FSC say what?

Using FSC products on a project is supposedly one of those things that you should do, and it will help you get that extra LEED point, too....but what the heck is it again? Yes, we know that the wood was harvested in some sustainable way, but what does that really mean? Whether the wood's coming from an FSC certified forest or just a normal joe-schmoe forest, isn't it still killing a tree? Now I love trees, but I also love buildings, and buildings need wood, so I'm not going to be the one to tell you to chain yourself to an old dying oak to save a forest. BUT I would like to know that by using that forest for our own built environment that we're not completely giving mother nature a nasty scar.

And IN steps the FSC, or Forest Stewardship Council who decided to make some serious guidelines for practices worldwide to help keep our forests going strong for years to come. And thanks to LEED, the FSC has become the most popular council of it's type, raising more and more awareness of sustainable forest management. LEED v4 (or LEED 2012) is now on it's 5th commenting period, and though credit MR7 Certified Wood may be transformed into 'Sourcing of Raw Materials,' FSC products will still be viable items for qualification. And for the most part, FSC hopes to be a model for others in the industry since this credit will now require a more stringent certification/documentation of other non-wood products.

But anyways, back to what it means to be FSC Certified. Now, to clarify, there are two types of certification which work hand-in-hand. The first is the Forest Management Certification which is meant for forest managers and land owners. To obtain this, managers and land owners need to prove to an FSC approved third-party independent certifier that they are abiding by FSC's Principles and Criteria. Below you will find the outline of FSC's principles with more in depth info here. (and mind you, this is just for the continental US. Regional variations have been made for other areas around the world). Follow these things, and you are certified.

• PRINCIPLE #1: COMPLIANCE WITH LAWS AND FSC PRINCIPLES - Forest management shall respect all applicable laws of the country in which they occur, and international treaties and agreements to which the country is a signatory, and comply with all FSC Principles and Criteria.

• PRINCIPLE #2: TENURE AND USE RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES - Long-term tenure and use rights to the land and forest resources shall be clearly defined, documented and legally established.

• PRINCIPLE #3: INDIGENOUS PEOPLES’ RIGHTS - The legal and customary rights of indigenous peoples to own, use and manage their lands, territories, and resources shall be recognized and respected.

• PRINCIPLE #4: COMMUNITY RELATIONS AND WORKER’S RIGHTS - Forest management operations shall maintain or enhance the long-term social and economic well being of forest workers and local communities.

• PRINCIPLE # 5: BENEFITS FROM THE FOREST - Forest management operations shall encourage the efficient use of the forest’s multiple products and services to ensure economic viability and a wide range of environmental and social benefits.

• PRINCIPLE #6: ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT - Forest management shall conserve biological diversity and its associated values, water resources, soils, and unique and fragile ecosystems and landscapes, and, by so doing, maintain the ecological functions and the integrity of the forest.

• PRINCIPLE #7: MANAGEMENT PLAN - A management plan — appropriate to the scale and intensity of the operations — shall be written, implemented, and kept up to date. The long-term objectives of management, and the means of achieving them, shall be clearly stated.

• PRINCIPLE #8: MONITORING AND ASSESSMENT - Monitoring shall be conducted — appropriate to the scale and intensity of forest management — to assess the condition of the forest, yields of forest products, chain of custody, management activities and their social and environmental impacts.

• PRINCIPLE # 9: MAINTENANCE OF HIGH CONSERVATION VALUE FORESTS - Management activities in high conservation value forests shall maintain or enhance the attributes which define such forests. Decisions regarding high conservation value forests shall always be considered in the context of a precautionary approach.

• PRINCIPLE # 10: PLANTATIONS - Plantations shall be planned and managed in accordance with Principles and Criteria 1-9, and Principle 10 and its Criteria. While plantations can provide an array of social and economic benefits, and can contribute to satisfying the world’s needs for forest products, they should complement the management of, reduce pressures on, and promote the restoration and conservation of natural forests.

http://us.fsc.org/mission-and-vision.187.htm

The second is Chain-of-Custody (or CoC) which applies to manufacturers and suppliers who use wood from Forest Management Certified forests. The CoC has been put in place for people like us in the building industry to guarantee products we purchase actually do come from these forests. Because most often FSC wood goes through many hands before hitting the shelves, CoC is there to document the trail and make sure that each supplier, manufacturer, whoever, has abided to certain handling/labeling/threshold requirements. If any entity along the way from forest to shelf (with some exceptions) does not hold this certification, the chain is broken, you may not be guaranteed that the product you have contains x% FSC wood, and it cannot be labeled as such.

Now to earn Chain-of-Custody as a member in the supply chain,  you have three options since there is such a wide array of ways wood can be processed. All-in-all, if the wood you're specifying for LEED has one of these certifications, you're good to go.

• Individual Chain-of-Custody certification - for individual operations or groups of enterprises wanting to certify a chunk of their services together
• Multiple Site Chain-of-Custody certification - for companies with multiple sites
• Project Certification - for objects or buildings complying to FSC standards

To date over 40% of our forest area in the US has been FSC certified with more on the way. Once thought of as a novelty item, having FSC products is not only smart, but becoming more mainstream and more attainable, not to mention quite marketable. Hopefully some of this info will prove a good argument the next time a client gripes about necessity of sustainable wood.

FSC International 

FSC US

FSC Program Areas

FSC Certificate Database

US Green Guys

Becoming a LEED AP has been all the rage these past few years, and everywhere you look, you now see those string of letters on EVERYONE's email signatures. The US may not be number one when it comes to worldwide rankings of greenness, but with all the hype out there in our homeland, you'd think that everyone and their mom's a LEED AP by now. This really got me wondering exactly how many people really do get to tack on a million more letters of prestige after their signatures.

According to GBCI's tally on LEED professionals, the US boasts a whopping 82,019 people with 24,951 being architects (it was not specified if these were licensed individuals or not, but for now, let's just assume so). Wow, that's a lot of architects, right? Or is it? NCARB's list from 2011 counted a total of 104,301 individually registered architects in the country (not counting reciprocities) which makes only 24% of us 'marketably' green. Not to say that those other 76% don't practice responsible design, but should we be pushing this type of standardized education harder since it IS our products that guzzle up a huge chunck of today's energy consumption? Or is there some other way besides passing the LEED exam to show that we actually do know our stuff without having to pay $100s of dollars to another organization? I don't know if there's any clear answer on this one, but the numbers do at least show that LEED is nowhere near slowing down. For the amount of gripes about the system, at least it's moving us in a more positive direction.

Below you will see a diagram showing the total number of architects in the States, one leaf for every 1000 individuals with only about a quarter being a LEED professional of some sort. What do you think? Do more of us architects need to be 'green leaves'? (and no, I'm not alluding that all non-LEED people are 'dead' leaves....it's just a fun tribute to fall, ha). Or does it really make a different in our industry?

And so you might ask, ok, so what about all those other leaves underneath the pile that we can't see.....well it's obvious, right? there are no other leaves, just a guy and his dogs hanging out in the shadows. Random, of course. This whole blog isn't going to be completely serious number crunching material at every post : )

How Green are We?

Welcome one and all to the kick-off of Green Limn where I investigate a variety of topics to try and understand what it means to be green, how to be green, and what notions out there are just a bunch of 'wash. Unfortunately, with the overuse of the term 'sustainability' one often is forced to oversimplify or simply under-digest the real meanings or solutions as to how to make the man-made environment function in a more cohesive manner. No promises here, but hopefully by illustrating some basic to complex concepts we can all at least feel a bit more informed if not wired to question the validity of something being sustainable or not. 

Let's start big. How about the US. Are we a green country? And if so, what does that really mean? Living in Europe, it's already easy to see that the US is far behind, but why is that? Well, simply scratching the surface it's easy to see that space is precious, energy is expensive, gas is not cheap, and recycling is a huge part of life. Right there, by cutting back on one's energy consumption, using public transit ( a car in Paris, are you nuts?), and making conscious decisions about what one throws away, you already have someone who appears 'green' to most. Some 'break-through' advances for some people, such as putting a recycling bin in their home/office is honestly second nature in other parts of the world. There really is no space to continue filling landfills, therefore, something else must be done. It really is hard to grasp comparisons between different nations and their ideas of green since each place has it's own circumstances and stories, but no one ever said it was a bad thing looking to your neighbor for successful tactics to hopefully implement on your own home turf. That is, as long as it's appropriate for your situation. Don't be that guy who simply puts solar panels on his roof that barely gets any sun just to feel better about himself. That's not green. That's just ignorant.

This thought of comparison was still intriguing, so sifting around a bit, I found a few sites ranking countries throughout the world for their greenness. According to Yale's Environmental Performance Index, the US ranked 49th out of 123 countries for 2012. Yikes.

You can find another fun ranking system at Greendex where you can calculate how 'green' your lifestyle is and compare this to countries around the world (it really is an apples to oranges kind of comparison, but hey, it may be something fun to chat about around the water cooler...do offices even have those anymore?....) Ironically, my score came up the same as France. Coincidence?

It's hard to really compare such huge entities to each other so let's zoom in a bit. I was curious to then see how our not-so-great world-wide-ranking US does amongst itself. According to the Green Town's Guide you can see the ratings given to each state and in what area they shine (or don't shine at all). Below gives the criteria used to rate each state, and by the looks of this list, this seems like a fair enough assessment with about 2/5 of our nation at the head of the game (ranking of 3-4). Not bad, but could be much much better. Take it for what you will, because like country to country, each state has it's own circumstances compared to it's neighbor. But hey, at least this sight sheds some light onto what each state is doing individually, and if anything, the info makes a fun graphic. Who knows, if not for the education factor, this could at least  be the next flooring pattern for some carpet rep to come brag about ..... "and we call this sample, 'Waves of Grain, to make a perfect compliment to our Summer Harvest Collection..." for any of you designers out there who've attended these kinds of lunch-and-learns, you know exactly what I'm talking about. We all get it, carpet is only so exciting, but enough with the wacked-out names (and for all you carpet reps out there, I do mean this all in jest. Some of those wacky names really make my day. )

Ratings based on the following criteria:

Air Quality
Water Quality
Recycling Rate
Green Businesses
Renewable Energy Usage
LEED Buildings
Emissions Rate Per Capita
Energy and Water Consumption Per Capita
Waste Generation Per Capita

The 50 States rated on their greenness
( Low = 0 to High = 4)