INTRODUCTION

Welcome to one of the "greenest" offices in the United States. In June 1996, the Natural Resources Defense Council's Washington D.C. office moved into a newly constructed environmentally-friendly building commissioned by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Working closely with our architects and builders, NRDC staff sought out and selected the best commercially-available materials and technologies to minimize consumption of energy and resources and maximize use of natural, recycled and non-toxic materials. NRDC's new home demonstrates that offices can be economic, aesthetically-pleasing, and environmentally friendly.

Below, the paper is organized into four broad sections. The first section deals with environmental materials, the second section covers energy efficiency measures, the third describes our "green" daily operations. Each of these sections describes the products or design techniques used and the environmental benefit from using them. We also discuss performance and cost issues, miscellaneous relevant considerations and end with a source to contact for each area. The fourth, and final, section briefly discusses NRDC's other environmentally-friendly office spaces and our Green Building Project.

Environmental Goals and Principles

NRDC established a set environmental design principles that guided NRDC's design and product choices.

• Demonstrate leadership in state-of-the art environmental and energy efficient office design by using the most advanced, innovative and cost-effective products available.
  
  
• Create a showcase facility that can be a learning tool and an inspirational example for the building profession.
  
  
• Use innovative, natural, renewable, low-toxic and/or recycled materials in place of conventional materials to reduce toxic emissions from unsustainable manufacturing processes and to demonstrate these materials' viability under actual conditions.
  
  
• Protect and enhance indoor air quality to ensure the health, comfort and productivity of the occupants.
  
  
• Reduce or substitute for the use of wood wherever possible to reduce the pressure of excessive harvesting on our nation's forests; where wood was necessary or desirable, 99% of the wood we used came from certified well-managed domestic forests.
  
  
• Demonstrate cutting-edge, cost-effective energy efficient design and equipment throughout the office.

Costs

NRDC paid a premium for design services, as well as for environmental and energy efficiency materials and technologies. In some cases, the environmental materials were only slightly more expensive than well-established conventional materials. In other cases they cost significantly more. Extra design costs can be attributed to the learning curve necessary for a design team and client who are attempting to create something new. We are hoping that many of the lessons we learned in this process can be used to reduce the cost of building environmentally for other designers or clients. As always, the first time something is done is more expensive than would be true in a mature market situation. Table 1 below summarizes the extra material costs incurred by NRDC for the various environmental materials and design features incorporated into the office.

There are several complexities associated with determining the costs of environmental materials as compared with "standard" materials. For example, the internal stairwell cost a significant amount of money and will yield substantial gains in productivity, but is not an "environmental" feature in the strict sense of the word, though it does improve the overall working environment. Similarly, though the environmental Wheatboard material used for the cabinets cost about 5% more than a standard particleboard product, the custom labor required to fabricate the cabinets nearly doubled the total cost for that item. By one calculus, the cost of "being green" is double, while by another, it's essentially equivalent. Because there is no reason why cabinet manufacturers cannot use Wheatboard as opposed to particle board, for the purposes of our analysis, we did not attribute the labor cost for custom cabinet fabrication to environmental costs.