but you CAN choose to work in a space that uses less energy/water than another space.

• What's the payback? We’re caught in a little game in the environmental or "green" products industry. If you’re trying to do something for the planet, there has to be a payback. You can go to Home Depot and spend $50 on a drill or $500 on a drill, and rarely will anyone ask, "What's the payback on the $500 drill?" There will be nothing on the packaging that will explain why one drill is so much more expensive than the other, what the "payback" will be. But on a green product, there will frequently be information on the packaging that shows you how much money you are going to save and how it will offset the higher cost of the product. Can't the "payback" be that we are doing less harm to our environment?