Builder John Abrams of Martha’s Vineyard is a storyteller. One of his favorite stories is about Gandhi:
A woman approaches the well-known visionary seeking help with her son’s addiction to sweets. He listens to her concerns but does not meet with the child. Over the following weeks she asks him several more times for help. Each time he gently holds off. Finally, after many weeks and frequent requests from the mother, Gandhi meets with her son and miraculously solves his problem. The woman is very pleased with the results but asks Gandhi why he took so long to work with her son. Gandhi calmly replies, “I had to solve my own sugar habit before I could approach your son.”
A mass transit shelter built entirely from salvaged/certified materials as a company activity and charitable contribution—South Mountain Company provided us with the perfect emblem for green building-green business.
Source: South Mountain Company Abrams speaks widely on issues of green building and socially responsible business practices, but he is not preachy. Rather than telling others how they should run their design and construction businesses, Abrams humbly describes his own business, South Mountain Company, and his experiences in guiding it, not only in what it does—design and build energy-efficient, environmentally responsible houses—but also in how the business is run. As Gandhi would doubtless agree, Abrams is convinced that to create truly green buildings a company has to “walk the talk.”
This article takes a look at how design and construction companies can incorporate environmental and social responsibility into their own operations. Most of what we cover in
EBN is about the design and construction of buildings—everything from land-use planning issues to energy-efficient design and green material selection. Here we examine what our companies can be doing
internally to practice sustainability. Yes, the buildings we create for others probably offer far greater opportunity for carbon dioxide emissions reductions or water savings or reduced dependence on automobiles than our own facilities and operations, but by implementing our own green business practices, we learn a tremendous amount, we gain credibility in the eyes of our clients, we realize the environmental and health benefits we try to create for others, and we play our own important part in the shift toward sustainability.
In the following pages, we look at several design and construction companies around the country and see what they have been doing to green their operations. A checklist of green business strategies is provided at the end of the article.
This 1998 Metro Denver Parade Home won the Built GreenSM Home of the Year Award. McStain fought hard to keep its size (deemed “unmarketable”) more than 2,000 square feet smaller than six neighboring Parade Homes, yet it was one of the first homes to sell.
Source: McStain Enterprises McStain Enterprises of Boulder, Colorado builds over 250 homes a year and employs 125—ranging from designers and carpenters to a sales force. In business for over 34 years, McStain is regarded as one of the leading green builders in Colorado, if not the country (see
EBN
Vol. 5, No. 6, page 16). Milestones include a 1995 Environmental Research House; a green, award-winning 1998 Parade Home; current participation in the DOE Building America program; and receipt this year of the coveted Colorado Ethics in Business Award (the first home builder ever to receive this honor). Every McStain project since the inception of the Metro Denver Home Builders’ Built GreenSM program has exceeded the program’s standards. McStain’s commitment to the environment goes back to the company’s inception. “Environmental consciousness led Caroline and me to home building,” says McStain owner Tom Hoyt. “We felt we could make a real difference because the impact that buildings have on the environment is so great.”
But the “greenness” of McStain Enterprises is not limited to the developments they create and the homes they build. “Green is part of everything we do,” says Hoyt. He describes three key aspects of his business that exemplify this commitment: the McStain Green Team, the corporate grant program, and the High Plains Environmental Center project.
In the last year, McStain set up the Green Team, which is “committed to the development of sustainable business practices within the McStain community” (from the Green Team Mission Statement). This is a ten-member volunteer group of employees with representation from every department of the business. “The Green Team provides a two-way vehicle for greening the business,” says Hoyt. “Ideas come from and go to all staff.“ Although McStain already had a lot of green business practices in place, the team ensures that implementation occurs company-wide and that ideas that really work rise to the top.
McStain has three parts to their corporate giving program: support of a selected nonprofit organization working on issues of sustainability within the four-county region where McStain builds; a revolving fund to support smaller local environmental events or actions; and a matching funds program for employees’ charitable contributions. According to Hoyt, “The corporate grants program is based on a percentage of company profits and last year totaled about $40,000 [not including the employee match program].”
The third key green business initiative for McStain is integrally tied to their next big development project in nearby Loveland—a mixed-use resi-dential/commercial/office park project on 3,000 acres (1,200 ha) with extensive wetland and water resources. In a striking example of green business and big picture thinking, McStain is creating a nonprofit environmental education and resource center as an integral part of the development, hiring the center’s director
one year before the project even starts. “Who is better qualified to oversee the development of the center and the overall project than its future director?” asks Hoyt. “The High Plains Environmental Center will promote stewardship and discourse at a personal and regionally specific community level,” according to its director, Ripley Heintz.
McStain’s commitment to protecting the environment and supporting the community does not have to be justified on purely altruistic grounds. “Our customers and our employees are hungry for honesty, respect, and a genuine approach,” notes Hoyt. The company recently hired a highly skilled job-site super who waited nine months for a position to open up at McStain. After he saw the McStain Web site and mission statement with its strong focus on sustainability, he knew he wanted to be a part of “building a better world” (the McStain motto). “With customers and employees both seeking this type of experience, running a green business is just plain good business,” says Hoyt.
Other green business features at McStain
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Public transit passes – McStain purchases unlimited-use Denver Transit ID EcoPasses for all company employees. The EcoPass includes the Guaranteed Ride Home program, offering free taxi service when an employee using transit has an emergency or has to unexpectedly stay late at work.
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Paperless communications – The Green Team has targeted paper as an “800-pound gorilla” and is shifting extensively toward electronic communication; significant training and education resources are being put into this.
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Office building energy audit – McStain is committed to reducing environmental impacts in its own office. Toward this end, the company is working with the Boulder Energy Conservation Center on a comprehensive energy audit of the office facility that McStain leases.
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Green investment for company 401k Plan – McStain employees are pushing their rather conventional fund managers to work with them in identifying successful, yet green, investment funds.
Mithun Architects + Designers + Planners is a full-service design company located in Seattle, Washington with 160 employees. In business for approximately 50 years, their $15 million (annual) business spans a wide range of projects, from residential buildings (particularly senior and special-needs housing) to commercial, institutional, and medical facilities. Some of their latest high-profile green projects include the innovative REI store and facilities in Seattle, the Puget Sound Environmental Learning Center, the Pacific Northwest Aquarium, and their own offices at Pier 56 on the Seattle waterfront.
Commitment to green business practices begins at the top at Mithun. Senior partner Bert Gregory, who was recently made both CEO and president, has long been actively involved in sustainability efforts in the greater Seattle area. Gregory feels that their new offices are a telling reflection of the company’s commitment to “walking the talk.” “We had a 15-staff-person vision team working on a wide array of issues and working closely with the design team,” says Gregory. The company renovated an old pier facility that was chosen for a host of green and business reasons, incorporated daylighting and high-quality fluorescent task lighting, and used few finishes in an effort to ensure healthy indoor air quality. Gregory adds, “The pier location was perfect for the ferry-goers, and some initial concerns for those using other public transportation were worked out in personal meetings arranged by Mithun with the local transit authority.” Gregory and Mithun’s commitment also includes his membership on the board of the local Urban Environmental Institute, a nonprofit effort to create a campus for the collaboration of environmentalists and scientists. “It’s currently just an idea, but we are working on including a Sustainable Materials Testing Laboratory,” says Gregory.
There is a lot packed into this view of the new Mithun office space: renovated structure; dual-function, structure-finish T&G ceiling and OSB floor; clerestory daylighting, and natural ventilation from operable windows and the open floor plan.
Source: Mithun As with McStain, Mithun has benefited quite directly from the firm’s internal green business practices. Their renovation of an old building into their new offices has sparked interest (and potential revenue) from a neighboring business wanting to reincarnate its own building in a similar fashion. Chris Dixon, recently hired as director of specifications, told
EBN that it was Mithun’s serious commitment to sustainability that attracted him to the company. And Dixon has since been successful in attracting two new employees to Mithun for the same reasons.
Selected green business features at Mithun
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Passive ventilation and cooling - The entire office facility is passively ventilated and cooled, with heating system setback strategies. The design team worked closely with a leading HVAC firm, Keen Engineering of Vancouver, on system design and building commissioning.
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Green building services - Selected janitorial services were based on commitment to environmental protection and use of nontoxic cleaning agents. Mithun is currently evaluating a variety of office supplies using the EPA Environmentally Preferable Purchasing Program Pilot Study.
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Office recycling - Their extensive program includes donation of older furniture, supplies, and equipment to local schools. Mithun has worked with their caterer eliminating boxed lunches in favor of platters for company events, and is currently pricing alternatives to disposable utensils.
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Green products - 100% recycled-content, chlorine-free paper is used office-wide. There is no longer any use of blueprints or blueline, and all large prints are eventually recycled.
For 25 years, South Mountain Company (SMC) has been a leading custom home builder on Martha’s Vineyard, Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Founded by John Abrams, the $5 million (annual) company employs 25 people and builds primarily single-family homes. Abrams attributes a lot of his company’s emphasis on sustainability to their island surroundings. “Living and building on a beautiful but environmentally stressed island makes thinking about the impact of our business imperative,” he says. It’s so important to Abrams and the owner-employees of South Mountain that they recently spent two company days engaged in a “Future Sketch”—a structured discussion and brainstorming charrette identifying what they as a company could be doing to help foster sustainability on the island and bring about the right type of growth and change. “There was a little bit of grumbling from a company full of ‘doers’,” said Abrams, “about sitting around and talking for two whole days, but afterwards there was complete agreement that we needed to keep at it and on a regular basis.” Company commitments emerging from the Future Sketch (available in its entirety from the SMC Web site) illustrate how innovative some of the ideas coming out of this charrette were:
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Institute a company Development of Regional Impact
process for large homes over 3,500 ft2 (325 m2) – The Martha’s Vineyard Commission (the regional planning agency) has a process and checklist called the DRI for evaluating the environmental impact of large projects. SMC is instituting its own DRI process for large single-family home projects. The company policy now is to take on large homes only if they have more environmental benefits than detriments, carefully explaining to potential clients how important overall size can be to local and global environmental impacts. SMC hopes that, by modeling their large-home policy on the planning commission’s DRI system, they will encourage the commission to consider a similar approval process for large homes on the island. This new SMC DRI policy is a natural extension of long-standing SMC contract language clearly stating that the cost-plus/fixed-fee agreement is subject to SMC recommendations for the best environmental practices, not
necessarily the most cost-effective ones.
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Increase company charitable contributions from 5% to 10% of profits – The focus of SMC corporate giving has always been local land conservation; now the employee-owners have added a new focus: helping address the growing housing crisis on the island. Rising land values have led to a situation in which Vineyard workers can’t afford to live on the island—a situation with its own social and environmental impacts.
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Take on local used building materials operations as a company project – SMC wants to get more involved in the brokering of used building materials on the island. The company has a well-deserved reputation for use of salvaged wood products—90% of the exposed interior and exterior wood on the company’s projects, including SMC’s new headquarters and shop—is salvaged. With a large number of houses being torn down to make way for new houses, salvage opportunities (and needs) are great. In a new approach on a current project, SMC has set up a volunteer Saturday workday for deconstructing a building that must come down to make way for the new. This crew gets as much done as they can, and an SMC paid work crew will complete the disassembly the following week. All the salvaged materials will be freely divided among the volunteers from the Saturday event.
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Develop better job-site toilet – SMC recently completed an entire cohousing project that relies exclusively on composting toilets (waste water treatment is a critical issue on the island). This got them thinking about the lousy environmental aspects of typical portable job-site toilets. Attempts at temporary, portable composting proved problematic, so SMC is experimenting with a job-site portable toilet that sits above the septic tank on projects where the septic tank is in place when house construction begins.
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Create a New England timber bank – Without real commercial timber production on the Vineyard, SMC has plans to develop woodlots in the Northeast (off-island) to offset their timber consumption. Notes Abrams: “We have not followed through on this concept yet—but, by Gandhi, we will!”
Two themes emerge in speaking with John Abrams about his company: one is the link between quality and the environment; the other is cherishing both human and natural resources. “Our clients and our employees see this natural link between quality and the environment—a building or a company that performs well, does the environment well,” says Abrams. “This extends from the maintenance schedule on our tools and equipment to the conservationist development of neighborhoods on the island. And all along the way, there is little point to a company that protects natural resources without creating a sustainable work community.”
Selected green business features at SMC
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Bike facilities and carpooling incentive – The new SMC building has outdoor shower facilities, and the company subsidizes company carpooling efforts.
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Comprehensive purchasing, services, and building operation policies – In an employee-owned company with a mission statement focused on sustainability, every aspect of business operation is scrutinized from an environmental perspective. Green business operations are part of the agenda of every company and owner meeting.
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Company pension fund – For the past twelve years, a longtime company carpenter has managed the company’s socially responsible pension fund (now valued at about $1 million).
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Environmental education – SMC regularly brings in speakers on various environmental building topics and tries to coordinate company presentations with opportunities for the speakers to get their message out to the local community as well.
All of us in the building community make a living off of one of the most resource-intensive industries on the planet, an industry with enormous economic and environmental impact. The green building community must champion the responsibilities and opportunities for commerce that can sustain both the environment and humankind. The responsibilities and opportunities range from the philosophical to the mundane. At the philosophical level are questions about what jobs to take on—should my company take on only sustainable projects or take any opportunity to improve, even marginally, the environmental impact of a conventional project? More mundane, but perhaps no less important, are the numerous day-to-day details, such as what type of paper goes in the copier. This article simply states: Why not examine
The most important thing firms involved with green design and construction can do relative to the environment is to continue creating low-environmental-impact buildings. Improved energy efficiency, reduced water use, less dependence on private automobiles for the people living or working in these buildings, greater use of green building materials, and healthier indoor environments are examples of how hundreds of leading-edge companies are practicing green design and construction throughout North America. While pushing the envelope as far as possible in our design and construction services, however, we should also try to push that envelope even further with our
own company operations and policies. Even the greenest of us have our ”sugar habits” to work on. While the companies profiled in this article have worked hard on greening their businesses, all were anxious to get this issue of
EBN to see what other ideas and approaches they could add to their efforts. We hope to be able to report back to readers with lots of other examples of how to “think globally and act locally” or, as some suggest, “think locally and act locally.”
