Continuing the mission we undertook with the LEED renovation of our office—to identify appropriate green products and materials for our clients—we have designated our headquarters a Sustainable Materials Resource Center and made it a proving ground for such products.

During our renovation we were inundated with numerous green product offerings, but we couldn't justify using many of them because their return on investment was simply too long. We designed our renovation with our average interior fit-out clients in mind, and we didn't want any of the finishes to be beyond their reach. All finishes had to satisfy their demand for relatively short returns on investment.

With that in mind we are continuing to seek green products that we think will perform well and are cost effective. We will install those products on our building, in our office, and in our dedicated Sustainable Materials Resource Room and subject them to daily wear and tear. If they install without a hitch and if they hold up, they get our seal of approval and we recommend them to our clients and architects. We will report the results in the Chapman Chronicle.

Products installed during our Platinum LEED-registered renovation and already being tested include Firestone's white TPO roof membrane and its white Acrylitop coating, Mohawk's recyclable carpet tiles, Kohler's low flow faucets and waterless urinals, Solatube's sunlight tubes, Benjamin Moore's low-VOC paints, 3M's window film, and XLerator hand dryers.

Chapman Sustainability Coordinator Allison Wellman, who is responsible for researching and testing new sustainable materials, has identified alternate manufacturers for some of the products installed during the renovation. We are going to install a Velux sun tunnel, and we will test no-VOC paints to see how they compare to the low-VOC paints we applied during the renovation, and we just installed a 3M film that not only reduces solar heat gain but also insulates against the cold.

Other products that Allison is bringing to our resource center include: Haworth furniture with recycled content; Array and Ecolamp LED lights, which consume a fraction of the electricity needed by incandescent lights; AcryLab fluid-applied white roofing, which goes on over an existing membrane; and a Xero Flor vegetated roof.

Our Sustainable Product Resource Room, which is open to the public, contains numerous product samples and a dedicated computer terminal with access to BuildingGreen.com. Sustainable product vendors and manufacturers interested in submitting products to our Sustainable Product Resource Center can complete an online application here.

published 08.20.2009