The Yudelson Associates Blog: What's New
Friday, July 11, 2008
Will green building and green products be retailers’ salvation?
The Journal article points out that Home Depot, Wal-Mart Stores, Best Buy, CVS Caremark and Walgreen are taking various steps to appeal to cash strapped consumers, such as remodeling their stores, spending more on store maintenance and investing more in customer service (what a concept!). Overlooked in the article is that each of these outfits is also taking a long look at using LEED certification and/or green product selections to stand out also. For example, Home Depot has LEED-certified a store in Calgary, Alberta, and also green-certified more than 1,500 items for their “Eco Options” program. Best Buy is promising to LEED certify all new stores. CVS is looking at LEED certifying one of their prototype stores in California, according to industry rumors. Wal-Mart just introduced a nearly 50% less-energy-using store prototype for the western U.S. Who will be next? Stay tuned!
Posted by Jerry on 07/11/2008 at 01:50 PM
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Corporate Sustainability / Green Business Practices •
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Thursday, July 10, 2008
Green Building Grows Up, Raises Mainstream Design and Construction Issues
A story in the online edition of McGraw-Hill’s Engineering News-Record outlines some of the risks and unintended liability issues of what advocates might think of as “conventional” green design, such as green roofs, operable windows, daylighting and cork (rapidly renewable materials) flooring. The bottom line: don’t “guarantee” anything, including any specific level of LEED certification and certainly don’t warrant that certification will be done by any specific time. Products and systems might not be available or might not be of the quality required, etc. At a project meeting held today, to consider “going green” for a new shopping center, similar issues were raised with respect to the developer’s marketing claims that the project will achieve a LEED certification. It was interesting to me that the developer’s lawyer was in the project meeting, undoubtedly wanting to get informed about the LEED aspect and to make sure we weren’t putting anything in the tenant’s leases that we couldn’t live up to after the project was completed. A similar report appeared recently in Constructor magazine, subtitled “Green construction can expose project teams to unreasonable expectations and a new set of risks.” The first task then of many green building projects will be to understand and manage these risks, on behalf of the entire project team, as well as the building owner or developer.
Posted by Jerry on 07/10/2008 at 07:59 PM
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Tuesday, July 01, 2008
Strategic Implications of Sustainable Development
In the McKinsey Quarterly for June/July 2008, Lovins says: “Environmental strategy is not about manipulating regulatory systems to put your competitor at a disadvantage. It’s about redesigning your company’s processes and products so that regulation is relevant only to your competitor, not to yourself. The real leaders are going to be smart companies that see the competitive advantage in leading energy transformation in their sectors.” In my work with the development industry, I find the most difficult part is to get people to look outside of the industry’s mindset of lowest first cost, to get people to realize that it’s the appropriate level of investment that should be looked at. In that context, sustainable design and green buildings should be seen as value adders and risk reducers, with clear economic values ascribable to these functions. For most corporations, sustainability is not about the things that they do today, but it’s about getting and keeping the people who will accomplish major changes over the next three to five years inside the organization. Technology per se is not a competitive advantage; what really counts for a company is a crafting and maintaining a mindset of continuous improvement in sustainable operations; energy savings are a result of this mindset, not the end goal in themselves.
Posted by Jerry on 07/01/2008 at 05:52 PM
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