CoreNet Corporate Citizen of the Year – LACCD

Congratulations to LACCD and Larry Eisenberg who accepted the  CoreNet Remmy on behalf of the LA Community College.   

For those of you who are new to this blog,  Larry Eisenberg is the executive director, LACCD Facilities Planning and Development. For the past few years, he’s been championing the tandem growth of green campuses and curriculum to match. Most recently, Measure J (for jobs) was passed in LA County to help fund the building of 50 new LEED Platinum Certified buildings.

The CoreNet Remmy Awards ceremony was held last night at Warner Brothers. This award reaffirms the energy and leadership Larry has provided to not only create green jobs in LA, but also provide green job education to the manufacturers/contractors of those products plus bring “sustainable thinking” to all disciplines taught at LACCD.

What makes this an even bigger award is that fact that it was given out in Los Angeles, one of the world’s largest building and trading centers. Being recognized in this market shines a big light on the work that is being done at LACCD to use their development power to change markets at the same time they are changing the lives of their 226,000 students.

Time to Come Clean, with RainTube

The recent Wall Street meltdown is leaving us with two words:  transparency and accountability. What that means for business-in-general is that business-as-usual  is over. It’s time to come clean about our practices and be transparent in our processes, but how do we start? Here’s how RainTube did it.

Four years ago, Steve Spratt and Bill Savage developed their RainTube  product to solve one of the irritations of home maintenance – cleaning the leaves out of the eave troughs. RainTube gave new meaning to “cap and trade;” once a gutter was capped with a Raintube, the trade off was less leaf removal, less fire igniting pine needles backing up on the roof, and more clean rain water to use on landscaping. Not a bad trade.

 

Steve told me the goal was to provide a useful product that solved a real problem  first and then to make the product and the company as green as possible. Because RainTube is a small company co-created along with the original product line, they were able to build sustainability into the core of the brand rather than strap it on later.  

 

From their company profile inside of Green Building Pages we learn:

 

[RainTube] Provides employee seminars, workshops to educate and involve in company’s environmental policies and goals. Sponsors educational newsletters, education seminars for the general public regarding environmental issues. Published policies in Production & Manufacture, Product Disposal, Installation Use and Maintenance, Company Social Profile. Published goals in Production & Manufacture, Product Disposal, Installation Use and Maintenance. Facility recycling waste program in place.

They also list that women make up 20% of their management. That is a big deal if you’re trying to impress consumers of which women are in the marjority. It’s also a big deal for the USGBC this year, as “fostering social equity” has become part of their guidelines. I’m a member of a green Mommy Blogger group and these women care deeply about the above. As a consumer and business person, it’s nice that I can just do a quick search and find the above information and so much more.

 

That’s exactly why Steve chose to register with Green Building Pages two years ago. He told me that it wasn’t enough that they were doing the right things, he wanted the world to know and to have some credibility in the market.  Putting it in writing on the Green Building Pages was the first step. Steve admits that filling out Green Building Pages comprehensive Company and Product profile was a task, but that it provided a framework for later improvements and going after higher certifications. 

 

RainTubes are sold directly to contractors who then educate homeowners and office owners on its benefits. With the shortage of water in so many places, however, the gray-water saving benefit is getting more attention than keeping the maintenance low. People want to know how to  “harvest” water for later use on outdoor plants.

 

RainTube is an example of the next generation in products that are functional, pragmatic and sustainable. See them for yourself at Greenbuild next week in booth  # 1767.

 

LACCD Builds Green – Over $6 billion of green

With the passing of Measure J (for jobs) in the past election, LA Community College District added $3.5 billion to the bonds the school already had from previous years to bring the total budget up to $6.5 billion. The money will go towards 50 new buildings and modernizing hundreds of others up to LEED Platinum standards.

LACCD is the largest community college district in the nation, serving 226,000 students yearly. The creation of these buildings brings purpose and mission together. Students learning about sustainable practices for their green job classes can touch and experience the very products that they may be working with later on after they graduate. 

Green Building Pages has joined this exciting effort. (this blog is part of GBP)  It will provide the evaluation system for the buyers and specifiers of the building materials used in these buildings. It’s a unique site in that it’s free to the public, comprehensive in its sustainable information and rewards performance vs. advertising dollars. Companies with the most sustainable products, that can prove it through Life Cycle Assessment and third party audits will be listed at the top of selection lists.

This is a very unique approach to a buying guide model where usually ad dollars do the talking. The more money, they higher on the lists products are ranked. In this case, Green Building Pages is encouraging companies to put their money into sustainable design and practices first.

Because the site is free to the public, companies are charged a listing fee of $300 per product placement. If the products featured are to be part of the LACCD Master Bid contract, then the fee goes up to $800 to cover the cost of cross-promotion between LACCD’s E-catalog and Green Building Pages and many other promotions including to other school districts.

Green Building Pages has been around since 2000, but it wasn’t until this year when it’s mission of providing full, transparent information has met the market need. Ironically, this year is also when the USGBC has made “fostering social equity” part of its guidelines. Luckily social equity is something that Green Building Pages has included since its beginning.  

For more information write Mary@GreenBuildingPages.com or go to Green Building Pages.