In brownfields’ first generation, regulatory agencies drove cleanup for cleanup’s sake, with no consideration for economic or community context. In the second generation, elements of proposed redevelopments crept in for cost savings: pathways or building foundations, for example, might form part of the cap on a contaminated site.

In the third generation, the most polluted sites have been dealt with, and most of the thousands of brownfields that remain will never rise to the top of the environmental priority list. What’s driving cleanup of these sites is their economic and community value. Often occupying desirable, in-town locations, blighted sites have the potential to contribute to their community’s green space, density, employment, tax base, morale, health, and perceived viability. “In the third generation of brownfield cleanup,” says Maul, “the development is the remedy.”

Key to this trend, which has been maturing in the Pacific Northwest over the last decade or so, is a reduced level of uncertainty around brownfield transactions and liabilities. Public sector leadership in both Washington and Oregon has generated a suite of tools to allow market forces to deal confidently with contaminated sites. Statewide programs provide funding for planning, market analysis, and community engagement so brownfield cleanup gets wrapped into a larger value proposition.

The landfill site before it was capped by an artificial-turf athletic complex.

“The reality is local government leaders don’t wake up in the morning and say, ‘How do I manage my environmental liability?’” says Jim Pendowski, manager of Washington’s Toxics Cleanup Program. “Their priority is making their community a better place to live.” An example of how Washington’s Department of Ecology (ECY) helps make the link between those two objectives clear is the Integrated Planning Grant, a small investment that enables a local government to explore what its brownfield cleanup would involve, and what benefits its community would gain. Just as importantly, the integrated planning process gives local leaders a positive experience of working with ECY, and builds relationships that facilitate change.

The cleanup of a 40-acre defunct wood treatment facility on Lake River in the Port of Ridgefield, Washington, helped pioneer the collaborative paradigm characteristic of third-generation projects. When the Pacific Wood Treating Corporation went bankrupt in 1993, it abandoned hundreds of thousands of gallons of wood-treating chemicals, thousands of tons of hazardous waste, severely contaminated soil and groundwater, and toxins migrating along the aquifer toward the Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge. With the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) gearing up to list the site for mandatory cleanup, the Port of Ridgefield found itself liable for the entire cost of remediation.

Facing the prospect of bankruptcy to achieve even a minimally cleaned site that would remain a fenced blight in the middle of town for years to come, the Port approached ECY. “For [ECY], it wasn’t just about cleanup,” says Maul, who helped the municipality strategize a solution, “it was also about maintaining the viability of the community.”

ECY negotiated a voluntary, but no less rigorous, cleanup that would keep the project out of the cumbersome federal system. And when the Port struggled to fund the work, ECY began to innovate to get the job done. It funded half the initial cleanup phase, for example, dependent on matching funds from the community. And when the Port could not immediately come up with its share, ECY agreed to front the money on the strength of the Port’s grant and appropriation prospects. “I can’t emphasize enough how innovative it was for a regulatory agency to do this,” says Maul. “It took a lot of courage for them to think outside the box like they did.”

Columbia Memorial Hospital’s new 18,000-sq-ft comprehensive cancer treatment center and specialty clinic. Rendering: Petersen Kolberg & Associates (PKA) Architects

Today, the wood treatment site has been cleaned to a higher standard than could have been achieved under the first-generation paradigm. The surface chemicals and contaminated structures have been removed, the soil cleaned, and some 30,000 gallons of recalcitrant chemicals extracted from the groundwater with an innovative steam-enhanced technology. The preserved wildlife refuge is one of two refuges nationwide piloting a new paradigm for what such places can be. And long-range planning decisions made in the context of the collaborative cleanup have helped make the Port of Ridgefield the fastest growing community in the state. “Ridgefield shaped our thinking,” says Pendowski. “It showed us how looking more broadly can pull our environmental agenda along.”

Across the river in Astoria, Oregon, the transformation of a leaching landfill into a new sports complex demonstrates how a public-private partnership can harness the momentum of multiple agendas. Over 30 years ago, Oregon’s Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) ordered the city of Astoria to prevent leachate flowing from its landfill into a nearby creek and wetland. Astoria closed the landfill, but capping it properly was more than the city could afford. The leaching landfill dragged on as an expense, liability, and risk.

Meanwhile, Astoria’s Columbia Memorial Hospital needed to expand but could not. With the Columbia River on two sides of the city, and the Coast mountain range behind, developable land is scarce, and the hospital was landlocked—except for the high school’s football field right next door. So Columbia Memorial made a proposal: If the hospital provided most of the $8 million to close the landfill properly and redevelop it as a sports complex, could the hospital have the old sports field for its expansion?

Winner of a Phoenix Award for this innovative solution to a blighted site, the development has given the school district a new 17-acre sports facility capable of hosting regional and state athletic events, with the potential to generate revenue from rentals. The hospital has a site to expand its services, including a cancer diagnosis and treatment center so that patients will no longer face a 45- to 90-minute drive for treatments elsewhere. And, of course, the landfill no longer leaches.

“The redevelopment actually wound up enhancing the landfill closure,” notes Tim Spencer, DEQ’s project manager. The sports field, with a membrane liner beneath it, is a much more sophisticated cap over that portion of the landfill. The athletic building roofs reroute rainwater so it cannot absorb into old waste. And project details designed to monitor and vent methane gas generated in the landfill ensures the site’s ongoing safety.

“The idea that we could do more than simply stop polluting, that we could end up with something that is an asset to the community, is very clear at Astoria,” says Spencer. “We’re all learning from it.”

The land constraints that drove Astoria’s brownfield solution also play out on a larger scale in the city of Portland, Oregon. For Portland, as for Astoria, sprawl is not an option. “All our opportunities for growth already lie within the city limits,” says Lisa Abuaf, Central City Manager at the Portland Development Commission. “We can’t expand, so brownfields are the opportunities for achieving the city’s objectives.”

The first new building in the Zidell Yards redevelopment, the Emery apartments, is LEED Silver.

Some of the city’s most significant brownfield opportunities stretch along its riverfront, where former industrial lands are finding new life as contemporary urban developments on the leading edge of green. The first phase in the rehabilitation of Portland’s south waterfront, for example, has enabled Oregon Health Sciences University, one of Portland’s largest employers, to expand within the city, developing the first large medical building to achieve Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Platinum certification, and partnering with two other universities to develop the COTE Top Ten–winning LEED Platinum Collaborative Life Sciences Building, all part of the university’s larger commitment to environmental leadership.

Next up, on the south waterfront is Zidell Yards, a 33-acre former ship-wrecking site. After an award-winning remediation removed contamination hot spots, capped remaining residue, and created new habitat for salmon along the riverbanks, this site now constitutes the largest privately owned bare-land waterfront parcel in Portland. The City of Portland has reached a development agreement with the site’s owner—a family business with deep roots in the city—that will govern the site’s transformation into a projected 1.44-million-sq-ft mixed-use neighborhood. Prioritizing density, transit, district energy, green infrastructure, LEED certification of buildings, affordable housing, public open space, and a construction contract requirement for the inclusion of minority and women apprentices, the development agreement exemplifies the city’s approach to brownfield redevelopment as an opportunity for sustainable city building.

In addition to its city building priorities, Portland sees in brownfield redevelopment a chance to cultivate and market the expertise of the city’s green development practitioners. As economics drive more brownfield redevelopments, and as more jurisdictions adopt a collaborative paradigm, this exportable knowledge base can expect to find a wide market. In China, for example, the need for both arable land and urban growth is highlighting the redevelopment potential in contaminated urban sites. “Internationally and into the future,” says Maul, “brownfield redevelopment will drive the majority of cleanups.”

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Top: Jeff Getty,. lead design architect of the Fort Bliss Hospital Replacement. Middle: Mark Meaders, sustainability manager for HDR. Bottom: Erin McMillan, HDR project architect.

While conditions at the Walter Reed facility, then located in Washington, D.C., developed into a scandal, there was a very positive result that would direct the design of military hospitals going forward.

“It certainly awakened a lot of people in the Department of Defense to a lot of things they weren’t cognizant of,” Getty says. “There’s a great sensitivity now to treating these folks [wounded soldiers] with great care.”

Today Getty is the lead design architect of the Fort Bliss Hospital Replacement, a $1 billion project that will replace the current hospital, the William Beaumont Army Medical Center at Fort Bliss. The new medical center, in El Paso, Texas, will embrace the highest principles of healthcare architecture: a patient-centered, world-class complex that incorporates U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) guidelines and evidence-based design (EBD), as well as a Sustainable Return on Investment (SROI) philosophy. An original HDR concept, SROI estimates the value of a project by assigning a monetary value to every cost and benefit, including economic, social, and environmental.

By weighing the effect of every aspect of military hospitals on patients, their families, medical staff, and the environment, the Fort Bliss facility will be a paragon of healthcare settings for treating active soldiers, veterans, and their families. Scheduled to open in 2018, the hospital will showcase sustainability, smart technology, and energy-saving features in a visually comforting, patient-centered setting.

In summer 2018, HDR plans to apply for LEED Silver certification in two areas: LEED for Healthcare for the center’s hospital and clinic, and LEED for New Construction for ancillary structures, such as the administration building and the central utility plant.

Mark Meaders, LEED AP BD+C, a sustainability manager in HDR’s Dallas office, says that HDR’s effort toward sustainability and design—putting people and the planet first—is based on a simple but hard-hitting mantra: “Our resources are not infinite. With the exception of the sun’s energy and wind, they are finite.”

Meaders is leading the Fort Bliss project’s sustainability efforts for HDR, an award-winning global firm with roughly 1,500 employees. HDR has examined countless components that will create a state-of-the-art Fort Bliss medical facility, featuring 127 inpatient rooms with smart room technology and plenty of natural light.

The goal of HDR’s Fort Bliss project team is to design a world-class medical facility in support of our veterans and their families.

HDR employed a leading-edge strategy to identify products with reduced toxins for the project, helping to avoid toxic chemicals such as heavy metals, phthalates, and perfluorinated compounds. The principle of material transparency—requesting that building product manufacturers disclose the materials in their products—provided a great assist.

“HDR, as well as many design firms, is placing a big focus on health and wellness, material transparency, and minimizing, or eliminating, chemicals of concern,” Meaders says. Options are much more plentiful today, he adds, than when the design started in 2010.

HDR’s holistic approach is focusing on sustainable building materials with recycled content and certified wood, and materials from regional sources. Many inpatient rooms will be equipped with ceiling-mounted lifts and rubber flooring, to ease physical stress for patients and medical staff. Inpatient rooms will be cleaned with a hydrogen peroxide vapor system to eliminate pathogens like the MRSA bacteria, avoiding the use of toxic cleaners.

Energy-efficient measures will be featured throughout, including high-efficiency centrifugal chillers with variable speed drives, and passive energy reduction through reflective roofing systems and shading devices on exterior windows.

Another exciting component is the addition of eight simulation labs, including an operating room, and seven classrooms, all aiding in research and staff education. “Research is part of world-class design,” says Erin McMillan, an HDR project architect who has been helping to execute Getty’s vision. “The simulation areas will show whether a premise of design actually panned out.”

The U.S. Armed Forces has been a significant partner in making strides for sustainability and patient-centered care in a truly world-class setting, Meaders says. “The military has a big focus on energy and water efficiency and independence, resiliency, climate impacts on design, and other factors,” he says. “I believe this project is an excellent example of such efforts.”

Locating technology, materials, and other strategies that are cost competitive—one aspect of SROI—is imperative, Meaders says. But the SROI concept goes much further to determine the real cost of each part. SROI analysis converts to dollars all relevant incremental social, environmental, and financial impacts of a structure, including air and water quality, waste reduction, and human health, as well as financial impact (such as the cost of labor).

“All the analysis that went into the SROI measures was unique and forward-thinking,” Meaders says. “I have not worked on another project that has performed that level of analysis.”

A geothermal energy system was not pursued after a 6,000-ft test well showed the water was not hot enough for the planned system. Likewise, a plan for a reclamation plant to clean wastewater for irrigation and other nondrinking uses also was not feasible.

Grounds will be planted with natural grasses and indigenous plants, instead of a traditional grass lawn, creating a beautiful desert landscape under a breathtaking open sky. Drought-resistant trees will dot the site, measuring more than 16 million square feet, as well as native shrubs, perennials, and succulents.

Two overarching goals have guided the project, Getty says. “The first one is to improve the lives of patients to make better outcomes and better care,” he says. “The second is to improve staff satisfaction and health. It’s all about caring for patients and staff.” Inherent in that philosophy is, Getty adds, “being a responsible steward of environmental concerns and protecting resources.”

Meaders concurs that the environment must take center stage in the Fort Bliss project. “It is our duty and responsibility to manage and conserve natural resources for future generations,” he says. “It is also our responsibility to leave the Earth a better place than when we got it from our parents and grandparents.” 

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She regularly confesses these sins for a reason: to dispel the idea that environmentalists have to be perfect in order to be effective. In fact, when she gives talks, she will often open by asking the audience to think about their own eco sins. “What do you do that’s really naughty, that you should not do relative to the environment?” she asks. Then, she proceeds to list her own sins.

The minute she does that, she notices the posture of the people in the room begins to change, to relax. The realization that she is not perfect—that no one is—can motivate people to make their own small changes.

“And then they begin to build on that and get excited about it,” Henderson says. “I just start saying, ‘What could you do? Everybody could do something, what could you do?’”

It is that friendly, down-to-earth, easy-going pragmatism that has led Henderson to be known as the “commonsense environmentalist” and to lend her green building skills and expertise to projects around the world that are as diverse as the LEED Platinum 1.5-million-sq-ft Enco Energy Complex in Thailand and the LEED Silver Pierce Chapel at Wesleyan College in Georgia.

But what does commonsense environmentalism mean? It means just what it sounds like: environmentalism that makes sense in the real world and is balanced with practical needs and expectations. For instance, Henderson says it is all fine and good to install water-saving automatic faucets. But if no one can get water to come out of them, they don’t make sense.

“I don’t really care if it’s environmental or not. I don’t care if it’s saving money. I don’t care if it’s saving water,” she says. “If it doesn’t function, it doesn’t work, it’s not the right solution.”

Henderson strives for a good environmental, social, and economic balance in every project she tackles, and rejects the idea that sometimes the environment should be a priority at the expense of the other two ideals.

“I might be a weirdo environmentalist by saying that, but I really don’t think so,” she says. She understands that for people to really adopt environmentalism, it has to fit into their lives, not the other way around.

Practicality is not the only thing Henderson looks for in helping her clients achieve their green goals. She also encourages them to find a personal connection to environmentalism. She insists that everyone has a connection to the environment, regardless of whether they realize it.

“I think it’s important for our teams that we work with to know their story,” she says. “I think when people understand their story and their conviction around it, they’re able to better communicate it.” For instance, maybe a client has a daughter with asthma or an elderly parent with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), maybe they are avid recyclers at home. Henderson remembers one client who was ultimately moved by seeing a mattress floating down the river outside his home.

“That’s really the connection,” she says. “Once they personalize it—that’s up to the CEO level and everywhere in between—they own it; they can begin to achieve more.”

Henderson’s own story starts in the art and architecture world, trying her hand at jobs ranging from designing large-scale public works projects to being a United Way ambassador. However, nothing fully stuck for her until she remembered how much she loved her environmental science class at Auburn University, and eventually founded the sustainable design studio at TVS (now tvsdesign).

“I think I’ve always had a distinct sense of purpose. I tend to go to the grocery store with vigor. Life’s a sponge, and every day I’m trying to wring it out,” she says. “It sounds so cliché, but I can make a difference…I guess I looked at environmentalism as stewardship, responsibility.”

As she encourages companies and the people who run them to discover and connect with their own environmental stories, Henderson finds that her clients often evolve in their environmental goals. Whereas at first they may simply consider “going green” a way to respond to their customers’ expectations or market trends, they quickly want to do more and push their goals even further.

“What I’m constantly amazed at, and excited by, and what gives me hope is that once they get into the process, they get really excited by it,” she says. “They want more.”

Although she finds apathy disheartening, Henderson believes that the best way to combat it is by making that personal connection. To that end, she says that she will work with clients that do not have a perfect lifecycle or footprint, clients that others in her field would not dream of working with.

“I’m one of those environmental consultants that will work with anyone,” she says. “Everyone deserves to be helped, and I want to help them. And sometimes I prefer those jobs because they need the most help.”

She recalls being in a meeting with one of those companies when one of its employees started to talk about what an avid recycler he was at home. “I almost started crying. It’s the revealing of those stories that they don’t even know are inside them that makes me excited,” she says. “I can help someone foster that story and what that story leads to…multiplying hands is probably my most motivating thing.”

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In April the FHA Office of Multifamily Housing Programs announced a change that will benefit certain FHA-insured loans through reduced upfront and annual insurance rates. For new or renovated LEED-certified multifamily properties, annual rates will drop to some of the lowest levels that FHA is allowed to offer.

“By reducing our rates, this Administration is taking a significant step to encourage the preservation and development of affordable and energy-efficient housing in communities large and small. This way, hard-working families won’t have to make the false choice between quality or affordable housing,” said U.S. Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Julián Castro in announcing the changes.

This change is extremely beneficial to LEED-certified (and other green-certified) apartments and co-ops. Specifically, properties that certify with LEED and use FHA multifamily financing will have their insurance rates reduced from between 45 and 70 basis points to 25. Similar moves from Fannie Mae demonstrate that reducing insurance rates for green certified properties can save projects hundreds of thousands of dollars over the life of a loan.

The scale of this change holds the promise of rapidly altering the landscape for new and rehabilitated apartments. The Office of Public Engagement at HUD estimates that in 2015, FHA originated nearly 1,000 multifamily loans, totaling $10 billion and over 100,000 apartment units around the country. They expect to replicate similar numbers for 2016.

Families and individuals stand to benefit the most from these changes. Oftentimes residents of limited means spend a disproportionate amount of their monthly income on utility expenses. In 2014 the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that families with incomes in the lowest 20 percent spent nearly double the percentage of their income on heating and electricity than families in the highest 20 percent.¹ Building and renovating housing to be more energy- and water-efficient lowers monthly utility bills with the effective result of families retaining more take-home pay for discretionary expenses.

By incentivizing certification, HUD and FHA recognize the value third-party certification has in yielding quality places to call home that reduce operating costs, improve indoor air quality, and reduce overall impact on the environment.

For more information on the new financing options, please visit the websites of the Office of Multifamily at HUD and the Federal Register.

Top Left: Avena Bella incorporates solar power, energy-efficient heat pumps for heating and cooling, and a continuously running energy recovery ventilation system brings in fresh, filtered outside air. Residents have access to a community center, community garden, play area, technology lounge, swimming pool, and landscaped walkways between buildings. Top Right: Built by EAH Housing with sustainability in mind, Avena Bella is an 80-unit affordable housing community in Turlock, California.

1. Quintiles of income before taxes: Annual expenditure means, shares, standard errors, and coefficients of variation, Consumer Expenditure Survey, 2014 available at: http://www.bls.gov/cex/2014/combined/quintile.pdf.

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The development phase of the program was a long one. Determining what such a program should look like meant careful consideration of its participants and the curriculum necessary to provide results-driven, on-the-job training for employees responsible for the maintenance and operations of commercial buildings, Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certified or otherwise.

“It took us a good amount of time to come up with our strategy,” says Dominique Hargreaves, executive director of USGBC-LA. “The core team has worked together for over five years to make this program come to fruition.” That team includes: USGBC-LA, Building Skills Partnership (BSP), Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA), and Service Employees International Union (SEIU). The group took cues from the Green Professional Building Skills Training program (otherwise known as GPRO), a national training and certificate program designed by USGBC’s New York City chapter, Urban Green, which trains electricians, construction managers, and the like. “We looked at their model [in terms of] how to create trainings, testing, and certification,” explains Hargreaves.

The Green Janitors Program mission is to promote operations and maintenance practices that enable buildings to meet green performance standards, with special emphasis on energy efficiency and building health. “It’s really critical that the janitors understand their role in building management and operations maintenance. It’s the kind of thing that can be taught and it can be cultivated,” says Hargreaves, adding that all of the work those employees perform on a daily basis shows up in utility bills, water bills, etc. “They have a large impact on the building.”

The program is designed to enhance coworker collaboration.Training manuals and materials are provided in each person’s native language.

By 2014, the team had hammered out the logistics and put into motion a pilot program designed for eight buildings. There were 150 participating employees maintaining buildings belonging to companies like CBRE, Commonwealth, Equity, and JMB Realty, among others. The entertainment industry, in particular, has been very involved in the program. “We’ve really found a nice niche with studios,” notes Hargreaves. “[That industry] is really a cornerstone of our economy and what makes our city interesting.” SONY, Dreamworks, Paramount, and (soon) NBCUniversal support a strong cohort of certified janitorial workers. It is important to note that this program aids corporate responsibility goals like energy conservation and LEED certification. Buildings whose janitorial workers have completed the Green Janitors certificate program are able to apply for the LEED pilot credit IPpc81 for operators and service workers.

In terms of training, janitors receive 30 hours of instruction, during which time they learn hands-on energy management and green cleaning techniques. The program is organized into seven modules. The first, introduction to building sustainability, examines topics like recycling, water conservation, and LEED certification—it is a kind of “buy-in to the program,” explains Hargreaves. The second is focused on green cleaning, which is five hours spent studying environmentally preferred cleaning agents. “This module is another kind of empowerment [tool] for janitors to try new products and see that they do work,” she says, making the point that the worst thing for a janitor is to receive a complaint that something is not clean. “So getting comfortable with new products that are better for their health and that of the environment, yet that are still effective, is really important.”

The third module is devoted to energy conservation. “Energy conservation is key and one of the reasons this program came into existence,” notes Hargreaves. Unlike most professionals who work in a commercial building, janitors really have eyes on energy waste and overuse throughout the building. During this portion of the program they learn about plug loads and vampire energy, and they perform energy hunts, whereby they form teams to survey their respective buildings, floor by floor, to identify good versus wasteful practices. “The janitors are the eyes and the ears of a building,” she says. “They have a lot of knowledge about the building and its usage.” So training them on specifics like energy waste and water strategies is helpful and another piece of the empowerment pie. They come away understanding why it is important to save energy and seeing themselves as potential agents for change.

The fourth module is a five-hour training on recycling and diversion, during which they learn why it is crucial to redirect waste away from landfills.

The fifth is health and safety, and runs for two hours. “It’s really critical that janitorial workers think about health and safety in the workplace because they do come into contact with all kinds of hazards,” notes Hargreaves. Water conservation is the focus of the sixth module—it runs for four hours and includes a “water hunt” that identifies possible conservation measures and areas in need of improvement in a given building. Finally, the last module is dedicated to review and testing.

Because the training occurs at their place of employment, participants are among their coworkers. It is taught in Spanish, though it can be taught in English as well. “They are more comfortable learning the material in their native language,” notes Hargreaves. They take two multiple-choice exams, a midterm and a final. Once they pass both, they have a graduation ceremony that includes a keynote speaker, and they receive a certificate and a pin, meant to be worn while at work, which demonstrates their “loyalty, allegiance, and pride.” The program fosters teamwork and gives people, many of whom have not received higher education, the opportunity to graduate.

Judging from surveys taken from building management staff, as well as the janitors themselves, it is clear their level of engagement and confidence in their skills have been greatly enhanced. Prior to this program, janitors did not necessarily understand why certain sustainable procedures or materials were required, or the kind of impact they could have on energy reduction and water consumption—and ultimately, human health—through their work.

“This has gone to a way more profound place than we had originally designed the program to do,” says Hargreaves. “It was designed to train and up-skill workers.” But beyond having expanded their knowledge, vocabulary, and skill set, they also absorbed what they learned on a personal level. Many of them now recycle at home and use green cleaning products, and they are more cognizant of energy and water usage in their homes. In short, the program helped them expand their concept of green cleaning to green living.

“All of that has [permeated] their family lives,” notes Hargreaves. “They have really taken this knowledge to heart as a better way of living and working. They also have a better understanding of their role in the building.” They now see how their work relates to green building standards, like LEED certification and ENERGY STAR. “They feel empowered because they know that what they do every day helps the environment.”

Feedback from managers has been very positive. In many cases, the janitors have exceeded expectations in terms of how much information they came away with, how much they retained, and how they are applying it to their work. “They were happy to see the workers’ confidence develop,” notes Hargreaves, adding that their communication skills have also improved.

One such manager, Cristina Rosales, Pacific Corporate Towers (PCT) supervisor in El Segundo, says: “I’m glad that the staff attended the class because it gave me support and reinforced the changes that have been made in PCT to be a green building. There is a difference between me telling them what to do and them learning the importance of why.”

Lesbia Chinchilla, an employee in the Oppenheimer Towers and a graduate of the Green Janitor certificate program, notes, “Being part of the [program] has really opened my eyes as a janitor and as a consumer. I was aware of topics like the three R’s and water conservation but not to the extent that we learned in the class and how it applies to my work.”

In its totality, the program is also an example of social equality, whereby everyone participates in the management and maintenance of a building. Janitors, alongside building owners and managers, are empowered to actively engage in the goals of the LEED rating system. “I think the hands-on learning [portion] of the program really…helps them be more informed and helps them come to the sustainability table,” says Hargreaves. “This program is empowering them to join the conversation.”

Now in its third year, the Green Janitors’ reach has spread from Los Angeles County to Orange County and San Diego. Expansion goals include statewide trainings. Furthermore, the team has pledged to train 800 janitorial workers by 2017 as part of the city of Los Angeles’ Sustainable City pLAn, which was released in April 2015. When encouraged to adopt the plan, USGBC-LA and its partners chose to focus on workforce development. Currently, they are signing up additional LA building owners’ employees for training. “The state of California is next,” says Hargreaves with conviction. The five-year plan sees the Green Janitors Program available across the country—they have already begun discussions with partners in Chicago and New York.

The vitality of their mission is clear, and summarized in Hargreaves’s own words: “You can design, build, and engineer the most efficient building but, when it comes down to it, it’s all about operations and how people use the building…it’s people that make buildings efficient.”

At the completion of the course, each graduate receives a certificate and a lapel pin, meant to be worn while at work.

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These are just a few examples, he says, of an unfortunate ecosystem that not only trucks tons of recyclable waste to landfills across North America but one that eliminates local jobs as well. “The great thing about recycling is that when you recycle, local industry has to process it as opposed to when you send to a landfill.”

It is an evolving—emphasis on the gerund—time in the recycling industry, which has expanded in recent years with multiple players entering the market, from massive multinational and national billion dollar companies to small, family-owned businesses. The last decade has also seen significant innovation enter the field—such as optical sorters, which recognize and sort different materials, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags to identify products, and trucks using fully automated arms. But there is room for improvement. A 2015 report by the Natural Resources Defense Council and As You Sow found that the United States recycles only half of discarded packaging and 34.5 percent of municipal waste.

Enter the Closed Loop Fund, founded in 2013, which describes itself as a “social impact fund investing $100 million to increase the recycling of products and packaging,” with goals of creating more than 20,000 jobs locally, diverting more than 20 million tons of waste from landfills, and eliminating 50 million tons of greenhouse gas by 2025.

“I had been thinking for a while about how to organize the largest consumer goods companies in the world to collate their capital in one place that could then be used to solve systemwide obstacles [in recycling], which they would benefit from if they were eliminated,” says Gonen, the fund’s CEO and co-founder. “The issue I had was the amount of capital required from each of these companies was going to be challenging to access because it would require CEO or top executive sign-off. To get that from the top consumer goods companies—some of whom are rivals or in different industries—was going to take years.”

That is where Rob Kaplan came in. Now a managing director at the fund, Kaplan was, at the time, leading product sustainability at Walmart, “which was seeing a lot of bottom-line benefits from recycling but saw limitations in the infrastructure that existed. They wanted to know what needed to be done to build out that infrastructure since they saw such a bottom-line benefit to recycling,” Gonen says.

Together, Gonen and Kaplan worked to build out the fund in two years, amassing 10 backers from some of the largest retail consumer goods companies in the world, such as PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, Unilever, 3M, and Colgate-Palmolive, each with a $5 million minimum investment. Gonen says the 10 investors saw the “tremendous promise in the financial product, and in most cases our argument was compelling enough to sign off on a large investment.”

Thus far, Closed Loop Fund has made seven investments in the recycling industry. It has invested in recycling equipment for a facility in Chicago; recycling carts for Portage County, Ohio; and trucks and carts for a facility in the Quad Cities region of Iowa. QRS Plastics, a facility in Maryland that processes hard-to-recycle plastics—numbers 3 to 7—from recycling companies on the East Coast, also received backing from the fund.

From public companies to municipalities, the investments vary in location as well—with a focus on increasing the recycling infrastructure in previously underserved regions. “In the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic there is good infrastructure. On the West Coast and Pacific Northwest, there is fairly good infrastructure,” says Gonen. “The infrastructure is generally not as good in the middle and in the south of the country.” When evaluating potential investments—the fund has received more than 160 applications—Gonen says they ask themselves a few integral questions: Can this project scale? How many tons will it divert? Can it provide the needed reporting? Can it pay back?

“We are representing capital from some of the world’s largest consumer goods corporations that want this material back in their supply chain, so we need to invest in projects that will provide significant amounts of material back in the supply chain,” he says.

Closed Loop Fund is also looking to invest in a solution for the building industry that could use recycled glass as a replacement for fly ash, which goes into cement. It also could help solve a big obstacle in the recycling industry: Currently there is no market for recycled glass, which is hurting profits at recycling companies. “This is an opportunity for the building industry to become much more sustainable. Rather than using a byproduct of coal, you are using recycled glass,” Gonen says. “So we are working on [an] investment in the two companies that have that technology, and Google is looking at potentially being the first to use it in their buildings.”

It is Gonen’s hope that as things improve on the technology side of recycling, they will also improve where recycling begins—at the individual level. “The macro issue is that business and citizen don’t recognize the cost of not recycling,” Gonen says. “The cost of not recycling is not, unfortunately, ‘I didn’t do the right thing.’ You pay to send it to the landfill.”

“People say, ‘I know it’s the right thing to do—I should do it,’” he says. “What we need them to say is, ‘Of course I recycle. I don’t want my tax dollars being used to send things to a landfill.’ If we can overcome that obstacle, then behavioral change happens in a major way.”

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Michelle Moore

CEO at Groundswell

Michelle Moore is CEO of Groundswell, a nonprofit that builds community power to connect low and moderate income communities with clean energy through place-based programs in equitable community solar, affordable wind power, and energy efficiency.

A social entrepreneur and former White House official with roots in rural Georgia, Michelle is a relentless agent for change. Her accomplishments range from helping build the global green building movement to leading the sustainability team for the Obama Administration.

What does the sustainability movement look like from the perspective of economic equity? You might measure your response in how much affordable housing is LEED certified, or whether there’s a cost premium for green. But if you’re a family living in poverty paying 10 percent of your total income for dirty power, is the promise of sustainability accessible to you?

That’s the question facing an estimated 16 million Americans who are paying more than 10 percent of their household income for electricity. The reality today is that working families pay more to keep the lights on despite falling prices and growing affordable clean-energy options. This burden isn’t uniformly shared by region or by race. Forty-six percent of all households with high energy burdens are in the South, and 50 percent of all families struggling with disproportionately high power bills are African American. In many cities, the challenge is even more acute. In Jacksonville, Florida, for example, 14.5 percent of households living in poverty are paying $200 or more per month for electricity. So what can we do?

First, it’s important to understand that, while good public policy is an essential part of the solution, it’s not the only answer. There’s an important leadership role for the market, too, because new clean energy technologies tend to follow typical technology adoption curves. The visionaries behind LEED understood this dynamic for sustainable building practices, which has been fundamental to USGBC’s successful strategy for market transformation. New clean energy technologies debut at the upper end of the market and are purchased by early adopters who can afford the premium. Then, as adoption grows, prices come down, and the once-new technology becomes economically accessible to everyone.

The thing is, energy isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity. We can’t afford the social cost of waiting for the benefits of affordable clean energy to trickle down to those in need.

Nearly 50 percent of America hasn’t been able to switch to solar because they are struggling financially and don’t qualify for financing, don’t own their roof, or don’t have a roof in the right location. Community solar radically expands access to affordable clean energy by allowing anyone to purchase locally produced solar power from a centrally located solar array.

Today, there are only about 100 community solar projects in operation around the country, but that number is about to boom. According to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, community solar is on its way to becoming the single largest source of distributed renewable energy in America—outpacing rooftop solar and providing an up to $8 billion investment opportunity. The problem is that most community solar models have the same barriers to access as rooftop solar.

Groundswell is developing an equitable community solar program that works for working families—complementing market leadership with nonprofit innovation. Through our partnership with Sustainable Capital Advisors, the model takes consumer credit scores off the table as an obstacle. It’s one among a growing vanguard of solutions that will give everyone a seat at the abundant clean-energy table.

Community solar promises to be a game changer that means your next green building project could provide access to affordable clean energy to your neighbors who need it most.

LEED ON,

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Anne Hidalgo

Mayor of Paris and Co-host of the Climate Summit for Local Leaders

Climate change endangers people’s health and poses serious economic threats. Yet by protecting the environment, we not only invest in the future but we also bring immediate public health and economic benefits. By acting boldly to address the perils of climate change, cities can improve millions of lives today—and build a safer, healthier future for the generations to come.

Cities around the world are taking the lead in the battle against climate change, and, in doing so, are determining the course of our planet’s future. Cities are more agile than national governments—cities have immediacy in their relationship to the impacts of climate change. They can take bolder actions and can see the benefits of climate action directly.

Here in Paris we introduced a Climate Action Plan unanimously approved by the Council of Paris in 2007, updated in 2012, committing our city to decrease its overall emissions by 75 percent in 2050 compared to 2004. In this perspective, Paris implements ambitious programs of construction of green buildings and retrofitting of municipal and privately owned buildings, as part of a major energy saving initiative.

On transportation, Paris is expanding Autolib’, an electric car sharing system inspired by the success of the Parisian bicycle sharing system Velib’. Our city also announced a major plan to ban diesel cars from Paris by 2020 and an adaptation and resilience strategy for 2015 through 2020.

City leaders have already emerged through their commitment to the Compact of Mayors and their participation in COP21 at the Climate Summit for Local Leaders hosted by the City of Paris and Michael Bloomberg, UN Special Envoy for Cities and Climate Change. The Summit built on the ideas and efforts of the Compact of Mayors, which was established in 2014 by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and Michael Bloomberg, in partnership with city-networks, to create pathways for a data driven framework for reducing local greenhouse gas emissions, enhancing resilience to climate change, while tracking their progress transparently. Currently more than 460 cities around the world are committed to the Compact of Mayors representing over five percent of the global population.

The Climate Summit for Local Leaders was instrumental in providing mayors from all over the world who are taking action in their community with the opportunity to come together to collaborate on policy, public engagement strategies and professional development to promote sustainability and progressive leadership. As a result, these leaders went back to their communities with a stronger commitment to implementing climate solutions, setting targets, and measuring progress.

As we turn toward implementing the Paris Agreement, we must recognize that climate change represents an urgent and potentially irreversible threat to society and the planet and requires the largest possible cooperation by all countries and the greatest possible action by all cities.

We also need to make sure mayors continue to look outward, to commit to the Compact of Mayors and work with cities near and far to reach the emissions standards set by the Paris Agreement and help to fill the gaps left by national commitments.

Our world faces many serious environmental challenges. We can meet them—but only if we act now.

LEED ON,

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Originally known as the Sonoma County Grape Growers association, SCW pushed for commission status in 2006. At that time, 1,800 growers voted to impose a self-assessment on the sale of their grapes, which meant that any vineyard in Sonoma County selling 25 tons or more would pay half of 1 percent to help fund SCW. “When the growers voted to do that, it became state legislation to create the commission, and growers vote every five years to continue the referendum,” says Karissa Kruse, SCW’s president, noting that the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) oversees the commission.

“From the very start, a lot of [SCW’s] marketing efforts and initiatives have revolved around the preservation of agriculture in Sonoma…. historically, this has been a farming community,” Kruse adds. Only in the last 60 to 70 years has the economic driver become viticulture, and many local growers have long family histories as farmers of prunes, dairy, apples, and other fruit trees. A major emphasis of the initiative is on continuing that legacy.

Top: Many of these growers have long family histories as farmers of fruit trees. Only in the last 60 to 70 years has the economic driver in the region become viticulture. Middle: The vineyards use a drip irrigation system, which is more efficient than conventional watering. Bottom: Shone Farms’ vineyard in Sonoma County

According to Kruse, the SCW thinks of sustainability in three parts: leaving the land in better condition than it was when initially settled, which includes protecting rivers, wildlife, and biodiversity so that it can be farmed long term; treating employees and neighbors with respect; and making it a sustaining business venture. “We want to be good members of the community and we want to give back,” says Kruse. “[The initiative] takes a triple-bottom-line approach to sustainability.”

To start, they looked at applicable existing programs. “We didn’t feel that we needed to start our own program from scratch. The best thing to do is use programs that have been well vetted by experts and already have a lot of credibility,” explains Kruse. Ultimately, they chose the model used by California Sustainable Winegrowing Alliance (CSWA), which consists of 138 assessments (questions) or best practices that a grower must address. The program considers things like water conservation, soil and canopy management, protection and promotion of biodiversity, energy efficiency, employee benefits and training, and external communications, to name a few.

The initial phase of this effort focuses on helping grape growers ascertain and assess sustainable vineyard and business practices already in place. Then, a third-party auditor conducts a site visit to confirm they are doing what they claim to be doing. Those auditors are chosen by CSWA, and tend to be educated in fields like environmental science and biology. Once they approve a property—indicating it meets the sustainability criteria—the grower is certified as sustainable. To maintain certification, they must repeat the process every year. Of third-party participation, Kruse says: “It’s not enough for us to just say we are doing these practices. Instead we wanted to make sure there was an independent [auditor] who was reviewing what our growers were doing on their properties.” It confirms that what is happening on the vineyards is in keeping with the initiative’s goals.

Kruse stresses that transparency is critical to the initiative’s success, which will be accomplished through regular progress updates, an annual “sustainability report card,” and monitoring with a vineyard/winery real-time tracker on SCW’s website. The plan is to assess 15,000 vineyard acres per year for the next four years until every acre of planted vines is under assessment for sustainability status.

In two years’ time, approximately 60 percent of the vineyards have gone through the assessment process (it’s a five-year plan). In other words, Sonoma County’s vineyards have reached the halfway mark to becoming 100 percent sustainable by 2019. “We are way ahead of where we thought we would be at this point,” says Kruse. “Almost half of our vineyard acreage is certified sustainable. It’s pretty incredible.” She is quick to recognize the board and staff for their commitment to pushing the initiative through.

In general, Kruse says growers are very supportive. Any resistance is usually because they do not understand what is being asked of them. Typically, once things are made clear, they find they are already doing many of the things that qualify as sustainable. Other times, it is a lack of awareness or the fact that they may be less engaged in the grape-growing community, which requires greater outreach efforts on SCW’s part.

SCW sustainability efforts apply to both the vineyards and the wineries. “We took the lead on this from the start because if you want to have a sustainable wine, you have to start with the grapes…. That’s why there’s been such a strong push toward the vineyards,” explains Kruse. They have begun working with wineries, too, which have a different set of assessment questions based on energy efficiency, packaging, emissions standards, building materials, solar power, etc.

In terms of progress, SCW has been recognized globally for its efforts and has been invited to speak at some prestigious industry events including Wharton’s Initiative for Global Environmental Leadership’s Annual Conference. In time, Sonoma County labels will be synonymous with sustainably grown and made wines. “As a region, it has allowed us to become leaders in sustainable growing in the global wine industry,” says Kruse proudly. “We are really starting to be the example of how you commit to sustainability and make it happen.”

The weather station is located within Shone Farms’ vineyard in Sonoma County. The device monitors the rainfall totals, wind, humidity, temperature, and other aspects of weather conditions within the vineyard and sends the data to grape growers to help them make important sustainable farming decisions. 

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