Contract Interiors Green Sense

Vague Goals

2008-08-18T13:01:00.000-07:00

A vague goal allows specialists in different functions to collaborate across rigid silos.

This seems to fit the process of building a goal and a team for your next or first green project. Can you keep the goal vague enough, for instance, let's build out this space using a "green philosophy" instead of saying we are going to achieve LEED Gold? Do they both hit that mark of goal setting? Are they similar goals? Does it matter?

When you put a green team together to work on an interiors project you have so many opinions and expertise to consider. But like any healthy relationship, every one's opinions matter and every one's input is potentially useful assuming we all keep to our boundaries and fulfill our part of the puzzle. I noticed this happening in two meetings recently, both were incredible but the content of each was really different.

Meeting 1 - Interior Designer, LEED consultant ( part of GC firm), PM/CM, Furniture dealer, Client/User. Clearly this was a sub-team of the overall project scope but this meeting was truly amazing. The interior designer talked about wanting a specific design and aesthetic. She/he was not working in a vacuum but instead pointing out what the overall intention was to be and not truly obsessed over how to get there. There were points in the intent that were taking green into consideration like quality of goods specified, green rated products specified ( GreenGuard, Greenseal etc ) but there was no plan on how to get to the goal of a green interiors project. The LEED consultant was not really concerned with the design intent or aesthetic at all, but really wanted the execution of the design to hit the LEED points needed. So there was a discussion brewing already from one player to the next. The CM/PM was schedule and price concerned, as if that is a new idea. How the project was executed and how much the greening cost. The Furniture Dealer added in options to hit the needs of the aesthetics, the points, the schedule and the costs, and then the trade offs among these decisions. The client watched over the whole discussion and determined the ultimate wins for their company. A vague goal with many aspects being considered collaboratively.

Meeting 2 - CFO, VP of Operations, VP of Sales, CEO, VP of Strategy all discussing a company initiative. Each sitting around a table and the conversation moved from one to the next for their point of view. Succinctly, each presented their own opinion as it related to their discipline. Finance talked about the financial ramifications of the decision, no cross talk about someone else's piece of the pie, just their part. This continued around the table and when you accumulated the information, it was fascinating to see the facts all at the table to decide upon. I have been in countless meetings where people accuse one another, trump one another, distrust one another etc. When you really give a vague topic, it does allow for collaboration, assuming everyone is functioning and trusting of one another.

Green building of interiors requires honest communication and collaboration to fulfill every ones needs otherwise, something gets lost in the shuffle. The budget is blown or the LEED rating is thrown out the window and so on.

I have heard numerous people say that green building and paying attention to the environment is a pain. But what about this; An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.

Is Money the Demotivator

2008-08-09T06:09:00.000-07:00

There was an interesting article in the Washington Post this week about money and motivation. Psychological experiments say that money is not the best instrument to use to motivate behavior and that it actually demotivated people because it devalued their "internal drive". Hmm. If you want to motivate behavior offer meaning, not money.

We have spent years weighing the value of green building. Is it more expensive? Hundreds of studies proving one way or the other. It is if you do this, it is not if you do this. But if you look at the early adapting people that built green, they were all motivated by something other than money. The collaborative process of green building demands conversation and healthy conflict to resolve monetary decisions and how they impact the building process and product. Woven into this is the LEED process and the "buying of points" that can occur. But the drive for green building originated out of meaning, not money. Now it seems that money is becoming less of a barrier for green building and the delta between building green and non green has shrunk.

For me personally, I decided long ago that I have only one thing in my life and that is time. If you boil it down to the least common denominator, that is what I have to give. So, I work with that thought and make decisions based on trading my precious commodity, time. I go to work every day knowing that I trade my hours that day for money and then in turn I trade that money for food, gas, housing, clothes, Reese's Pieces and Ruffles. I think about who I am with and what I am doing with my time and make sure that I am making a good trade. So, working in this context, I am pretty particular about how I trade.

If you take this philosophy and apply it to building or whatever you want to apply it to, you will find it creates a puzzle that demands solving. Going back to the study of motivation, Edward Deci, a psychologist, studied students who were solving puzzles for him. He offered half of the group monetary rewards for solving puzzles and the others continued to solve puzzles for fun. The group that was offered a financial reward were less interested in solving puzzles on their own time than the group that was doing it for fun. The external rewards were actually demotivating a group. I found this fascinating at first but then totally understandable.

Maybe that is the same trigger that comes into play when someone offers me a cheaper solution to a problem thinking that money is the driver in the decision? I don't think that green can be the only driver in a decision either. I think you have to think and weigh out the reasons for your decision. However, having said that, decisions I see being made on green furniture are pretty simplistic. Is it Green Guard or not. Is it Cradle to Cradle or not. Is it the same price or is one less expensive.

I watched several presentations recently by different manufacturers. They were amazingly similar in that they all said the same buzz words. Our product is cradle to cradle. Our product is filled with recycled content and is recyclable. Our product has been designed using green materials. It appears that the price of admission has changed and it is no longer unique to have a green product. So coming full circle, if you are trading dollars for furniture, what is the motivator?

LEED recaps

2008-07-30T06:08:00.000-07:00

I was rooting around in the case study part of the USGBC website. If you haven't been there in a while or ever, check it out - www.usgbc.org. I found that looking at how other people have designed their spaces opens your eyes to the creativity in the world of green building. The project approaches vary, the way the project accumulates points vary and the purposes of the projects are really quite different, other than the part that they are all green projects.

One of the projects obtaining LEED-CI stated that they used movable walls to "reduce financial and environmental costs of churn and reorganization". The case studies are all about a page long so there really isn't a lot of room to talk about the project details so the fact that this company chose to talk about the strategy of their space stuck out in my mind. Very different from the other case studies which concentrated more on why they chose to build a LEED project and then how they obtained points and what decisions they made along the way.

Of course there was a pattern in the LEED-CI case studies. Day lighting and views were talked about by all of the projects. They all obtained the openness of the offices in a similar way. Put the offices in the core of the space and workstations around the window walls. Or, eliminate offices all together and stick to low panels/low workstations. Maybe it was me but it seems like this was all stated like it was the newest idea in the world, eliminate the private offices around the exterior of the space. Well, not to date myself but the first time I saw this design layout it was stated as revolutionary too, and that was for the Quaker Oats project in Chicago designed by GHK in 1986 or so. I guess if you think about it, culturally those perimeter offices are still highly coveted by the executive C-suite crew and therefore are prolific in space design making this still a revolutionary or at least controversial design concept.

The other couple of ideas I found employed by others were to eliminate trash can liners in the office building. Thomas Properties talked about this as it relates to their LEED project in Sacramento for CAL/EPA. For some reason, I found this to be wonderful. So simple yet I know that my Irvine Company building puts trash can liners in our trash cans and now even in our blue recycling cans. It makes me crazy. The leadership and learning that would need to accompany a change like this is astoundingly high. And it seems so simple, but alas I think that it would be quite an effort. I wonder if I can get The Irvine Company to change, HA.

Lastly, lose the lawn!! Using native landscaping for water conservation here in San Diego is a no-brainer. But the case study about our local LEED project mentioned satellite irrigation technology that automatically schedules irrigation based on the needs of the landscaping and local weather conditions! How cool is that. I always love the scene of the building watering their landscaping when it is raining outside. Unbelievable.

So check out the projects, you might get inspired.

It's Coming Up Everywhere

2008-07-20T06:34:00.000-07:00

I personally think that the amount of information flying at all of us is incredible. What to read, what to believe, what to think, what does it all mean, when is enough enough? I have to let it sit in my brain and distill for a while and then it all seems to take shape. Staring at the ocean helps too.

Paul Goldberger wrote an article for The New Yorker this past week talking about a new building by Daniel Fisher. Dr. Fisher has designed a building using Dynamic Architecture creating an 80 story skyscraper in which every floor rotates independently of the other floors. He calls it "flexible for life" able to morph for the user today and tomorrow and everyone can have the mixture of views from the building. To make it environmentally friendly, each floor is separated by a few feet of space to accommodate wind turbines which make the building self powered.

Deloitte and Charles Lockwood released a study The Dollars and Sense of Green Retrofits. Lots of statistics that I have seen before and heard about for years supporting green building. There were a couple of highlights I pulled out that were interesting. Deloitte states that organizations that forego green building for whatever reason ( usually ROI ), should reconsider because they are predicting that within the next three years they will be at a competitive disadvantage due to higher operating costs, lower productivity and declining attraction of skilled workers - and don't forget a potential of negative brand image. Then there are the dollars and sense, LEED building are commanding rent premiums, have a higher occupancy rate and sell higher on the market. My personal favorite statistic is the movement of the younger workforce where 80% are saying that they are interested in a job that has a positive impact on the environment and 92% want to work at a company that is environmentally friendly.

The quote of the week in The Week magazine is about how the person could not afford to drive their Land Rover anymore due to the cost of gas. She goes on to say that she used to laugh when drivers of small cars honked at her and she would think Go ahead, make my day. I could crush you like a bug. Oh, how have the mighty fallen now.

Harvard Business Review has a host of articles about people, alignment, motivation, leadership and high-commitment, high- performance CEOs. There is a list of companies that are lead by this leadership - a whole bunch of environmentally aware companies appear.

And last but not least, the USGBC announced earlier this month that they will release a huge revision to the current LEED systems that includes realignment, consolidation, updating and streamlining the process. The drivers for this change are nested in the input from the users of LEED that criticize it for being too rigid, cumbersome and demanding - and too costly.

So if you link all of these together, the message coming into my head is that the individual is the common denominator in these readings. The individual wants a view no matter where they are in a building, the individual wants to work in a environmentally friendly building, the individual is making decisions about their behavior and mindset, companies want to influence individuals in multiple ways and individuals are demanding change in benchmarks. So, bringing it back to the almighty adaptable workspace, doesn't it make sense to think before you act and bring attributes of environmentally friendly ways of building into your workplace to accommodate the diversity of the individual?

It is all in how you look at things

2008-07-14T06:10:00.000-07:00

I have marveled at the word "stress" for many years. It is a huge dumping ground for emotions and perspectives that could be called something else. We quickly just say that we are stressed out, or that a situation is making me stress out or that certain things are stressful. I am certainly not discounting that there is indeed stress in our lives but I started to look at the word and how it was being used several years ago when I read about a parking lot attendant talk about how stressed out she was everyday. She was sitting in a booth in an underground parking lot, alone, stressing out. It dawned on me that stress is increased or intensified by your own perceptions and your own thoughts. If you decide you are going to be overwhelmed then you usually are getting what you fear the most - what if you change your mind?

G.K. Chesterton wrote a great couple of passages about looking at things differently. One is about being at a train station and hearing adults complain about having to wait for a train. He makes us sit back and think about whether you have ever heard a little boy complain about having to hang about the station and wait for a train? Probably not because the station is a place of wonder and "poetical pleasures" to a child. Isn't this the same situation for both people with different views on the experience? His second passage I loved was about an adult trying to open a sticking bedroom bureau drawer. Every day it was jammed and completely annoying to have to pull open. The frustrations were coming from a perception that the drawer was supposed to be easy to open, it should be easy to pull out. What if you imagine yourself pulling against some powerful and oppressive enemy, then the struggle becomes exciting instead of exasperating. Or what if you are tugging up a lifeboat out of the sea or a climber in a crevass in the Swiss Alps. Does that make the experience different?

I find myself getting "stressed out" when I get overloaded in a quick period of time - when things come at me so fast that I cannot process the information, organize the information or when it is just over the top too much. Maybe too much is just too much.

Why get stressed out in traffic? It does not help to reduce the traffic or the time spent sitting in traffic. Stress does not make you not late for a meeting - it just makes you stressed. Apologize for being late and then leave earlier the next time and don't be late again. It is disrespectful.

I certainly won't say that the world is not feeling a little "stressful" these days with the price of oil, the crazy markets, the unemployment rate etc. I don't think I have a panacea for all of those factors but I can say that you can change your mind and that is a very powerful thing.

I have been concerned for a long time that I don't have a favorite saying that sort of sums up my life or my favorite spiritual saying to guide me. A bible passage, a quote from Aristotle, an I Ching saying - something to put it out there. This was actually a bit stressful to me because I felt pressure to have some profound statement in my life. Well it turns out that I do have one, it just is not what you would call sophisticated -

"there ain't no Coupe de Ville hiding in the bottom of your Cracker Jack box" - Meatloaf.

Incremental Changes

2008-07-05T06:16:00.000-07:00

I am a big picture thinker thinking about things while looking for trends and patterns that show a path or a movement and I am watching one develop right now. In our pluralistic society, the change is coming from all places. It is all integral to our little world of green interior construction / furniture. Less waste is a good idea.

My neighbor bought a brand new Prius last week. They traded in their old car, inclusive of the Condi Rice for President sticker on the bumper. I heard that when you buy a Prius they give you an Obama for President bumper sticker as a standard issue. I know we are what we drive around here but can't we all just decide that good performance is good performance?

The Vatican issued a statement that pollution would now be considered "a sin". Along with nature's demise comes ours - so who is the sinner? ( Marketwatch.com) The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary says that destroying God's creation was akin to tearing a page out from the bible. ( The New Yorker, June 30, 2008 ). I would rather have a less garbage/toxic filled world to live in regardless of your views on global warming.

And nearest to my heart is the start of the integration of the interior construction world. The divide between purchasing/procurement and design/facilities/construction seems to be healing. Slowly but moving that way. Large corporate procurement people and large unified school district procurement people are calling for information, learning about what they are buying and wanting to know what they need to know about sustainable approaches to building.

Whatever happened to the commercials on TV with "don't be a litterbug" and the American Indian on horseback looking at the trash on the ground with a teardrop in his eye. Clearly had some impact on me - I can't remember what I had for lunch yesterday but I remember commercials from 35 years ago.... There are 2 movies that I find interesting from a trash and garbage perspective - Wall E and Idiocracy. Wall E is left on the plant cleaning up garbage for 700 years after the earth has so much consumerism that it cannot support life. Idiocracy is a world with garbage everywhere and commercialization everywhere. Society is completed dumbed down and individual responsibility and the consequences break down. Futuristic like Sleeper but garbage plays a part in what the world looks like in the future.

The organic society. Able to change, adapt and grow. Designed to integrate. The organic workplace, a manifestation of the same ingredients - adaptable, changeable and expandable. The little steps are happening everywhere to reduce consumption, reduce waste and build differently. Take notice.

Behaviors and Green Purchases

2008-06-27T11:29:00.000-07:00

You can't prescribe something green and then become green. Specifying a green chair does not mean you are green - it just means you bought a new chair that has sustainable features like recycled content or non-horrible toxins. If you want to be greener, it is probably better to not buy a new chair at all and therefore you are using less virgin materials or throwing away more old stuff into the landfills.

There are several points in LEED that have an intent around impacting the environment less. In Sustainable Sites, you can earn a point by locating your building on a brownfield site. The intent is that you are cleaning something up AND putting less pressure to use undeveloped land. In Water Efficiency, you can earn a point by using high efficiency irrigation technology or using captured water to irrigate. The intent is to limit or eliminate the use of potable water for irrigation. In Energy & Atmosphere, you can earn a point for increasing your energy performance to reduce environmental impacts of using excessive energy. In Materials & Resources, you can earn a point for recycled content of building products with the intent on boosting the demand for products with recycled content and decreasing demand for products that extract and process new virgin materials. See a trend? You can earn points by selecting things that preserve land, water and resources.

According to Cornell University, an average of one pound of drywall ends up in a landfill for each square foot of drywall built in initial construction. The EPA estimates that 155 lbs of material waste is generated for every square foot of built out space - and we demolish 1.75 billion square feet of existing building space a year. So how can the USGBC not acknowledge movable walls, or plug and play power or removable access floors or modular carpet tiles or sound masking or indirect lights as terrific strategies?

The manufacturers call these behavior - changing tools. If you use the products, they are actually probably more effective for the second time around LEED process because you would be reusing a huge portion of existing building materials, diverting scads of trash from landfills etc.

I found it wonderful that DIRTT, KI and Haworth joined forces as manufacturers to work on the USGBC to recognize behavior changing tools as huge parts of green building and green using of buildings. Good for them! Collaborative, innovative, sustainably focused and interesting.

Green Teamwork

2008-06-22T07:09:00.000-07:00

It occurred to me a while back that teamwork is a term that is heard all day every day but it is not really understood by a large part of the working world. Not to be gender based but, there are many women I know ( and a few men ) that have never really played on a sports team. Certainly women in my generation - old - did not have the opportunities that the girls today have in the sports world. There were no team sports available to play until maybe junior high school when softball was offered back in the day. I happened to love competitive sports and played softball, field hockey, lacrosse, volleyball and the creme de la creme at the University of Michigan, women's rugby. I also have an older brother that I spent years chasing and trying to impress by volunteering to be the goalie ( in full pads ) during our winter hockey games. But what about those individuals that do not really understand that the power of the team is so different from the individual star? When I use sports analogy in my office, it is only partially effective. Talking about the full back and the wide receiver don't really hit home sometimes, or talking about running a play without a plan from the quarterback doesn't sound that bad...

The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do. When you work as a team, this permeates the whole of the individuals and allows the "specialists" in different functions to collaborate across rigid silos. When you are building a workspace, it is pretty darn important to work as a team and let the talent be talented all together. Bringing this back into my little world, our movable wall component to a project isn't just about how the manufacturer makes the panels in a factory, ships them to site and discounts the price the most aggressively. We touch a whole pile of trades and people on the team. If the GC ( or quarterback for this analogy ) calls the play for the team and the timeline moves ( oh heavens ) then the whole team needs to flex. But what if the quarterback doesn't tell the players that he/she changed the timeline? What if we don't talk to our teammates about how we can resolve the problems? What if we chose to just do what we want because it is good for us and the client but hammers the project team? Yikes.

I was talking about style and culture this week with a colleague. We were lamenting about our dislike for micromanagement. Now of course there is a time for getting deep in the details and using that hard/soft combination punch that motivates and drives the team however, a collaborative dance can be so much more effective. Sometimes we see the micromanagement style combined with knowledge is power in our LEED teams and it is definitely not the most effective way. Typically, we see the start of the project through a LEED checklist of yes/maybe/no. I was talking to a new green furniture buyer in Las Vegas this week about how this checklist starts the process of points. We talked about how the checklist is a guideline but it is not the culture of the project. It is merely the starting place for the team. We take that list of point opportunities and figure out how we are going to align and add value. The micromanagement style just asks us to provide information that they want for the points. The collaborative team gives us the list and asks us to help solve the point puzzle and asks us to add value and help get the points. Totally different experience and result.

Harboring information as power makes me personally crazy. There is so much more to creative thoughts and innovative problem solving that experience and expertise bring to the table. Why exclude that as you build out a space? We see it all the time. And oh, it has nothing to do with price. Wisdom and experience can come at the same price point - you just have to look and want the added value. Teamwork attitude is also "free", you just have to look for it and want it.

The Green Building Doesn't Do It By Itself

2008-06-06T09:14:00.000-07:00

The San Diego market has a shortage of green buildings - or so I hear. The one big one on everyone's mind is the new La Jolla Commons building. So, there we have it. A green building in a prime location in UTC. So, if you move into the building are you more green than if you choose another building that is not green? What if you don't want to afford the rent costs in that new class A space. Can you be as green as the tenants in La Jolla Commons?

Well, lets think about this. Let's say you rented space in the LEED building and you drive to work every day in your autosaurus and sit in your furniture that is made of toxic chemicals imported from China. Are you more green than someone that rents space in the non-LEED building but takes the Coaster to work and sits in reused furniture? Hmmm.

You can't do everything so you have to do what you can do to be more green. In an overly simplified way, here are some thoughts when you think about that building choice. How about picking one that has access to public transportation or that is easy to ride a bike to? How about a building that has drought resistant landscaping, my personal favorite is the Kilroy Del Mar Heights buildings on Valley Centre. How about a building that has natural sunlight and you utilize the space in a way that everyone enjoys the light and you can use less lighting or leave the lights off completely? What about a building that uses cleaning products that are non-toxic, uses paint that has low vocs, has extensive recycling programs for the tenants, uses reusable building materials like movable walls so you can reconfigure your space to meet your changing business and the building owner can tailor space for new tenants without tearing out hundreds of pounds of drywall. Hmmm, that all works.

There is no solution that addresses everything, so do what you can and be smarter. Being green does not mean that you have to be uncomfortable. Being healthier has to be more comfortable. And, being green does not require you to buy anything.

What happens if

2008-05-30T08:06:00.000-07:00

It used to be that our office strategized daily about how to improve our performance, how to improve our customer satisfaction, how to improve our sales and how to improve the overall experience that we give to our local community. We spent and still spend countless hours analyzing these issues and working to progress forward. We challenge ourselves with being current and futuristic about how our business works and how it will look in 5 years. Lately it seems that the voyeurism of 5 years into the future has cut been down to a time frame that is less than Moore's Law of 18 months. What happens right now to all of us as the cost of gas rises and rises.

Our offices are in UTC and while we love our location, access to any transportation is pretty low. I occasionally ride the Coaster to Sorrento Valley but that means someone has to come pick me up at the train and get me to our offices. So, I don't ride the Coaster very often, it just is not that convenient. This led to a larger conversation about how many people would ride the Coaster or Trolley if it were "possible". This led to conversations about working 4 days a week in the office and 1 day at home to save gas. Then we talked about moving to a location that had easy access to trains and trolleys - and using a communal car to meet with clients and visit job sites. When you put all this together you get a whole lot of information and options. How are we going to address the cost of gas in the microcosm of just getting to work and back home.

I can go down the path of thought about how our San Diego world will change holistically as gas prices grow to $7-8-9 a gallon. Maybe instead of one central office/showroom we will need 3 offices in regional markets - say north county, golden triangle and Chula Vista. Our clients won't want to travel to a central spot to look for furniture because it will cost too much. Do lease spaces become smaller? Maybe we invest in technology and have our teammates work from home or in satellite spots. How do you keep the cohesion of a team and the quantum thoughts that arrive out of putting collective thought and effort towards problem solving and our overall business if the teammates are scattered all over the place? Let's not forget that our company trucks and talented installation technicians have to deliver furniture and equipment throughout San Diego County with diesel fuel prices breaking the $5 a gallon mark. But this is just about us. What about our entire market - other companies face the same prospects.

There was an article in the WSJ a couple of weeks ago about a company that is giving their employees $50 per paycheck to pay for the rising fuel costs. I loved that idea but it is really not sustainable if gas continues to escalate. It is more of a band-aid but an effective band-aid. There was an article in the LA Times this week about a company in San Diego that is making "green crude" oil out of algae and carbon dioxide and processing it in existing oil refineries - Sapphire Energy. The amount of articles about this subject in every publication is astounding. The combination of innovative thought, innovative products and willingness to open our minds to see a different pattern will lead us through the needed changes that are coming quickly.

As we progress into a new economy and a new world, it is really important to keep an open mind about what we can do and how we can do it. The current way of thinking and behaving is just going to have to morph because we are so reliant on gas and it is effecting us all. Leading the way for change can be hard but not leading change is more painful. What if we just do nothing. That is just not an option for us.

5 Tips for Leading Transformation ( from the CEO, Douglas Conant, of Cambell Soup Co.)

1. Bring an "all things possible" attitude to the workplace

2. Confront the brutal facts and be clear-eyed about the situation

3. Set high standards and make expectations clear, as the ability to mobilize people is the key to success

4. Give the organization time to do things right

5. Do what you say you will, this is about performance, not intentions.

So, our roundabout conversation internally about what to do ended in a interesting place. We have to do something and one solution doesn't work for everyone. We have already moved team meetings to accommodate car pooling schedules, we are exploiting technology to create and transport visualizations of space and functional workplaces, we are coordinating schedules with one another to avoid redundancies and share in transportation, we are finding key partners in destinations outside our a core area that can service the needs of our clients less expensively and we are talking about ideas daily. The short, short term solution looks like ride sharing, public transportation usage and a communal hybrid for use after you get to the office. The long term solution looks like a lot of small term thoughts strung together based on an overall strategy.

Footprint

2008-05-16T05:58:00.000-07:00

If you haven't taken your carbon/ecological footprint, there is a fun interactive site to visit that will open your eyes. www.ecofoot.org. I have looked at other tests and sites that offer this type of evaluation but this one was pretty good. It is certainly about your personal consumption versus your work consumption but of course, those worlds collide.

Since I tend to work well with check lists, I thought I'd take some green practices that are relevant to the office and list them here. So many of us inhabit office space that was not built green - and even if you do work in a green building, here are some tactical things you can do to better your green world.

At your desk, or as an individual, here you go - things you can somewhat control.

1. Use a coffee mug instead of paper/Styrofoam/plastic cup for your coffee. 1.9 million tons of paper and plastic cups and plates are thrown away each year. Yes, your Starbucks cup is recycled paper and can be recycled but that requires energy so just don't use paper cups.

2. Get rid of the disposable pens and pencils. 5.1 billion pens are disposed of each year when you run out of ink. Get a refillable pen and enjoy better quality and produce less waste. Cut down those purchases from Office Depot.

3. Paper is an easy one. Print on both sides, print less, save paper in a tray on your desk that is only used on one side and use it as scrap paper, proof on the screen so you only print once, recycle the used paper and buy recycled paper. It is so hard to stop using paper but you can certainly cut down on the amount by a bit and that little bit adds up.

4. Turn off your computer completely at night and turn off your monitor at night too. If you are away during the day, put your computer to sleep ( system preferences on your computer allows you to change settings ). www.energystar.gov has some "how to" guidelines for computer users.

5. Bring your lunch to work in reusable containers. You don't need to buy new containers, just reuse the ones from the take out food you ordered. Reuse bread wrappers and other plastic packaging and avoid buying plastic bags. Give up yucky plastic forks and spoons.

Pretty simple stuff that adds up and makes sense.

The Intention of Green

2008-05-06T05:34:00.000-07:00

I attended a wonderful lunch sponsored by CREW San Diego a couple of weeks ago. It was a board discussion that involved the Port of San Diego, the Airport of San Diego and the Pacific Gateway development in San Diego. The discussion was not about green or anything so specific but, there was this one statement made that stuck in my brain and resonated over and over. I will never get the exact wording right but the statement went something like this - The Pacific Gateway project will of course be LEED certified... Then later in the conversation when the board was talking about opposition to work done by any of the entities ( the airport, the port, Manchester etc ) it was said that the "environmentalists" are always fighting and very vocal. I totally appreciate both sides of that story - those fast adapter, radical environmentalists can be completely anti-development and crazy in the minds of business people. In the same light though, would we be building green buildings if it weren't for the efforts of the USGBC to help educate and evolve the way we build? There is a happy medium between development and green and they can coexist in my mind. There is clearly an intention to being green.

There was an RFP out on the street that had the intention of green but judging by the words chosen, it is clearly an intention without an understanding. Would the team building a new corporate headquarters really build green if they didn't feel some pressure? 'A key goal of the project is to obtain Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification for this project. Products that support LEED are of interest and may be considered over other products'. Well now that barely makes sense other than you can figure out the intention of being green. Products don't get you to LEED certification. Process, teamwork and collaboration will get you a "green" building. There is not a "greener" product per say - especially as it relates to this evaluation because you can only add into the mix of calculations for the overall project.

To be truly helpful and relevant to LEED, an RFP could ask questions that go like this:

Describe your documentation process for materials you are proposing to supply to the project. This is no easy feat as the products we support are varied and each one different. It is cumbersome and hugely time consuming to do this - that is assuming you even know where to start.

Provide the documentation relevant to LEED credits early on and submit using calculations. Jeez, you really have to know what you are doing here.

Provide your process of touch up for the products you are supplying. Often times the dealerships install these wonderful Greenguard products and then slather on the high VOC touch up paint in the field. Yikes, talk about blowing out the LEED points.

Provide details about the packaging and disposal of trash on site. This RFP had the standard statement that says we can't use the GC's dumpster. Well according to LEED, that is a no-brainer - how about if we offer up our own cardboard dumpster for 100% recycling and then we provide our waste tickets to our LEED coordinator. Wow, different approach huh.

There is really so much to learn and so much to know with how to build green. I am just truly happy we are getting to the point where most things we hear about are intending on green building - and learning how to green build along the way.

The Now

2008-04-25T08:31:00.000-07:00

I am not an Oprah watcher but I certainly talk to an awful lot of people who are Oprah fans. I am probably really out of the loop and this is old news but I am hearing over and over about these 2 books relating to living in the NOW. Letting go of your ego and other distractions and just being in the now. Not a new concept, in fact very Jungian from what I can gather, but clearly this is impacting people. It is an interesting concept when you combine it with being more environmentally responsible.

If you are in the NOW and not thinking about later or earlier, do you just not care about the impact of your actions on anything? I am living right now so who cares about later? Or do you look at your present actions as right now and then what impact it does have on the future.

For instance. You buy a new fancy computer, like a very, very yummy IMac. The first day you get it, you unbox it, throw away all the packaging and marvel at the design, speed and technology. You cannot fathom that this stunning purchase will one day be your old computer that you cannot wait to get rid of and replace. Is that living in the now or later? How do you do both?

So do you look at the computer and say, when I throw this away, where does it go? According to an article I read in Forbes.com, electronics are the fastest growing solid waste stream in the world. They are not allowed in California landfills and therefore, they are often shipped overseas to junk yards. Waste all over the place. Check out the article "Rehab, Reuse, Recycle" at Forbes.com April 21, 2008. Pretty interesting.

How do you consume today and not trash tomorrow? Planned obsolescence is in seemingly everything we buy. Just get ready to want something newer. And not just because it is newer - it is so often times so much better. Look at the older big huge computer monitors in your office. When they die, you bring in the new flat screen monitors. What a difference. The quality of the screen is better but also, the ergonomics of your desk is so much better. You can work differently, you can pull up to your desk and see the typing on the screen. Clearly an improvement but how do we do this and not just keep junking up the planet.

"Cradle to Cradle" would say that there needs to be planned future in good design.

Furniture Misconceptions

2008-04-18T09:37:00.000-07:00

I spoke at the IFMA Green Symposium last week with 3 distinguished other speakers - Danette Ferretti, Kelly Devereaux and Ron Sutliff. One of the key threads through our conversation was a a list of common misconceptions surrounding furniture and LEED.

Buying a specific chair will get you a LEED credit
Greenguard furniture will get you MR credit
Green costs more
Greenguard is the same as LEED
All domestic furniture today is Greenguard
Furniture is a major component to LEED

We addressed and answered the above statement in our presentation -

Buying a specific chair will get you a LEED credit. Nope. LEED is very specific that you can never just buy something to get a point. A specific product does not ever earn a point. The products can contribute to points.

Greenguard furniture will get you MR credit. Nope. Greenguard is about indoor air quality and emissions into the air. MR is about recycled content, reuse, less use etc. Totally different.

Greenguard is the same as LEED. Nope. Greenguard is an independent testing facility and organization that evaluates products. LEED is a voluntary program designed and administered by the US Green Building Council surrounding sustainable building.

All domestic furniture today is Greenguard. Nope. This is an elective test paid by some manufacturers to certify their product. It is becoming more wide spread but initially it was prohibitively expensive for many companies and controversial with some companies. Similarly, we are seeing off shore products starting to get Greenguard interested.

Furniture is a major component to LEED. Nope. It has no direct effect on any points in LEED-NC other than to maybe contribute to recycled content. It has only a minimal effect in LEED-CI, hitting one or the other of two credits, either using Greenguard furniture for the IAQ point or using recycled furniture for an MR credit. Similar to LEED-NC, furniture and movable walls can both contribute to other points such as recycled content or local manufacturing.

There is a lot of mystery in the furniture world but at the end of it all, it is all very simple.

The Impact of Design

2008-04-02T10:03:00.000-07:00

Statistics say that the initial design of a space drives 85% of the capital cost of the space and 100% of the occupancy cost of the space. However, design costs less than 5% of the capital cost and less than .33% of the occupancy costs. I had to think about this for a long while, letting it sink in. Basically, the impact of design is huge but the price/cost of design is not so huge. Wouldn't this lend you to think that spending a bit more money on design would make sense since you could maybe decrease your other costs substantially by using better design?

I have been watching art and design and their impact on the world my whole life. I could go on and on and on about it but there is a small part of this big topic that interests me greatly. The public schools that our kids go to have cut and cut to the point where art and design no longer exist as important educational topics. They are not considered basic educational needs and in order to keep math and English in the schools, our kids are doing without art and design. So, it goes to say that we are raising generations of kids that have never really been educated in design or art and some really have not exposure to art and design. As these kids grow up and become heads of companies, they are missing design and art as core understandings unless they miraculously are interested or have taken a college course in art. Therefore, the ones that are controlling the big corporate dollars are not spending or wanting to spend money on design because they may not know the impact?

The world certainly sees good design and bad design every day. Design is everywhere but is it noticed as design or just image. The Apple Stores - nice design right? It effects your experience right? I walked into the UTC Apple Store last week and was astounded by the design. This isn't even one of their flagship masterpieces and it was cool. A guy in flip flops helped me buy a time capsule in under 3 minutes, emailing me the receipt and sticking a cool little sticker that said "lucky you" so the guard at the door knew I had bought the product. All of that is customer experience and all of it is based on good design. Look at your experience walking into WalMart versus Costco. Totally different set ups, totally different designs. Does it affect you? Why does my husband like going to Costco so much, and I am sure that he is not the only guy that actually likes going to Costco.

When you walk into a workplace, you have an initial reaction - it may be about the aesthetics, the colors, the design, the smell or lots of other stuff. But you always have a reaction. This reaction effects how the business attracts workers, how the business succeeds or fails and whether the business functions effectively or not. Integrating good design, which includes sustainable practices does affect the bottom line - and it doesn't cost a fraction of what other things cost.

Stop Reading and Emailing and Start Talking

2008-03-16T07:25:00.000-07:00

One of the core values of USGBC's original LEED program was collaboration. Instead of using the old and tried lineal approach to design and building, the program insisted that the design and build teams talk and work together from the start to the finish. Collaboration, listening to a teammate with years of experience, working through problems, establishing healthy conflict that has to exist to break through old ideas to find a new and better way are all ways to help to construct a high performance building economically.

Every week it seems that there are more and more articles about being green and ironically, they all seem to have a theme of collaboration and community...

The New York Times had an article last week by Megan Hustad about the general hum of an office, the activity of the workplace and the ringing of the telephone. "Everyone sat at desks silently reading and typing email passages". The noise of people talking, the sound of the phone ringing, the daily energy in the air is gone. Also gone are important ambient learning moments- eavesdropping on your boss' conversations to learn the business. "The office phone call, properly overheard, is really the cheapest, easiest way to transmit institutional knowledge." "Business calls also taught me the necessary summoning of courage for potentially fraught encounters. Typing a tough e-mail is simply no substitute for the fine art of handling a difficult conversation. So though we may welcome the way e-mail spares us from confrontation, it's worth remembering that resorting to e-mail rather than picking up the phone results in not merely a quieter workplace but also a feebler one".

I remember way back when, well in 1985, when I went to work at Merrill Lynch in their New York City-midtown offices. The workplace had just changed from the traditional bull pen of desks in a room with brokers and assistants lined up talking on the phone to the new cubicle arrangement. The panels were set up in pods of 4 with peek holes in the middle so we all sat facing a corner that was connected to one another. I supported 3 brokers, all of us in this one pod configuration. The office was no longer noisy - everyone was in their little space doing their thing. The older brokers were culturally shocked but adapted, the younger brokers were lost. They could not learn from the older group because they could not hear them. The assistants were put next to the team but the ambient information that we used to hear that helped us do our jobs was lost in the new set up.

There was an article at least 6-7 years ago in Fast Company about a company in the south bay that banned emails on Friday for internal company correspondence. The CEO was demanding the return of conversation among the employees. He was also protesting, if I remember correctly, the amount of emails being received by everyone from people sitting 6 feet away. Get up and talk to one another, solve problems, work together, stop hiding. We followed this in our offices for a short time and it was a lot of fun, difficult, but fun and funny. Some people adapted quickly and painlessly. Some just could not adapt. Rifling off emails without thinking, forwarding emails without dissecting who needs to do what or know what information was just easier than thinking. It quickly pointed out how often we are emailing when we could be talking and building our office community.

Last week the Wall Street Journal cited a company offering incentives to employees to trade in their low gas mileage cars for more fuel efficient types. I have very little to say on this as my Prius costs $20 in gas for a week and I drive 20,000 a year - for $1200. I cannot understand spending money on gas when there are options - but that is just me.

Last week there was an article in Entrepreneur about how facilities can be more green. Simple things we all know - programmable thermostats, motion-sensor lighting, turn off your computers and screens when you leave for the day, install bike rakes and showers to encourage bike riding to work, and subsidize mass transit costs. This article also said that the average worker uses 12,000 sheets of paper a year and that email cuts down on waste.

So, writing less emails means you have to talk more and therefore you are not wasting paper and writing more emails and less memos on paper means you are saving paper. So, while I am not confused, I guess you can do both - email more and email less. But the most important thing is to honor your community and talk to one another and collaborate with your office mates.

IFMA Green on April 9th

2008-03-06T14:30:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned in my last posting, IFMA San Diego is presenting a wonderful Green Symposium. The event has several speakers, all of whom are addressing green interiors and facilities. Topics include: Construction, Flooring, Maintenance / Cleaning and of course, the granddaddy of them all, Furniture.

Kelly Devereaux from DPR, Ron Sutliff from Integrated Project Management and Danette Ferretti and I are all sharing the stage to talk about Furniture. We are covering some basics, such as what is LEED, what credits are relevant to furniture, which LEED programs are which, how do you treat the three buckets ( if you will ) of furniture; movable walls, systems furniture and ancillary furniture, what are the misperceptions of LEED, what does Greenguard mean, why you can't just buy a point or credit and what you may have in your existing facility that is already "green".

We are going to address strategies for seeking LEED. How do you get a point for a credit. What are the trade offs. What can be specified by a designer to provide a longer/better life cycle cost to a workplace. What is the process for getting LEED and greening your interiors. How do movable walls work in construction and tenant improvements.

Lastly, what are the costs of green, or better yet, what are the savings with green. Do you have to spend more to buy green products? Can you build a green interiors inexpensively? What can you do to be more green but not spend a lot of green doing it.

We are looking for an interactive audience so sign up now, come ask questions and learn something new.

Green Conferences in San Diego

2008-02-29T14:24:00.000-08:00

There are some great green conferences coming up in San Diego.

On April 9th, IFMA San Diego is hosting a Green Symposium. It is an all day event at the Four Points Sheraton. The day has four breakout sessions surrounding LEED-CI subjects like furniture, construction, floor coverings and maintenance/green cleaning. The furniture session is hosted by yours truly and I am co-presenting with Ron Sutliff of Integrated Project Management, Danette Ferretti of Carrier Johnson and Kelly Devereaux of DPR. We are planning a riveting talk about movable walls, costs of going green, green wash by the furniture industries and how the LEED points do and do not apply to products. www.ifmasandiego.org

On another fun note, the USGBC - San Diego chapter is hosting what looks to be a great event.
"Collaborating at Intuit". Sounds like a huge crowd is gathering and the content is great. www.usgbc-sd.org

Don't miss these if you are trying to learn about LEED and green.

Think Local

2008-02-15T07:02:00.000-08:00

LEED - CI and LEED - NC both have credits for buying locally manufactured products. The idea behind these credits is to support your local economy, which has long term sustainable aspects, and also saves energy ( fuel ) by not shipping materials and goods from all over the globe. Interestingly, LEED-School does not have this credit available and I am not sure why. Research to follow.

When we did a search for manufacturers within a 500 mile radius of San Diego, we came up with 35 or so. It is a little tricky because the credit is for manufacturing, not distribution so when you look up manufacturers, you have to make sure they are actually making the product, not just storing it. For instance, AVA Furniture shows up as 467 miles away from SD however, that is just their corporate headquarters and distribution center. The product is all manufactured in China. This would not qualify for the credit in either LEED program.

The list of local manufacturers - based on our location in San Diego - is posted here for your convenience. I encourage you to submit more and different ones that we don't know about - we are always looking for options and by no means think that this list is all conclusive. Additionally, some research is still necessary to make sure that the products being marketed by these manufacturers are actually produced here and not just imported and sold under the company name. That is a bit more tricky as the information is not readily available. Lots of times manufacturers OEM their products ( in a nutshell, they have a outside equipment manufacturers produce the product for them and they sell it under their name ). Kind of like groceries - Trader Joe's has all sorts of yummy items produced under their label but the actual product comes from a plant that is not Trader Joe's. In the furniture world, all sorts of OEM arrangements are going on.

The LEED credit for using products produced within a 500 mile radius applies to the whole project, not just the furniture purchase. Therefore, it is important to know the details of the credit and how furniture relates or does not relate to the overall scope of work.

The Post, Pre and Industrial Difference

2008-02-08T12:43:00.000-08:00

Recycled Content - LEED - NC and LEED - CI credits 4.1 and 4.2.

The intent of the credit is to increase the demand for building products that incorporate recycled content materials therefore reducing impacts resulting from extraction and processing of new virgin materials. Okay, pretty straightforward in concept but the collection of the data and computation of the data can be tricky and difficult.

Credit 4.1 asks for 5% of total value of material on the project to be comprised of recycled content. The 5% must include both post-consumer recycled content and post-industrial / preconsumer recycled content. Post-consumer recycled content is worth double the credit as pre-consumer. What is the difference between the two and why is one worth more than the other? What is post-industrial mean?

Post-consumer waste is a waste type produced by the end consumer of a material stream; that is, where the waste-producing use did not involve the production of another product. It is simpy the garbage that individuals routinely discard, either in a waste receptacle or a dump or worse littering.

Pre-consumer waste or post- industrial waste is the reintroduction of manufacturing scrap ( such as trimmings from paper production, defective aluminum cans, etc ) back into the manufacturing process. Preconsumer waste is commonly used in manufacturing industries , and is often not considered recycling in the traditional sense. Preconsumer waste is often called post-industrial waste.

The way I remember the difference is that post-consumer waste is the plastic water bottle that you just finished. If you recycle that into a HAG office chair, you meet the post - consumer criteria. The scraps from the worksurface that end up on the floor of the Haworth manufacuring plant that are recycled into particle board or firewood to heat the factory is preconsumer / post-industrial waste.

Find out more at www.ftc.gov/bcp/grnrule/guides980427.htm - the FTC Guides for the Use of Environmental Marketing Claims, 16 CFR 260.7.

Wikipedia helped me articulate the above information about post-consumer waste - they also have a list of things that are qualifiers.

Post-consumer waste is worth double the amount of credit than preconsumer because it diverts waste from landfills.

Lastly, post-industrial and preconsumer are the same thing.

Know your words, know what they mean and then get ready to compute.

How we can be helpful with LEED

2008-02-01T07:32:00.000-08:00

As LEED becomes more ingrained in the world of design and construction, our involvement has changed. Initially, I would get phone calls asking me about what we could do to help with gaining points and occassionally a question about what credits we can help obtain but now I am seeing a shift.

There are several LEED-AP's in San Diego that are working on their second, third, fourth or even more LEED projects. These grizzled veterans as I call them, know the ropes and know what they are looking for during their projects. Yesterday, I met with a LEED-AP who is in the midst of a project and it came out that they are not going to go after the GreenGuard Indoor Air Quality credit. Of course, I asked why and asked if I could show some options that would meet performance, price, quality and Greenguard certification so they could achieve that point.

A few weeks ago a RFP/RFQ came out that asked our company to provide an on staff LEED - AP. We have not seen that before. Additionally, the RFP/RFQ asked us to identify which credits we could contribute to for the project. This required a pretty good amount of knowledge of what products are relevant to what credits and how the whole synergy works in the LEED process. Again, the project team had identified which credits were possible and which credits they were going to pursue. We took that checklist and married up our information and knowledge.

One of the biggest services we provide is knowledge. We see manufacturer's reps everyday, we hear about product attributes everyday and we have the horsepower to weed through the information to find the relevant meat for the LEED teams. Half the battle of getting through green building is knowing what you are doing.

A good article on the changes in and benefits of demountable walls.

2008-01-29T10:20:00.000-08:00

Demountable Partition Systems: The Ugly Duckling Turns Into the Beautiful Swan

Written by Carl Haines, Senior Project Manager for Johnson & Jennings General Contracting. Johnson & Jennings is a leading San Diego-based general contracting firm specializing in corporate office, retail, healthcare, and industrial facility tenant improvements. Founded in 1981 by owners Tom Johnson and Jackie Jennings, the firm employs a staff of 46 in headquarters located at 6165 Greenwich Drive, San Diego, Calif. More information about the company can be found on the web at http://www.johnsonandjennings.com/.

The Green Jungle

2008-01-10T11:33:00.000-08:00

There was an interesting article in the latest IIDA publication "perspective". It is a wonderful piece that sorts out different terms, ratings, rankings and certifications. A quick read but a good read called The Green Jungle.

The article touches on something that lured me into the LEED world.
I was already committed to the environment morally but the LEED process for building showed me that we needed to change the way we build. It is about the totality of process, or the holistic approach to design. It makes it complicated but that is what it is, it is complicated. You cannot just say I am going to buy a piece of furniture because it has Greenguard certification and therefore, I am green. ( Greenguard is for air quality, emissions, toxins etc. It has nothing to do with how the product was manufactured, recyclability, content or anything else, it is just one piece of the puzzle). You cannot build a building using the conventional old ways and expect it to be a successful LEED project, LEED requires collaboration and large picture thinking.

We have manufacturer's reps in our offices daily talking about their products and saying things ( I heard this one yesterday ) like "Is the client interested in green? Our product has 92% recycled content, it is really green". This has become nonsense to me because it does not explain anything. Sure it is a great start and the fact that the manufacturer can get quantitative numbers in their process is huge but this information is only a part of the picture.

How is something made? What is the overall impact? If you haven't read "Cradle to Cradle", read it. It is a must.

There is no instant gratification in green, it is messy and complex which means you have to take the time to learn it, little by little is great, but it is continuous.

The LEED test

2008-01-05T08:40:00.000-08:00

I have been asked more times than I can remember about the difficulty of the test to become a LEED-AP. My answer has become consistent - it was hard for me because I didn't know anything about building a building or site planning or anything like that so I had to learn what ASHRAE was and what a MEP was and what a brownfield was etc. Hardly things that I use in my everyday furniture life. So, I studied like crazy for many months and worked really hard to prepare and passed. In the words of an old business mentor, I am not the brightest or smartest so I prepare, prepare, prepare.

When I was studying four years ago, I had to explain to everyone, including my parents, what it was that I was learning. No one in my circle had heard of the USGBC and no one seemed to know what a LEED test contained. After I passed, I joined our local USGBC chapter and met some amazing people like Bob Noble, Drew George and Beth Brummitt to name a few. First Adopters and light years ahead of me when it came to green knowledge. I learned so much - and continue to learn.

My dad, Roy Slade, was the president of Cranbrook Academy of Art for many years and an avid learner. He has been curious about the USGBC and green building from the day I told him about it. As he and my mom travel around the country, they constantly report back about their findings of green and how pervasive it has become. During a recent interview for a documentary about Florence Knoll, Saarinen, Cranbrook and design in America, he was asked about sustainable design. He called to say, thank you for the Green Goddess blog and it's information! Finally, someone admitting to reading my blog!! If your parents don't read it, who would???? Anyway, his answer included a conversation about nature in design and how it has been prevalent in art forever. It is about green practices but it is also about integration with nature and the totality of art and it's very nature.

So, if you are thinking about taking the LEED test, I have really straightforward advise. Buy the study materials, go to your local USGBC chapter and sign up for a LEED study group and study like mad. I also went to the USGBC Cascadia chapter website and bought their flash cards - depending on how you learn, these are really handy. Study hard and talk to people.

Greening FirstAgain

2007-12-27T11:26:00.000-08:00

HetzelMeade Communications got me started on this blog endeavour so I guess it is only fitting that my year ends with a great "small world" story involving Sue Hetzel.

Many months ago I talked to Sue about PR in San Diego - she is the best of the best and a wealth of information. Among a lot of ideas (and some margaritas), my green goddess blog was hatched as a vehicle that would help our company Contract Interiors San Diego expand our impact on the green furniture world. We have a ton of expertise on our staff yet there really is not an easy way to promote that unique quality.

So, on with the story....

I got an email from Sue last week about her experience at the new offices of FirstAgain in the Diamond View Tower in San Diego.

"Well, hope your ears were burning today. I was downtown visiting a new client in their posh new digs and commenting to the new VP of marketing about how hip and functional the place was. Being nosy, I asked who designed the space and supplied all the groovy work spaces, etc. So she found Betty Johnson who told me she used Contract Interiors and just loves, loves, loves everyone there including the boss lady. I replied that only AB and her crafty crew could crank out award-winning office space like the one they did for FirstAgain..... Guess it didn’t hurt the execs are all big Michigan fans (the CEO actually included his love for Michigan football in his intro to me)".

Well, the story had another edge to it that I particularly loved. FirstAgain deliberately made decisions about their offices and the design of the space keeping green practices in mind. It started with the demand for incredible views for everyone in the company, furniture that has Greenguard certification for healthier air to breathe and an overall approach that had its footings in take care of the whole team. I like the sign on their website that says they plant a tree with every loan. How great is that?

The small world of San Diego never ceases to amaze me. Have a great end to 2007, happy new year and may Michigan football recover from an awful season with a new coach in 2008.

The Green Goddess