EBOM 2009 MRc2: Sustainable Purchasing—Durable Goods

Severin, it's located on USGBC.org under LEED Resources.

Samantha, LEED is strictly FSCIndependent, third-party verification that forest products are produced and sold based on a set of criteria for forest management and chain-of-custody controls developed by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), an international nonprofit organization. FSC criteria for certifying forests around the world address forest management, legal issues, indigenous rights, labor rights, multiple benefits, and environmental impacts.. There has been a ton of debate about this, and thus far USGBC has been squarely behind FSC.

Actually Jennifer, I think submitting pictures along with the material you already gave GBCI, as well as a narrative explaining that you've been stonewalled by HP and struck out with the vendor, should be plenty. If that ENERGY STAR label is on the computer, and the picture makes it clear that I'm looking at the same computer you've listed in your table, that really should be enough. Good luck with it - I think you've got a strong case.

Dan

Elliot, I think the tracking form shown above in the Doc Toolkit assists in that regard. That form can be given to vendors who make purchases that they need to track.

Agreed Geoffrey - those hand dryers would be considered mechanical equipment and excluded from EBOMEBOM is an acronym for Existing Buildings: Operations & Maintenance, one of the LEED 2009 rating sytems..

That's a good question, Matthew. At first blush, I'd say that you would be required to count the cost of those items in your overall cost of goods purchased during the performance period. It hasn't come up very often in the past, so I can't say for sure whether GBCI would agree with you if you wrote a narrative explaining why you excluded the purchase entirely. I'd say your best bet would be to send this question to GBCI's customer service via LEED Online and see what they say.

This is a question that's never really been definitively answered, and I'd love to hear what GBCI says about it. Risking Jason's enduring wrath, I'll say that my take is that you can exclude them - I just don't see how there is any sustainability benefit to including a product that isn't eligible for the relevant criteria. If the intent of the credit is to promote energy efficient products, penalizing you for purchasing something with no clearly-identified alternative doesn't really benefit anyone. Better to exclude it and focus on the choices at hand. The one alternative I would recommend would be trying to research microwave ovens to see if there is a way to identify more or less efficient models. If you can document that the ovens you purchased were similar to Energy Star in terms of their performance relative to conventional microwaves, I think that would be a sure-fire winning argument. Hope that helps.
Dan

Yes, you would count these as meeting the "Salvaged Material" criteria and use the replacement value of $700 as the cost.

I think this should work. However, as they said, it's up to USGBC. I would ask them if you have any doubt.

Katie, I'm not sure this will fly, given that "refurbished" is considered a sustainable attribute for furniture, not electronics, under the credit language. Also, could encouraging use of refurbished IT equipment encourage use of older, less-effiicient equipment?

If you think you can overcome these concerns then maybe it's worth a shot. I would problably just document that the unit is refurbished from offsite, which is something the vendor should be able to provide documentation for.

In any case, I don't think this would qualify under IOc1, since if it's going to be allowed, it's covered here. Unless you want to get more ambitious and do some kind of "comprehensive electronics impact reduction plan" that goes well beyond the idea of this credit.

This is a good question, Cara - the issue of "salvaged" furniture can be tricky within the LEED context. First off, it is possible to count salvaged furniture towards the credit threshold by determining the "replacement cost" of a comparable piece of furniture. However, your example of using chairs that had been in storage is not guaranteed to earn compliance. LEED doesn't want to encourage project teams to move old chairs from one floor of the project building to another floor and count it as salvaged. The concept of "salvaged" material makes a lot more sense in the NC context, where you can deconstruct a steel wall frame and then use the salvaged steel to create an interesting architectural feature on the newly built wall; the concept just doesn't translate as well to EBOMEBOM is an acronym for Existing Buildings: Operations & Maintenance, one of the LEED 2009 rating sytems.. The best example I can give you of a piece of furniture that would count as salvaged in EBOM is the following: picture an old chair made of conventional materials with absolutely nothing sustainable about it. It's nice, but it's old and the owner gets rid of it by donating it to an antiques store. You then go and buy this chair to be used in an office of your project building. Since it's from a resale shop, you can consider it 100% salvaged, even though when it was made in 1970, it was built using virgin materials. Make sense?

To follow up on Jason's (absolutely accurate) comment, in my experience the most common type of LEED-compliant furniture salvage is in institutional settings where furniture, when permanently removed from a building, is placed in long-term storage and made available to other buildings within the institution. Most large universities have a warehouse where old desks, filing cabinets, etc... are kept for years at a time until a need pops up. This is in contrast, as Jason notes, to a situation where furniture is temporarily removed from a building while a renovation takes place and then returned, or alternately moved directly from one building to another. Hope that helps.

This definitely seems like it would qualify under the electric equipment portion of this credit.

Sorry to revert; I need to clarify a few more items:
1) Would hybrid vehicles (not purely electric vehicles) qualify for this credit?
2) Do I include conventional (gas powered) vehicles purchased within the performance period in the template for computation of total amount of purchases?

Pabs, if you're going to include purchased vehicles in your durable goodsDurable goods have a useful life of 2 years or more and are replaced infrequently or may require capital program outlays. Examples include furniture, office equipment, appliances, external power adapters, televisions, and audiovisual equipment. calculations, then you would have to include all vehicles purchased in your calculations, in order to show that you meet the credit threshold.

I would say you could make an argument that hybrid vehicles qualify, but because they are gasoline-powered with electric-assist, it's not a sure thing they would qualify. Might be up to the reviewer.

Have you looked at MRc3: Sustainable Purchasing—Facility Alterations and Additions? Seems like carpet is a more natural fit there, although I supposed one could argue that it's similar to furniture, a durable good, in some respects.

I have an EBOMEBOM is an acronym for Existing Buildings: Operations & Maintenance, one of the LEED 2009 rating sytems. project review report from GBC indicating that carpet is considered a base-building item. Therefore, it cannot be included in this credit table.

Hi Reynaldo, lamp purchases (the actual bulbs) are dealt with separately under the Reduced Mercury in Lighting credit. According to the Energy Star web site, labeled desk lamps are available, and my opinion is that you would need a label on the actual fixture in order to claim compliance with the criteria for this credit. The bulbs don't really factor into this credit at all.

In past projects, teams have successfully incorporated leased goods into their purchase calculations by including any costs associated with the lease that were incurred during the performance period. So, if you pay upfront for the entire lease period and that payment also falls in the performance period, you include it all. Or, if you make regular payments on the lease (say monthly), you would include the amount for associated with the months of the performance period.

Now how would this compare to the solid waste end of this question? End of use for leased computers. can you just document that you lease equipment therefore not able to influence what happens to it at the end of its use?

Nope, when you return leased computers to the manufacturer at the end of the lease, you can claim that as a form of recycling and include the replacement cost of the equipment in your calculations for MRc8.

I've always felt a little strange about this. It seems to me that the nature of leasing is such that it absolves the project of responsibility for disposal - I'm not sure that is something EBOMEBOM is an acronym for Existing Buildings: Operations & Maintenance, one of the LEED 2009 rating sytems. should be rewarding/encouraging. If the options are allowing inclusion of $X of leased computers as 'recycled' even though those computers may end up in landfills vs simply excluding leased equipment from the calculation (as they are not technically a 'purchase' this seems quite reasonable), I think the latter is more consistent with credit intent.

Good point, Dan - I hope that type of revision makes its way into the 2012 language. For now though, this is viable option for project teams, even if it is a bit of a loophole.

If a company leases all copiers and multifunction devices through a third-party vendor, and the lease agreement charges for the equipment lease and toner on a cost-per-click basis, how can project teams successfully document this for MRc2? Is tracking of leased equipment a requirement of LEED EBOMEBOM is an acronym for Existing Buildings: Operations & Maintenance, one of the LEED 2009 rating sytems. under the materials and resources purchasing credits?