Of the billions of e-mails Greasy Rider readers send here, there were two recent ones that were especially notable. One was from a guy who read about the new campus the Business School at Stanford is building. It's set to cost a little over $305 million when complete, and the whole thing will be platinum LEED Certified (which is the highest green building seal of approval). The extra costs to make the place LEED certified will pay for themselves within a decade. Meanwhile, they'll be drastically reducing energy use, water use, and solid waste, and drastically imroving air quality over normal buildings. So the savings they'll reap over the next many decades will be immense.
Another person sent this message: "A number of the things you get into with regards to current design and construction practices, (i.e geothermal heat, LEED accreditation, rainwater collection for irrigation) are items that I have encountered on recent MIT and Harvard projects. It’s great stuff and very effective. MIT has even gone with utilizing gray/rain water in the toilets at the Stata Center (they have had to leave signs above all of the toilets to explain the unappealing, slightly tinged, brown water to the users). The ongoing Harvard Allston Science Facility construction projects are filled with these ideas and implementation of energy saving methods and renewable sources. An interesting note, Harvard has gone with a European architect for the design."
European architect? Are you kidding?
Anyway, universities and colleges get it. They receive awesome PR for going green, but more importantly, they save millions and millions of dollars. They think long-term. Unfortunately, corporations don't have the luxury of thinking long term. That's why we have to provide incentives for them to think that way--and in the long run, they'll be more profitable.
This isn't rocket science.
