I delivered a dozen red roses to my wife on Friday, the day before Valentines day, at her work in the Alberici Corporation headquarters in St. Louis, MO (Guys, sometimes it’s better to just play it safe). As I drove through the new Alberici complex I was awestruck at the natural beauty of the grounds and the buildings striking architechural design. Alberici Corporation is a customer of mine. I visited their website to learn more about Alberici’s New World Headquarters:  <a

When Alberici Corporation employees move into their new offices in December, they will be moving into one of the nation’s “greenest” buildings.  That’s because the new headquarters — situated in the St. Louis suburb of Overland — is a model for sustainable design and construction, a way of building that significantly reduces life cycle costs, conserves natural resources and enhances the quality of work life for its occupants.

From the start, the project was registered with the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) and measured by their metric rating system called the LEED® (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design) Green Building Rating System.  Alberici is seeking to achieve Platinum LEED® certification, the highest certification level.  Currently, there are only a handful of platinum-certified buildings in the world.

One of the most visible features of the new building is the massive 3-blade wind turbine that sits atop a 124-foot monopole.  Not a common site in St. Louis, the wind turbine is expected to provide close to 20 percent of Alberici’s annual energy needs.  Other examples from this project include:

• More than 95 percent of construction and demolition waste was diverted from the landfill, and either reused, donated or recycled.
• 500,000 (half a million) gallons of water saved per year and zero reliance on city water for sewage conveyance by using rainwater collected in a catchment system.

• Use of innovative building materials such as a soybean polymer for the garage roof membrane.
• As a guy in the warehouse business, I don’t think enough about how I can reduce my impact on the environment. It appears from what I read that “Going Green” can be profitable and is the way of the future. I am inspired to read about positive changes being made that will have a positive impact on our earth. One such article that I read was from AdamCRES:
  

  Reading the latest book to be recommended to Adam; The Necessary Revolution: How individuals and organizations are working together to create a sustainable world. hits on the ultimate manifestation of sustainable commercial real estate development, or at least a pretty cool idea. The term “Industrial Ecology” is the concept of fitting together different businesses in an integrated design where waste by-products in one becomes resources for another. In essence a building, complex or industrial park works like a natural forest. Elegantly simple. The challenge in our case is to get the different users, consumers, players to play along with the concept.

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dn6oFaVkvoY