The core of sustainability has been obfuscated by the diatribe of climate change, carbon footprints and policy machinations.  And if we dare to rise above this din, we are handed checklists to validate a sustainable action or enterprise.  What we discount, in our desire to be sustainable, is ourselves.  As ‘wise beings’, we need to reassess the core of sustainability, the human person: body, mind and soul.

BODY – At home, or at work, we need to ask ourselves, how do I feel?  An inventory of all of our senses will determine the quality of our immediate environment.  Does the furniture cause fatigue and discomfort, or does it support me?  Do my eyes tire or become irritated from the type and quality of lighting?  Or do I have access to natural light and views to the outdoors?  Beyond the sensual inventory, we need to see the value of physicals and health screenings in the same manner as nutrition, water, sleep and exercise.

MIND – A young child can watch TV, devise LEGO constructions and absorb an adult conversation an entire room away?  Children utilize the entire capacity of their brain while the path to adulthood results in a limiting of this overall capacity.  Diplomas, certifications and accreditations are nice, but they signify an end goal, a limit.  Our personal and professional enterprises can do the same as we attempt to do more with less; the result is to do it the same way we did it the last time.  We narrow our capacity for the sake of efficiency.

SOUL – If your religious beliefs do not reveal our interconnectedness, globalization certainly will.  Globalization is being indexed utilizing the economic, political and social dimensions of countries, and how they are integrated in other cultures.  How cultures are maintained, celebrated, expressed and how they can foster a larger world view, can also be found in the Community Sustainability Assessment tool.   The spiritual aspects of a community are rated along with ecological and social factors.

As ‘wise beings’, we need to return to ourselves, body, mind and soul before we wade out into the encompassing expanse of sustainability.   We can achieve this by answering these three questions:

1. How do I feel?

2. What are my limits?

3. Who am I connected to?

If I do not understand the value or purpose of sustaining myself, how can I enculturate a sustainable framework for my family, my work, my community or my world?

With many recent projects incorporating sustainable features, and other projects utilizing lean principles in the design and construction of their buildings, should these two practices be more integrated and thought of as one? Is there a way to streamline sustainability through the introduction of lean design to make buildings and working environments even more efficient?

Lean initiatives originally came about in the manufacturing industry, where companies would alter existing processes to become more efficient.  The EPA defines lean manufacturing as “a business model and collection of tactical methods that emphasize eliminating non-value added activities (waste) while delivering quality products on time at least cost with greater efficiency.”

One of the key activities in utilizing lean techniques is to identify which steps add value to your process and which do not. Through lean manufacturing, seven types of wastes are typically identified.

These wastes are:

• Overproduction
• Unnecessary transportation
• Inventory
• Motion
• Defects
• Over-processing
• Waiting

While initially serving the manufacturing industry, lean techniques are becoming common ground in a variety of fields. As architects and engineers, we are always looking at ways to improve the design of our buildings; making them more efficient and eliminating wastes.

These lean concepts in some ways parallel sustainable practices, such as utilizing more efficient mechanical equipment to improve the performance of a building.

Where I feel these two philosophies differ but can be combined to enhance the total added value of a project is in the way a client chooses to engage sustainability and lean production.  Companies generally introduce lean principles to enhance profits and become more competitive. Sustainable features are often utilized not only for the environmental impact, but to increase consumer awareness, create the possibility for a return on investment, provide a better working environment, and to boost consumer awareness and enhance the company’s image.

Through the elimination of non-value added activities (waste) and the incorporation of sustainable features, the design of a building can encourage an environment of continuous improvement.

What are ways that these two ideas can be combined to provide an even better product to the client? Has anyone come across positive or negative results when incorporating both lean and green philosophies into the same project?

Construction waste management is an extremely important aspect of LEED and all construction projects.  In the LEED reference manual V2.2, control of construction waste can contribute up to three credits for the contractor side of the certification.  Of the 18 possible construction credits, achieving 15% of the available credits from one on-going effort can have a large effect on the success of realizing an owner’s goals.

As architects and engineers, we must take time to consider construction waste before we review our planned scorecard for the project.  Before we can plan on the credit as part of our goal, we need to know if it is reasonable to expect the contractor to be able to perform the assigned task.  Recycling opportunities for construction waste vary vastly from community to community. 

Since the basis for measuring this credit is judged either by weight or volume, the largest contributors to the credit will be the heaviest materials i.e., concrete and steel.  In the recycling community today, steel is a hot commodity.  Since up to 97% of our construction building steel comes from recycled steel materials, there is currently a highly developed market in place for these materials.  Recycling left over concrete from the wash out of concrete trucks is another opportunity that should be considered.  By volume, concrete will contribute the largest quantity of materials at 1400 lbs/cubic yard.  It may be possible to find an interested party for these materials who will take them from the site at no cost to the contractors.  In the case of the Volkswagen project, a local contractor was utilizing crushed concrete for back fill around culverts and drain pipes and he was willing to remove the raw materials from the site. 

To achieve the three credits available for exemplary performance, the concrete and steel recycling efforts will go a long way to reaching this goal.  But will it be enough?   Probably not.  To reach the exemplary performance goal of 95% waste diverted from the landfill, all construction materials will have to be considered.  In a large metropolitan community, the resources should be in place to take these materials easily.  What happens when we go into a smaller community where the resources are not available?  If we commit to our client that we will attempt this goal and enter it on our planning scorecard without the proper research, we are setting our contractors up for failure.  The contractors will have no possible way of achieving this goal.    

I discovered the difficulty of this problem when I arrived on the job site for Volkswagen in Chattanooga, TN.  Chattanooga is a fairly small community; hence not all of the resources were available to the contractors.  I started doing research to help them solve the problem of finding outlets for the smaller commodities.  An example of this process was for recycling the left over wood products.  There was a wood recycler in town, but he would not take our materials due to contamination.  The majority of our left over wood was from pallets.  His typical business was to grind up yard waste to create garden mulch.  Grinding pallets would result in ground up nails ending up in a playground or garden bed so this was not an acceptable solution.  Finally, after numerous phone calls, attempts and review of the CIR’s, we found a successful solution.  A local contractor had a grinder with a magnet attached to the end.  The materials were ground then sent to the local pulp mill.  The wood is being used as a “wood derived fuel” which is acceptable to LEED by a CIR.  While burning the construction materials on site is specifically prohibited by LEED as a method of diversion from the landfill, it is allowed by the CIR’s as an alternate fuel source.

The wood example mentioned above was a fairly time consuming process which required quite a bit of patience.  This process was then repeated for recycling plastics until a solution was found.  The LEED reference manual tells us, as designers, to work closely with all parties involved on the project.  Construction waste should be discussed in the planning phase with the contractors.  In a case where such discussions do not happen, I would urge the designers to make some preliminary contacts in the local community to see what resources are available.  The preliminary research will ensure realistic goals and assist with successful realization of our LEED projects.