Building Capacity

LEED HC – A Sensible Leap Into Sustainable Health Care

Have you ever been in a hospital or medical clinic, observed the humming machinery, the constant overhead lights, the busy staff, the patients in varying degrees of distress, the human drama, but your first thought is “How much energy is this place consuming?” Congratulations, you are a building science geek. Welcome, you are among friends.

Pacific Northwest Health Care Provider Leaps Forward: I worked in healthcare, clinics and hospitals for many years as a Registered Nurse, then a Nurse Practitioner. My career change to Green Building Consultant felt pretty natural to me as I was always renovating houses on the side. And I have watched with special interest the emergence of LEED© for Healthcare (LEED-HC). So I was delighted to start work on a local LEED-HC project for a great organization where I used to work as a Nurse Practitioner. Group Health Cooperative has committed to LEED-HC Certification for two new or replacement clinics in Washington -- one in Puyallup (see rendering) and one in Burien. These will be among the first in the country to certify under this new Rating System. Along with the owner, CollinsWoerman, University Mechanical, and GLY Construction, are enthusiastically committed to the projects' sustainability goals, and in particular achieving the target for LEED-HC Gold and achieving a 30% energy efficiency improvement over a similar baseline building.

A Little History on LEED-HC:  It grew from the Green Guide for Healthcare (GGHC), a sustainable design “Toolkit” that integrates environmental and health principles into the planning, design, construction, operations and maintenance of healthcare facilities. GGHC originated in 2004 as a joint venture between the Center for Maximum Potential Building systems and Health Care Without Harm, aligning itself with the structure of LEED for New Construction. GGHC piloted 100 facilities, enabling LEED-HC to bypass the US Green Building Council's LEED pilot process. The first draft for LEED-HC  was released in November 2007, and projects began registering in November 2010. To date, there are 26 registered projects in the US ranging from medical clinics and Veterans homes to hospitals and cancer centers.

The Problem: Hospitals, open 24/7, use enormous amounts of energy. There are rigorous ventilation and pressurization needs; heating and cooling demands that vary from the OR to the ER and contribute significant mechanical loads; and intensive water needs. According to Energy Star, the average EUI of a hospital is 468 kBtu/ft2 while the average EUI of an office building is 193 kBtu/ft2. The healthcare sector is reported to contribute 8% of total US Green House Gas Emissions (JAMA, Nov 11, 2009). How can hospitals and medical clinics become high performance buildings, better neighbors and a healthy part of the community where they are located?

A Problem-Solving Tool: Despite the fact that LEED for Healthcare requires a mere 10% energy performance improvement over the baseline (like LEED NC, but its not enough), it  addresses several key aspects of the problem, with several new Prerequisites and Credits that make sense for these massively consumptive facilities, such as:

• Integrated Design: Integrated Project Planning and Design is a Prerequisite. 
• Energy: In Energy & Atmosphere there is a credit for buildings that limit products of combustion, a sure way to become a better member of the community and the planet.
• Daylight: Articulated floor plates that allow more daylight and views for patients and staff earn credit.
• Water: Medical equipment process water must be non-potable -- it's a Prerequisite. New credits for water use measurement and verification (you can’t manage what you can’t measure); and water use reduction for medical equipment, cooling towers and food waste systems.
•  IEQ: In Materials & Resources there is a credit for medical furnishings and mattresses that do not contain harmful chemicals or VOC’s.
• IEQ: While sustainably sourced materials garner credit, they are also required to meet the low emitting requirements in IEQ.
• IEQ: The bar for the low emitting materials credit is raised with the addition of carcinogenic limits for adhesives and sealants; and credit for limiting VOC content for exterior applied products safeguards construction workers and the community.

Respite Care: In addition there are credits for Places of Respite for patients and visitors, a place to heal and recuperate from ongoing treatment. Don’t you feel better already? For in-patients or patients with long wait times, for families waiting even longer for their loved ones, this is a place to rest the eyes, have a view, appreciate some nature and smell some flowers. This is evidence-based design, referencing research indicating improved outcomes for patients with a view of nature rather than a brick wall. Additionally this LEED-HC credit has a requirement for a private outdoor area for staff to take a break, away from patient care. This allows hard working medical staff some time and space to find balance in a stressful workplace. Group Health’s Puyallup Clinic has a green roof and rooftop staff area planned, incorporating shelter, access to nature and privacy. The project design also incorporates a respite area for patients and families adjacent to the ground floor clinics.

Existing Buildings, When a Problem is an Opportunity: Retrofitting existing hospitals and clinics offers tremendous opportunity for reducing energy use, greenhouse gas emissions and CO2. The Community Power Works program is working with all the major local hospitals in the Seattle area to conduct energy upgrades as part of $20 million in federal stimulus grant funding to energy retrofit hospitals, municipal and large commercial buildings. Puget Sound Energy offers customized grants to hospitals for energy retrofits and existing building commissioning. Environmental Purchasing Policies for hospitals such as mercury-free purchasing; buying products with recycled content; requesting reduced packaging; and purchasing reusable products  help reduce their environmental impact. Remember the old days when that bedpan was metal and cold?  It  was cleaned in an autoclave and reused for years. This is much more sustainable than the plastic ones that are often single use in emergency rooms. But I digress. Stay tuned for more postings on Hospitals and Sustainability. 

Colleen Groll, CSBA and Senior Project Associate for O'Brien & Company, Inc.  is consulting on GHC's Puyallup and Burien Projects . In addition to her green building expertise, she brings more than 15 years experience in the health care services sector. She is a regular contributor to the Building Capacity Blog. Colleen recommends additional resources including Practice Green Health, The Healthier Hospitals Initiative, and The Department of Energy’s Hospital Energy Alliance.

Shoreline's Sustainability Strategy Bears Fruit: Interview with Juniper Nammi, Associate Planner, AICP.

  
Editor: The theme of this blog is to provide inspiration and practical advice to help build capacity in the realm of sustainability and green building. In 2007, O’Brien & Company partnered with the planning firm AHBL to help develop an Environmental Sustainability Strategy for the City of Shoreline. This Fall, we checked in with Juniper Nammi, Associate Planner for the City of Shoreline, and Project Manager for our contract to see how implementation of the Strategy is going.

Before we get into today, let’s provide the reader with some background. Can you provide a little history for our reader? JUNIPER: Certainly. As of 2006, there was actually a good deal happening throughout the City’s departments and among our residents with regard to sustainability. But there was nothing tying all of these efforts together and no comprehensive guidance going forward. In 2006 the City Council added "creating an environmentally sustainable community" to its goals. Under the Council’s charge, City Staff leadership worked on what this might mean and determined that a plan or strategy to define and direct municipal and community wide efforts towards sustainability would be helpful. The Council approved a consultant budget of $75K (keep in mind this was different economic times!) and City Staff leadership created an interdepartmental team to work with the consultant team. This team was the foundation for our green team which still functions today and is a key component of Strategy Implementation. The process took one year, and included review of our Comprehensive Plan and Development Code regulations, interviews with various city staff, and two very important community conversations. The Strategy document went through an intensive review and was adopted formally by the Council in 2008 with unanimous support of Council, Planning Commission, and the Parks Board.

You mentioned an interdepartmental green team as a key component of Strategy Implementation. What is your role on the team and how does the team function? I’m co-chair of the green team along with Miranda Redinger. We have about 13-15 members at any given time and meet monthly, although there are subcommittees that meet in between to do more specific tasks. I’m happy to say that all City departments are committed and the work is included in our work plans. With lean times, it is definitely a challenge to get full support from every team member all the time, but the team does provide a city-wide forum for the implementation of ideas generated during and since the strategic planning process in 2007-08. As I mentioned earlier, prior to the Strategy there were a number of individual efforts going on. This team gives us all a better understanding of what's happening in other departments, and allows us to collaborate. It enables us to do what we are already doing, better, and to build on that.

What kind of budget does the team have? Not much. We have a few hundred dollars for direct expenses. However, sustainable elements recommended in the Strategy are being integrated into many of the City's projects. An important outcome of the strategic planning process was to add the question -- What are the sustainability implications for your project? -- to the budgeting process.

Bravo! What other positive outcomes have you seen? The Strategy provided a good starting point for the green team’s discussions, but it intentionally wasn’t a prescriptive plan. If you visit our City’s website you will see projects that have been completed or are in-progress that were identified at the community conversations we held as part of the strategic planning process. The City is also doing a better job of explicitly calling out the environmental sustainability implications of our plan updates and capital projects

A good example is our Transportation Master Planning process, which is currently underway. A number of specific recommendations in the Sustainability Strategy are related to transportation planning and the plan update is systematically reviewing those recommendations for incorporation into the Master Plan. Recommendations being considered include transit oriented development, improving the safety and connectivity of walking and biking routes in the City, and addressing transit service issues.

Anything else? We were able to secure grant funding for some projects including getting our sustainability indicators and baselines up on our website, conducting a carbon inventory, and updating our urban tree inventory and related regulations. Also, we have an approved framework for an environmentally preferable purchasing policy in place. Now we are working on specifics for various categories of purchases such as office supplies, janitorial supplies, or consulting contracts.

What about green building efforts? Planning and Environmental Services staff are currently developing a comprehensive Green Building Program, including evaluation of building codes, outreach materials, technical assistance and training opportunities, as well as incentives for greener buildings in our zoning standards. We are developing guidance for capital improvement projects to ensure sustainability is a consideration along with financial feasibility. In addition, we are in the process of benchmarking the energy efficiency of our facilities through a comprehensive carbon emissions inventory effort.

In addition to all the activity you've described, have you seen a change in the way City staff approach the concept of environmental sustainability? From the very beginning of the strategic planning process, the City Council and management staff recognized that environmental sustainability was not just about trees and recycling. There has definitely been an organizational shift in thinking about environmental sustainability, broadening staff understanding beyond the commonly understood environmental topics of habitat and the three Rs. Interdepartmental involvement supported by the leadership has been a big part of making this shift happen.

Strategy development engaged the community in planning. How is the public involved now? Public participation opportunities in environmental sustainability include outreach events such as Earth Day Every Day and Clean Sweep Recycling events, community meetings and public hearings related to specific plan and project development topics, and ongoing volunteer opportunities in our parks. At this time the City does not have a citizen committee or volunteer opportunity specifically related to the Sustainability Strategy implementation because the Green Team is primarily focused on city operations, updating processes, and developing new programs.

Any lessons learned you’d like to share with municipalities trying to do something similar? Start with the basics. In our case the leadership explicitly added sustainability as a value for our community. This begins to shape all other guiding documents and policies. And it is critical to have interdepartmental collaboration, even more so when our budgets are so constrained. For this to happen you need the blessing of your leadership, both from elected officials and City staff. Shoreline has been fortunate to have the continued support of our Council, our City Manager, Department heads, and the community at large.

Are there other tools besides a sustainable strategy that you feel are/could be useful for municipal planners? (Including tools that don’t exist but would be great if they did!) We need analytical and assessment tools that are easy to use -- for example, a Life Cycle Cost Analysis tool that doesn't require you to be an LCA expert. We also need tools that can help us convey the significance of the data in an articulate manner.

What do you think the big opportunities are there now for municipalities? We need to be looking at neighborhood or district level solutions -- although there can be challenges with maintaining centralized systems. Collaboration with neighboring jurisdictions will also be essential, especially given limited resources, to share ideas and tools that work as well as coordinate projects and ideas that need to be implemented at a larger scale. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel if the city next door has an excellent wheel model to get things rolling. Cascadia Green Building Council has issued a challenge to create Living Communities using the International Living Building Institute's Standard.. It will take some time and effort to shift the thinking of the building industry and general public as to why this approach is a good idea, but I think it's time to move beyond the low hanging fruit to more comprehensive steps toward sustainability.

Juniper Nammi is currently an Associate Planner with the City of Shoreline and a Shoreline resident. She acted as project manager for development of the Shoreline Environmental Sustainability Strategy and is currently co-chair of the City’s interdepartmental Green Team, which is charged with implementation of this Strategy. Juniper also works as part of the permit services team reviewing a wide variety of permits and assisting customers when they have questions about City regulations. She has a Masters degree in Water Resources Management from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (2004).

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Workforce Training Tool Responds Directly to Industry Needs: Interview with Laurie Black, Director Workforce Initiatives

EDITOR: We enjoyed working with you on developing the "Sustainability in the Building and Construction Trades" course. Can you share with our readers how the course is being used? BLACK: The course was designed to introduce pre-apprentices and apprentices to green building concepts, terms and best practices. There are four recorded modules that can be used as is or used interactively. Quizzes test learning, and a certificate is available for those who complete the course successfully. Instructors are provided a guide to help them run the course.

We launched the course at the Pacific Northwest Apprenticeship Education Conference this past spring and we know it's being implemented in the field. We're getting a great response from the trainers using the course materials. In fact, it's now been adopted for use in the Building and Construction Trades Department's "Multi-Craft Core Curriculum" of the AFL-CIO.

Why do you think the course is working? A big part of the course's success is its genesis. We started with a 25-member green building industry panel in 2008-2009, chaired by David Allen of McKinstry and including many other design and construction professionals leading in the field of green building, as well as representation from educational, economic development, and workforce development groups. The panel's goal was to identify the highest workforce development priority; they felt strongly it was to integrate green building knowledge across sectors. They also felt it was important to target apprentices first because as these apprentices would move forward in their careers as journey workers and construction project managers they would bring that knowledge with them. The idea for the course emerged from this discussion. In addition, the course was built with the input of an advisory committee representing multiple trades and training programs. So the course was a direct response to the industry's need and was shaped with significant input from industry and industry trainers. Not only that, the narration was done by apprentices. This really appeals to trainers who want to offer something their trainees can relate to.

What's next on the agenda for your agency? The training you helped develop provides a foundation, intended to be used across trades and in any training program. It is not craft-specific by design. Now, through grant funding from the Department of Labor, we are contracting with Joint Apprenticeship Training Committees to deliver craft-specific training. We are also working with local community colleges to provide training for energy efficiency occupations in the built environment as well as training for more senior level positions, such as the commercial building energy auditing course that will be offered at South Seattle Community College.

What else? We have convened a Green Workforce Leadership Council, which includes employers from five green economy sectors: green building, energy production and distribution, manufacturing, transportation (both mass transit and fuel efficiency vehicles) and environmental remediation/protection. The goal of this council is to give us a cross-sector view of workforce needs as the green economy grows in our region. This council also commissioned a study to track all of the federal funds coming into the area, where it is going, and how many jobs have been created from that investment.

What challenges did you face in developing the Sustainability and the Building and Construction Trades? It was new territory for us. For one thing, we found that developing a video course (especially one that isn't boring!) is more involved than we thought. And making sure that all of the course elements went through proper review and met with the approval of the advisory group was of course, time-consuming. It was a great idea to use apprentices to narrate, but they needed a little extra coaching - the results were great though and the extra effort definitely was worth it.

From this vantage point, what key learnings can you offer someone in green building job development? First, an understanding that there are very few unique green building jobs. Mostly we are seeing existing jobs on projects that are pursuing energy efficiency. The skills for the green jobs in demand are largely the same. What is changing is the knowledge required -- knowledge about green materials, green products, and green processes. This knowledge needs to be integrated with existing job training programs. In fact, if you create resources outside those normal pathways, your trainees may not be able to access the jobs. Second, an understanding that there has been a significant lag between investments in training and investments in job creation. Estimates of green building job opportunities have been high, especially given the downturn in the economy. We've seen that in terms of weatherization and public building energy audits in particular. Policies and investments to create jobs are just coming on line now. It's important not to overpromise the opportunities, and to pace the training with them as they emerge and the economy recovers.

Laurie Black’s background combines over twenty years of executive experience in private industry and six years in non-profit workforce development, giving her an understanding of both the supply and demand sides of the workforce equation. Currently she is Director of Sector Initiatives for the Workforce Development Council of Seattle-King County (WDC) with a particular emphasis on green jobs training. The WDC is now leading or is a partner on three Department of Labor grants which bring over $10 million into the region for training in the building and construction trades as well as other occupations related to energy efficiency in the built environment.

Editor's Note: O'Brien & Company has also worked with Laurie on developing a job description and handbook for a "Sustainability Coordinator." DOL’s Bureau of Labor Statistics has just recognized positions related to sustainability, acknowledging that many companies are trying to "green" their operations and not all of them have the knowledge base to do so. Where there's a need, there's a job opportunity! This publication is for businesses and non-profits (especially small to mid-size organizations) that are not likely to have (or need) a senior level manager dedicated to sustainability, but would like to address operational issues in a more sustainable manner.  The publication will be available on the WDC and O’Brien websites and also available in a printed version from the WDC.

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How does a community support the use of FSC certified wood in its built environment? Ian Hanna, FSC-US Director of Development, Responds.

There are both direct and indirect ways a municipality can support the use of FSC-certified wood. But for readers who are unfamiliar with the term FSC- certified wood, I should provide a brief definition of the term.

FSC-certified wood is wood that is certified under the standards set the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). FSC-certification is given to companies and landowners to verify that they practice forestry that is consistent with FSC standards.

FSC is a non-profit organization that advocates responsible management of the world’s forests. Our standards ensure that forestry is practiced in an environmentally responsible way that takes into account economic viability, and social responsibility. Although there are other certification programs, FSC is by far the most rigorous and takes great pains to avoid being dominated by industry.

There are many benefits to using FSC-certified wood including the direct and permanent positive impact on the world’s forests and the people living from, in, and around the forest. You might want to check out FSC International or FSC-US websites for more information on these..

Communities that promote green building and/or sustainability in general will find that using FSC-certified wood is directly aligned with these goals. The same is true for communities that make a living from forest products. What are some practical ways to encourage its use?

First: Include specifications for using FSC-certified wood in public sector capital improvement projects. Specifications may require or include a preference for FSC-certified wood by including a deduct (preferred) or alternate to allow pricing FSC-certified wood as part of bid. (Deducts make it less convenient to drop the preference.) Include a list of FSC-certified wood sources in the bid documents.

Second: Provide education as part of the bidding process. When the Bainbridge Island City Hall was being contracted in 1998, it became clear that the “lowest” bidder (and winner of the project contract) knew the least about FSC-certified wood (and certified wood in general). The deduct he offered for FSC-certified wood was extremely high, triggering a strong negative political reaction community wide, as well as a call from the local paper to drop FSC-certified wood from the design. Miller-Hull (the project’s designer), O’Brien & Company (the sustainability consultant), and the Forest Stewardship Council understood this to be a “teachable moment” and organized a presentation at a televised Council meeting. At the conclusion of the presentation the Council voted to send the contractor back to the drawing board, and the bid (and actual cost) for FSC-certified wood was reduced fourfold. The project was able to utilize 70,000 board feet of FSC-certified wood, the largest quantity of wood used by a public project in the Northwest at that time.

Third: Require proof of understanding as part of the bid process. In the recent FSC Local Living Economies Tour (photo) conducted by King County’s Green Tools Program, participants learned that the bid process for the Cedar River Watershed Educational Center required prospective bidders to complete a pre-bid walkthrough as well as provide brief presentation on how the bidder intended to fulfill the project’s requirements for green building materials and FSC-certified wood. As a result of this and specifications with a preference for FSC-certified wood, the wood in the project’s buildings is comprised of 98% FSC-certified wood.

Fourth: Adopt a procurement policy for the municipality in general. The City of Seattle has had a preference for FSC-certified wood products in place for years.

Fifth: Use public projects to demonstrate the feasibility of using FSC-certified wood. One of the nice things about public projects is their access for this purpose. Signage and tours can tell the story to those in the private sector considering FSC-certified wood.

Sixth: Pursue FSC-certification of municipal land. This will create “anchors” of supply, and eliminate the argument that FSC-certified wood is not as available. Two of the mainstays of supply in the Puget Sound region are the Department of Natural Resources South Puget Region and the forestlands within Fort Lewis. In addition to municipal land, communities might work with private landowners who have development interests and might certify some of their forested land in return for permission to develop other property. The circle is completed for communities that are hoping to promote the local economy as part of their overall sustainability when they specific FSC-certified wood from local properties.

Seventh: Incentivize green building generally. FSC-certified wood is widely recognized as a green building material choice. There are several ways to incentivize green building, including providing free technical assistance, and – when construction is more active than it is now – expedited permitting.

Eighth: If your municipality does not own forestland, consider purchasing tree-based carbon offsets. You’ll want to make sure these offsets are based on trees growing in FSC-certified forests. If you want to encourage certification by small landowners, there is a group in the Northwest that has created a carbon offset program (NW Neutral) specifically with small landowners in mind. There may be similar programs elsewhere.

Ninth: Take the long view. If we can all agree that we want to live here forever, we need to be talking about forestry for the next 1000 years – the lifespan equivalent of a Doug Fir. Or even 3500 years, the lifespan of a Yellow Cedar. Government is the appropriate vehicle for taking the long view.

Ian Hanna is the Director of Development at the Forest Stewardship Council U.S. National Office and has been involved in FSC supply chain and market development since 1997. He brings broad perspective having worked across the supply chain in forest management, family forest certification, manufacturing, market development, and sales. With the FSC market quickly coming to scale, Ian is responsible for growing FSC-US's operational and financial capacity to match the needs of the thousands of producers, manufacturers and retailers that have integrated the protections and value FSC offers into their business strategy.

Building Capacity Blog is edited by Kathleen O'Brien, Principal and Founder of O'Brien & Company. Editor's Note: Some of you may not be aware but a very important ballot to revise the USGBC LEED Credits with regard to certified wood is underway. The consensus body is open to individuals employed by USGBC member organizations. If you opted-in and have not yet received information from USGBC regarding voting procedures, please email [email protected]. The ballot will remain open until Nov. 23, 11:59 p.m. ET.

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Transforming Markets and Practice through Environmental Procurement. Interview with Shirli Axelrod, City of Seattle

As you know the theme of this blog is to provide inspiration and practical advice to help build individual and organizational capacity in the realm of sustainability and green building. Our work with you has been to assist you with the City of Seattle’s considerable environmentally preferable purchasing (EPP) efforts. Why is this work a priority for the City? SHIRLI: Good question. As you know I work for the solid waste division of the Seattle Public Utility (SPU). To reduce solid waste, SPU encourages businesses and households to recycle. But recycling doesn’t work if there’s no market for recycled products. So the City started imposing upon itself requirements to purchase products that had recycled and/or recyclable content or were reusable. That was our first impetus.

Secondly, when you start looking at your purchases from an environmental standpoint, you realize the waste aspect is only one of the impacts – and that these impacts are inter-related. You realize that each product and even the manner in which you purchase and use those products represents an expenditure in energy, water, raw materials, and production of unwanted consequences, such as pollution or poor health. So we moved beyond the issues of waste reduction.

Thirdly, it is important for us to walk the talk. If we are telling our utility customers to save water, make less waste, the City should do the same. It’s a matter of integrity.

And finally, because we have significant buying power, and can combine forces with others in collaborative purchasing, we do much to transform the market.

I know there are lots of EPP projects you can talk about. Can you pick two to share with our readers? Certainly. What comes to mind first is the Green Office Fair we did last fall. This grew out of the City’s Paper Cuts Campaign, but concerned multiple ways to make office work more green AND more effective. In other words, we focused on environmental preferable practices that actually solve other problems. And what was most exciting to me was that this was not a vendor fair. Presenters were agency staff from around the region that had solutions to share. For example, animal control folks demonstrated volunteer web-based tracking system. (They have a huge number of volunteers). This saved them a lot of paper AND time. This same idea can be applied in many other circumstances. This was a great opportunity to share practical solutions and learn from each other.

The second thing that comes to mind is our work with regard to bio-based oil, a less-toxic/less polluting product. Reducing toxics exposure and pollution is the highest priority for me among environmental purchasing factors.

Why is that? Reducing toxics is an environmental justice issue as well as a pollution concern. As a public agency we are concerned about public health and pollution.

So, what did you like most about how you addressed the issue of bio-based oil? Every time we produced something for city staff, we presented it to private professionals as well. So we got double duty out of our effort. And, like the Green Office Fair, we relied on folks who actually use (or could use) the product day to day. In this case we sought out user experience in both the public and private sector. Panelists included a mechanic and maintenance supervisor for example, as well as an equipment dealer. They weren’t all experienced with bio-based oil so they asked good questions of each other. The other thing we did was test out some of our users concerns. We tested bio-based oil in a dozen or so pieces of equipment, and then asked the operators about their experience. We were able to report on these results.

With regard to EPP, what do you think the big opportunities are there now for municipalities or large enterprises? Although public agencies are collaborating a great deal now, collaborating in a variety of forms across public and private lines is much less explored. Something the City of Seattle is doing is allowing contractors with the City to purchase office supplies under the City’s contract as long as the vendor consents. (Editor’s Note: O’Brien & Company is taking advantage of this program). I think there’s more potential to be tapped in this regard.

Another area of opportunity is looking at purchasing contracts themselves. The green option – and that includes repairable, upgradable, and durable options, in addition to non-toxic, recycled, etc. – should be the default, not a soft substitute. This is especially important where you have lots of choices where product specifications can’t cover it all. We need to let manufacturers know we don’t want lots of “bad” products to choose from.

A third area of opportunity is connecting EPP to social responsibility and environmental justice. People talk about green jobs. A job that makes people sick is not a green job. Building a greater awareness about how and when negative environmental impacts occur, all along the life of a product has not been fully addressed.

A fourth opportunity is to figure out how to capture more recovered material in manufacturing here, rather than sending it away to be remanufactured. Where there’s industry there are jobs. And finally, there’s the issue of packaging. So much of what's still in the waste stream is packaging. This material is not necessarily intrinsically bad, but it can be short-lived or polluting. Can it be functional (for storage) or can be dissolved – like a “seed” cup? How much time would be saved in eliminating the unpacking now involved when products are delivered? Can products be delivered in a container that becomes the return container? The City gets our office supplies delivered in a box that can be reused.

If you were starting out today, what would you be focusing on? Do you have tips for the next generation or individuals just venturing into this arena?

1. Don’t spend a lot of time writing manuals. They rarely get used and are out of date before you’re done.
2. Spend more time listening to users about what they need. You’ll get their buy-in, but perhaps more importantly, you’ll be able to give them what they need! And don’t just talk with people who are doing the green thing. Talk to everybody and bring people along.
3. Collaborate across agencies and across public and private sector lines. Share information, such as specifications, borrow solutions. Go shopping together to use your buying power. You may not have to create a mandate about non-toxics, if you simply tell the market in a strong enough voice that that’s what you want).
4. Field test products. You’ll create “experts” on the product who will be much more convincing than you could ever be. And you’ll avoid specifying a problem product.
5. Check out what other folks are doing. We have a lot of resources on the City of Seattle’s Purchasing Website.

What’s next for you? In addition to exploring the opportunities I’ve already mentioned, I’d like to work on what’s still in the garbage that we'd like to get out. How can we prevent it from getting in the garbage in the first place? Can this material be perceived as industrial raw material? What would it to make it productive? Here, locally? In particular I’ve been focused on carpet recycling and products made with recovered carpet ingredients.

Any final advice? Yes. Find the changes people have wanted to make all along, give them permission, and give them what they need to make those changes.

Shirli Axelrod, Senior Environmental Analyst, has been working with the City of Seattle for over 20 years on environmental programs, first on hazardous waste, Superfund issues, and since 1998 on EPP issues when she drafted the City's first Environmental Purchasing Policy. She is Chair of the City’s Interdepartmental Green Purchasing Team, sponsored by the City of Seattle’s Purchasing Office. You can contact her at [email protected]. This interview was conducted by Kathleen O’Brien, Editor of Building Capacity Blog, and President of O’Brien & Company, which has assisted Shirli in EPP work (and enjoying it!) on multiple projects.

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