Standards & Compliance Briefing: Green Building Initiative, LEED, GRI, International Maritime Organization

by | Dec 8, 2011

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The Green Building Initiative released its Guiding Principles Compliance certification program for existing buildings – a tool designed to help federal agencies comply with sustainability requirements in federally owned or leased buildings. A 2009 executive order says that by 2015, 15 percent of federal buildings 5,000 square feet or larger must incorporate sustainable practices. The Department of Veterans Affairs will use the program to certify its 180 buildings.

Cal State San Bernardino’s Palm Desert Campus has earned LEED Gold certification for its recently built Palm Desert Health Sciences Building. Among its sustainable features, the building’s lighting system consumes 20 percent fewer watts per square foot than a baseline code-compliant building. The project sourced building materials within a 500-mile radius of the site, recycled or diverted about 90 percent of construction and demolition debris, and the building will include an installation of 500 kW of photovoltaic panels.

Wright-Pierce’s Cocheco Well water treatment facility in Rochester, NH, has become the first LEED-certified facility of its kind in New England. Its energy saving features include a geothermal heating and cooling system, use of high-efficiency pumps and natural lighting, and the plant was built using local materials, and products from sustainable forests, according to Water & Wastes Digest.

Canadian environmental groups Équiterre and SERA-Canada are pursuing a standard for sustainably developed aggregate (sand, gravel and stone used to make concrete or foundations) produced with attention to GHG emissions, life cycle operations, air pollution, noise mitigation, and threats to water quality and quantity. The certification would be similar to forest and marine stewardship programs, The Gazette reports.

ProcessMAP has earned Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) certification for Environment, Health & Safety (EHS), and sustainability software. The certification verifies that ProcessMAP has applied GRI content accurately in its software platform, including the ability to link, measure, and report performance metrics against GRI indicators and perform a gap analysis of sustainability indicators against GRI’s G3 guidelines.

The American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) has added a new standard for reusable plastic containers for fruits and vegetables to its technical library. The new standard, ANSI/ASABE S600, Manually Handled Collapsible Reusable Plastic Containers for Handling of Fruits and Vegetables, provides uniform design and performance specifications for a manually handled, collapsible, reusable plastic container for handling fresh horticultural produce during post-harvest processing, storage, and transportation.

Xcel Energy plans to install pollution-control equipment on power plants in Colorado, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Texas, for a total of approximately $1.8 billion by 2020. $862 million will be invested in the company’s Colorado generators between 2012 and 2016, Industrial Info Resources reports.

Mitsui O.S.K. Lines’ (MOL) ship energy efficiency management plan (SEEMP*1) has received a statement of compliance with Energy Efficiency Operational Indicator (EEOI) guidelines from the International Maritime Organization. The plan was independently certified by the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS), and it is the world’s first such certification, the company said.

UK battery producers are on track to meet their 2011 obligation to collect 18 percent of portable batteries for recycling. About 13 percent of were collected by the third quarter of 2011, ahead of the predicted rate of 12.5 percent. The UK has a target to collect 25 percent of waste portable batteries for recycling by the end of 2012, according to LetsRecycle.com.

Touch screen manufacturer Touch International has earned its ISO 9001:2008 certification for international quality management standards for its manufacturing facility in Shenzhen, China. The new 50000-square-foot factory has a vertically integrated manufacturing system equipped with cover glass, touch screen, and LCD-to-touchscreen module (LCM) assembly sections.

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