Should we Share?

This spring I had an intern from Florida Atlantic University that is excited about everything green. South Florida geography makes the LEED point requiring that materials be within a 500 mile radius challenging. Furthermore, many products indicate that they use recycled materials but do they meet LEED requirements regarding percentages and post vs. pre consumer waste? My dream has been to put together a list of materials that meet these requirements for South Florida. The materials I’m interested in as a Landscape Architect would be concrete, pavers, wood, irrigation equipment, light fixtures, outdoor furniture, metals, sealers and preservatives.

The intern took the project on and began researching on the web. She found a million products that claimed to be green. In order to focus her efforts, she contacted “green” consultants to see if they might have some sort of list from which she could start. These businesses wouldn’t help; she felt that they were unwilling to share.

I guess there could be a couple of reasons for this. The most obvious reason to a business person would be that they are getting paid for this service. Through the intern’s eyes, shouldn’t we be sharing this information for the better good? Couldn’t the ‘green ‘consultants get a percentage from the products they include on their list? Or – maybe these lists don’t exist at all.

What do you think? Are those lists out there? Should the information be shared?

LEED and Landscape Architects

I’ve been a LEED ap for three years now. Although I do a number of government projects and I’m active in USGBC, I have not done a LEED project yet. Why?

Part of it is that South Florida is way behind the rest of the country in LEED projects. The economy may have something to do with it as well.

Unfortunately, I’ve seen LEED projects for which a Landscape Architect was chosen that was not a LEED ap. It was apparent in the finished product that they were not familiar with what LEED was trying to accomplish. Why were they chosen for the project?

To me, the site and what happens on it are critical but it is often an afterthought to architects and civil engineers that are the project managers on these projects. Maybe they think anything that is planted is “green”. Maybe we, as Landscape Architects don’t care enough to learn about sustainable ways to do things successfully. Maybe we haven’t done a good job of educating project managers, explaining the benefits of our services enough.

Saving the earth should start with exactly that – making sure that we don’t compact the earth, we maintain or improve the quality of soil, we save or restore vegetation that cools temperatures and reduces carbon and we collect, preserve and clean water just to name a few. SPROUT!