Designing Healthy Communities by Richard J. Jackson & Stacy Sinclair

Author:Richard J. Jackson & Stacy Sinclair [Jackson, Richard J. & Sinclair, Stacy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781118129838
Publisher: Jossey-Bass
Published: 2011-09-20T00:00:00+00:00

Creating Sustainable Businesses

There are multiple facets to a sustainable business—what is produced, where and how it is produced, and then what happens to the product once it is no longer needed.

Janet Jarecki owns Rieke Office Interiors, a business that manufactures office furniture and also helps clients create environmentally responsible workspaces. “Our new business space,” she says, “is twice the size of our old place but our heating bill is one-fourth of what it was before. If we build more buildings that are green and very efficient, the people working inside will benefit, as well as the community. Using local materials in buildings reduces the environmental impacts of transportation and keeps people close to home working. When we support local businesses, more people want to work for us, and our business benefits as well.”

This is an example of an organic business. Businesses are successful when they are the right industry in the right place and time. When Janet Jarecki designs environmentally conscious workspaces for her own business, she can prove that certain technologies work and can sell them to her clients. “We have switched to energy-efficient lighting with sensors that automatically dim the lights when there’s lots of natural sunlight and increases the lighting when it is needed,” she explains. “The building is well-insulated, keeping heat inside in the winter and the cold outside, which is great. We recycle all of our materials—we try to be environmentally conscious and aware.”

On the product side, Jarecki does things to make her product more sustainable and better for the environment. “We manufacture office furniture. We use all water-based adhesives and the particleboard substrate is 100 percent postconsumer product. We use materials in our flooring and our fabrics that have a high-recycled content.”

When I look around my office at UCLA I can see some of the ideas Janet Jarecki describes. For example, some offices and institutions are taking part in carpet rentals. According to Carpet America Recovery Effort’s 2007 Annual Report, over six billion pounds of solid waste in the United States is used carpet. Much of this carpet was originally made from fossil fuel–based plastics and is highly recyclable.3 So smart businesses are installing carpeting that they use for five or more years and then return to the manufacturer, or in many cases the owner, to be reprocessed, often into new carpets. Similarly, Jarecki’s business increases the life cycle of existing furniture:

We give our clients options for refurbished filling of existing office furniture. If one company goes out of business or is moving and upgrading, we’ll buy back their furniture and sell it at a reduced price to a client who may be starting up or be on a very tight budget. By reusing furniture between facilities we can help our clients keep their costs down and keep furniture out of the landfills. We have a flooring department that not only lays down floors, but they help clients recycle their old flooring materials that are being removed. We think about the whole cycle from raw materials through use and to dismantling.

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