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Want to go green, but can't seem to get upper management's support? Here's a tip: Enlist the help of your occupants. Oftentimes, bottom-up pressure can be just as effective as top-down mandates in terms of instituting effective, efficient organizationwide green operational strategies. For...

You've no doubt heard the expressions, usually with negative connotations, that there are "too many cooks in the kitchen" or "too many chiefs and not enough indians." The idea is that, sometimes, egalitarianism only leads to time wasted because while everyone has an opinion, not...

This fantastic article from the Jan. 12 issue of the New Yorker tells the story of Van Jones, an activist who is trying to answer that question with a resounding "NO!" Jones, who is also mentioned in Thomas Friedman's new book titled Hot, Flat and Crowded, is leading a small, but growing...

Time’s Best Inventions of 2008 – its annual list of all that’s new and cool – includes several facility-related entries. Two actual buildings made the list as inventions in and of themselves. First, the $700 million Dynamic Tower in Dubai actually rotates on a floor-by-floor basis...

While the stories themselves may not exactly be what you’d call “good news,” the timing of the stories may wind up as a nice touch of serendipity. That’s because they both hit the wire at almost exactly the same time – which allowed the two stories to augment each other’s...

You may not have thought of it as such, but email is inherently a green technology – it saves a lot of paper (well, assuming you don't print your e-mails, a practice against which you're being increasingly warned by clever little taglines at the end like "Save Trees. Don't Print"...

First, the facts: A r eport released this week by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) stated that carbon dioxide emissions released from fossil fuels increased 1.6 percent from 5,888 million metric tons of carbon dioxide (MMTCO2) in 2006 to 5,984 MMTCO2. This article reports the facts fairly...

Does your organization have a Director of Sustainability or a Vice President of Environmental Practice, or maybe just a Green Guru? If not, your organization may be in the minority. Even as the economy slows and unemployment grows, green collar jobs continue to rise. There’s no specific definition...

A survey of more than 1,150 executives and facility managers released this week reveals some fairly interesting details about how the industry is dealing (or plans to deal) with the rising cost of energy. For all intents and purposes, what the study , conducted by Johnson Controls and titled Energy Efficiency...

There’s greenwashing, and then there’s GREENWASHING, and sadly, it’s often hard to tell the difference. Sometimes greenwashing is a purposeful and blatant distortion of the truth. Often, it takes the form of half-truths or little green fibs. But just as often, it’s accidental...

Green success stories are coming in fast and furious these days, but here’s one that definitely stands out from the crowd. The Dell Children’s Medical Center of Central Texas, a new 500,000-square-foot, $200 million facility designed to be certified at the LEED-Platinum level, uses a natural...

How familiar are you with LEED? At the very least, you probably understand that it’s a rating system that is supposed to tell you how environmentally responsible your building really is. And you’d be right. LEED has been around since 2001 and has often been credited as the catalyst for the...

Al Gore uses them to justify his Tennessee mansion’s enormous annual energy use. Planners for both the Super Bowl and the Academy Awards used them to declare the events carbon neutral. And you can even purchase them quickly and conveniently as an add-on when you book a flight on expedia.com. Yes...

I recently had the pleasure of spending a week in Switzerland with about 30 other journalists from all over the world. We spent the week touring Swiss renewable energy companies and learning about Swiss strategies for energy efficiency. There were several highlights from the trip, but two pieces of information...

If you checked FacilitiesNet within the past few days, you may have noticed the news that USGBC members voted overwhelmingly to make a pretty significant change to LEED. Projects now must meet at least two “Optimize Energy Performance” credits, essentially forcing all LEED-certified new construction...

I don’t know about you, but whenever I find an article about our industry in the mainstream media, the emotions are a bit mixed. This article about green workplaces that appeared in the June 18 issue of Time is a perfect example. The article is a fairly good primer about various ways office buildings...

Last week, the Illinois state Senate voted 52-5 to mandate green cleaning in the state’s schools. While seemingly innocuous on its own, this law is emblematic of a much more widespread trend: State and city governments forcing publicly funded, and in some cases, even private developments, to go...

A few weeks ago, New York Times foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman wrote a lengthy, and rather convincing piece , about why America needs to go green. His central argument is quite simple, really: Going green is the only way to discontinue our relationship with oil-rich foreign enemies that may...

Last week was a pretty phenomenal week for the city of Chicago. For one, the U.S. Olympic Committee chose Chicago as the U.S.’s candidate to host the 2016 Summer Olympic Games. And then, the Chicago Planning Commission unanimously recommended approval for the Chicago Spire – a massive, twisting...

They say there’s a fine line between genius and insanity. And when desperate times require desperate measures, that line can become much blurrier. Thankfully, in the case of climate change, we still have a few more practical alternatives – renewable energy, hybrid vehicles, energy efficiency...

A few interesting notes about this week’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the Mass. vs. EPA case : It is another strong indicator of how politicized the debate over global warming in general and greenhouse gas reduction specifically has become. The ruling was 5-4, and two of the four dissenters are...

With apologies to Chicago Bears fans, Super Bowl XLI was one of the most entertaining Super Bowls in recent memory. (As a huge Colts fan, I may be a bit biased.) It was the first won by an African-American head coach, the first of what will no doubt be several more championships for Peyton Manning, the...

Is Vinyl Green? It’s kind of fun to ask that question to persons of various industry affiliation. You never get the same answers (or justification /rationalization) twice. It’s a question that evokes reactions ranging from anger to befuddlement to incredulity at your stupidity. A few years...

Green building advocates have long argued that the “magic key” to unlocking the chains of skepticism is proving that green buildings are better at attracting tenants at higher lease rates and can be resold for at a higher value than traditionally built buildings. Without some extremely knowledgeable...

One side paints gloomy portraits such as frequent Katrina-like hurricanes, a thousand-fold increase in incidence of malaria, and extinction of hundreds of species of animals (including our own, potentially). The other side uses warmer and friendlier brush strokes: More temperate, pleasant weather in...