A good knowledge resource

Facilitiesnet is a very good resource -- we've added it to our bookmarks finally.

And their excellent blog is here.

Discussing the environmental discussion: Greenversation

As part of the EPA’s efforts toward the Open Government Directive that lays out the Obama Administration’s commitment to Open Government and the principles of transparency, participation, and collaboration, another excellent Greenversations post on the EPA's Video Town Hall page here.

Blogger Mathy Stanislaus writes:

My office held our second Video Town Hall two weeks ago, and I thoroughly enjoyed the discussion. The session covered two topics: reducing your carbon footprint through reducing, reusing, and recycling, and EPA’s recent decision to conduct an environmental justice analysis of the definition of the solid waste rule. We had an excellent conversation. We answered a question from a man in California who wanted to see us do more to promote energy-saving compact fluorescent light bulbs, and one from a Minnesota woman who wanted to build an environmentally-friendly house. A Brooklyn non-profit wanted to know how we balance our focus on environmental justice with preserving industrial jobs and the tax base in urban areas

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Welcome to IFMA - NY Tech Valley

From our own David Hammons, the International Facility Management Association, better known as IFMA, has a new chapter in the Albany, New York area: IFMA - NY Tech Valley. The very well-known networking group is excited about getting Professional, Associate and Student members from in and around the Capital District to join!

You're invited: Wednesday March 24 ColorRize demo

Please join RD Weis Companies and friends for drinks… and a fun, quick ColorRize demo as we give our old wood pantry floor a whole new look:

New Look For Old Floors: Don’t Replace -- Reengineer!

On Wednesday, March 24, at RD Weis Companies’ Manhattan office, 260 Fifth Avenue, Suite 500, New York, NY 10001, from 6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.

Please RSVP to Sheri Gorman at 212-376-5355 X 202 or email her, sgorman at rdweis.com

Come see how it works -- on our old wooden pantry floor!

ColorRize lets us add opaque color to environmentally friendly Waxnomor, a non-yellowing polyurethane finish.

Keep your flooring assets at work -- and out of the landfill.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Greening the Empire State Building

Alex Padalka at GreenSource has an interesting article here about how the Empire State Building retrofit was selected by the Clinton Climate Initiative as the first, symbollic project for its retrofit division, and the economic goals of this project:

In practice, the revolutionary green projects in New York, such as the New York Times tower and the Bank of America building at One Bryant Park, went beyond the call of duty or LEED points to analyze every possible option in reducing energy costs. The Times building team spent a year analyzing sun movement to perfect the combination of heat-deflecting ceramic rods and window types for optimal heating and cooling. Similarly, the Bank of America team tested wind turbines for a year to see if they would generate enough electricity and experimented with photovoltaics, before settling on even more effective methods of cutting down on energy use. Both are iconic projects, having pushed the envelope at significant research and development costs that others still try to replicate.

The key difference between these earlier projects and what’s happening at the Empire State Building is precisely that – cost. Experts interviewed for this magazine as late as 2008 have cited discrepancies in LEED points, fluctuating materials costs, and other factors for the lack of consensus among them on how much exactly it actually costs to build green. To that end, the Empire State Building team started with the numbers.

Commercial and residential buildings account for an estimated 70 percent of the carbon footprint in New York City. By 2030, buildings that already exist today will account for around 85 percent of them. The Empire State Building was found to be America’s No. 1 favorite building in a poll by the American Institute of Architects. Its visibility is total. Its almost 40-percent energy reduction model is available here.