The Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT) is a 25-year-old Chicago nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting urban sustainability and improving community livability. We moved into an eighty-year-old former textile factory in 1987, and recently renovated our three-story brick building in 2000. In accordance with our organizational philosophy of utilizing existing resources, we chose to pursue a “green building” renovation by participating in the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Green Building Rating System™ Version 2.0. LEED’s integrated approach to building design and renovation has confirmed and expanded upon many of CNT’s design principals and policies. We are currently applying for Platinum status.

While green buildings are not a new idea, most of the applications have been in new construction or expensive showcases. One of the highlights of CNT’s green renovation project is that it addresses the reality that ninety percent of buildings that will be standing in 2020 are already built. If green building techniques are to have a significant impact, they must be made affordable and applicable to existing buildings and enable them to achieve the highest LEED certification levels. A second highlight of this project is that it shows that green rehabbing can be done aesthetically using readily available products. The creative use of space, light, color, textures and contrast has transformed an old industrial shell into an attractive -- as well as healthy -- place to work. The third highlight of this project is its success in substantially increasing the occupancy in the building in a dense urban area without adding building mass, height, developing open areas, or increasing reliance on public services and utilities. This was done through a combination of resource conserving design, installing systems to reduce the peak demand for utilities, and enhanced use of renewable energy sources.

In 1999, the Center for Neighborhood Technology created the Green Building Committee. The committee meets once a month to research and discuss strategies for maintaining our green building, and encourages green practices amongst staff. We are happy to share our greening-the-office strategies with you! If you are interested in receiving CNT’s Green Building Manual, please contact Lisa McNally at 773-278-4800.

For more information about the Center for Neighborhood Technology's green building, please visit us at http://building.cnt.org.

Our office has a lot of old computer hardware (some 7-10 years old). As you may know, landfilling computer hardware is bad for the environment, and as I understand it, some computer hardware is classified as toxic waste.

Instead of buying new computers, our plan is to reuse them. We are going to use a terminal server system where a server does the "heavy lifting." Buying just one server replaces the need to buy 20-40 new computers.

We'll also be improving productivity and saving money on acquisition costs and maintenance costs.

I hope this system (and the better software it allows) will encourage staff to use email instead of paper memos.

The old computers can have their hard drives removed which may reduce electricity costs. It's easier to turn off the computers: no need to shut down, just cut the power switch. The computers turn on quickly. This will encourage people to turn computers off more often.

I started a Green Team at my ngo office about 2 years ago. We had a lot of energy and good buy-in.

The main problem we had, however, was out of our control: our landlord. Despite requiring our office to fill out and register a recycling plan (only because the city required HIM to have one on file for all tenants), we consistently found and continue to find the building cleaning staff putting our carefully segregated recyclables into the same trash pushcarts as our garbage.

When confronted, the landlord stonewalled with the answer that "it was seperated in the basement", which of course makes no sense, as we had obviously already seperated it ourselves. We have no way of forcing him to show us this mythical recyling effort in the cellar and have to take his word for it. It's obviously going straight to the trash heap.

It seems the only option left to us is to report the building management to the city authorities, but of course no one is going to do that and risk the consequences. So, those of use that care cart out our glass and plastic on our own time and recycle everything by hand at home.

Not looking for a solution here, just warning of the kind of pitfalls that await those with a green outlook.

matt i.
Pact
Washington DC

I know the folks over at http://thinkhost.com power their web servers on wind and other green energy, plus they have lots of other services that are of interest to non profits

Marshall,

Yes, Thinkhost is great, I use them myself for many domains. BTW, until the end of this month (March) they have a great special running for only $7.25/mo which includes tons of space and bandwidth. While I've been with many hosting services, these folks truely seem to have it together with support and their systems.

John Lorance
CompuMentor/TechSoup

KILL the fax machince!!!!!!!

I have completely removed the fax as a communication tool for my business. THere are just to many other options for paperless communications these days.

http://www.imusranchfoods.com/index3.aspx?categoryid=105

you can get green cleaning products here..


oz

Back when I was on the science beat at Wired News, I wrote about several green Web hosting companies. Not sure if they're all still around or following the same business practices, but they're worth researching if you're looking to "go green" with as many of your business operations as possible.

Wired News
This Blog is 100 Percent Solar
http://www.wired.com/news/planet/0,2782,67785,00.html


--Amit

Speaking of greening your office. I found that the SF-based, Method, cleaning products company which produces environmentally and animal friendly cleaning products now sells them at Target with refills available there too, making them very affordable for offices to switch off their chemicals.

John Lorance
CompuMentor/TechSoup

One would think all the Solaris shops would have solar heating .. ???

heh

Oz

One would think all the Solaris shops would have solar heating .. ???

You have such a sunny disposition, Oz.

Having had the same type of building owner, here are a few tips:

1. Have you checked with your local recycling/garbage company to see if they have free rolling bins available for the sorted materials.

2. Try to talk to the building owner about his costs for garbage, and then estimate the amount of material that could be recycled and how much he will save by recycling. Its been my experience, its the bottom line that gets them to comply.

3. Look for a way to organized the recyclable bins in the basement, and a way to include the smaller sorting bins onto cleaning staff carts. I found large signs (bilingual if cleaning staff are Spanish) on which bin was for what.

4. Try adding a monthly newsletter for the building until the program is well established. This keeps everyone competing for compliance.

Good luck!

What about having your web site powered by solar....AISO (http://www.aiso.net) is 100% solar powered, both their servers and data center are powered by onsite solar panels. And they also have a partnership with Co-Op America, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the U.S. Green Building Council. Plus, they are doing more then just making sure their electricity is green. Their data center and office is green too by using environmentally friendly air conditioners, solar tubes to bring in natural light, a propane powered generator instead of diesel, VMWare virtualization to reduce their server electricity usage, 6 watt energy saving desktops computers for their employees, and soon to be LEED certified as a green data center, the only public one in North America, at least that I have found so far.

The ultimate sustainability would be to actually create workspace products that never have to be recycled or put in a landfill. Reconfigurable, modular office furnishings, in other words. A client of ours Neocase (http://www.neocase.com) and other manufacturers are onto this approach. It involves casework, shelving and workspaces that are not built in but fully modular, and can easily be moved, combined and reconfigured. Like legos for office workers!