At Greenbuild you could feel the excitement and the promise of what a green future would look like. At IBS, even though it was in Vegas with perfect weather, the tone was lack-luster at best. I walked the IBS floors on Thursday in search of companies heading into a sustainable future. Maybe it was the showrooms I picked, but I didn’t see much in the way of REAL green efforts.

That said,  Henkel had a new line of no VOC adhesives.  I have a friend who is so sensitive to VOCs that she has to let any new products out gas on her front porch before bringing them into her home. Back about ten years ago, I sold tankloads of adhesives. The are nasty and very hard to go green and still maintain a profit while keeping production lines humming. Kudos to Henkel for introducing this new line.  

Later, I chatted with a several insulation companies – Biobased.net, Icynene.com and NevadaFoam.com. They were in competition, per se with the new cement walls with foam forms and with wood walls with foam cores. All of them help to keep your home toasty or cool, and all of them had way too many ways to tell you how they did it. Unless reasearch analysis is your thing, comparing products via their handouts is an insane use of time.

A surprise highlight came from a chat with the Soybean Board. I had no idea so many products came from this renewable and chewable plant. We’ll be revisiting that sector in the upcoming blogs.

I don’t know if I would go back to the IBS show. It was fun, but there wasn’t enough of the future there to make it worth the drive across the desert. I’ll leave the gamblers to Vegas. As for me, I’m betting on the sure thing – green homes and offices and conferences like Greenbuild that inspire me to do better.

If you sell building products into educational facilities, you’re probably wondering what they need and how can you get your foot in the door.

Here’s the next advertised group. If you don’t have your products listed on Green Building Pages. Do so now. Go here for more background.  Good Luck!

Child Development Center Furniture & Equipment
Recycle Bins
Parking Lot Sweepers/Green Golf Carts ZEV
Utility Carts
Pool Supplies
Appliances (ADA Compliant + Lab)
Library/Lounge Seating, Tables, Misc. Storage
Library Shelving/Back Office Shelving
(pcm) Recycle – Waste Paper Containers
IT Smart Walls, Boards – classroom
40 yard roll off and storage bins
Boom Lifts, Scissor Lifts, Forklifts

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.

The Anaheim ConventionCenter in Anaheim, CA is the the location for 50 workshops and over 200 exhibitors. For more info go to: www.green-technology.org/gcschools or call 626-577-5700.

I’ll be there floating around talking to manufacturers and inviting them to participate on Green Building Pages, The Green Hive and in the building of 50 new LEED Platinum buildings for the LA Community College District. Call me  at 714-926-1223 to learn more or go to http://laccdbuildsgreen.blip.tv

Greenbuild 2008

Greenbuild 2008 was all that it had promised to be - packed with potential (about 30,000 attending) to change the world through low energy, high performance products and buildings.

The biggest “potential” came from LA Community College District.  I felt like the tooth fairy being able to talk to vendors about the LACCD opportunity. “Hi, do you work with schools? I have $6 billion to spend…”  It’s amazing how fast people smiled and asked you to step into their booth. Greenbuild already had an air of hopefulness due to the recent election, but there is nothing like cold hard cash during a tight economy to get companies engaged and excited again. 

Did you miss getting an invite? Go hereto have a full rundown on the LACCD opportunity and the how you can become involved.  

After “hopefulness,” “transparency” had to be the other key word covering the 3 days. On each corner, aisle and seminar, vendors spoke of Life Cycle Assessments, Third Party Audits and Sustainable Product Standards. Some companies floated their certification flags, others are holding off until a dominate standard comes forward, but everyone agreed that LCA’s are the future and that putting it in writing (whatever your shade of green) is where it all begins.

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 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.