Construction Practices

So how do you go about making a green building? For one thing, you think about the materials that go into the building. Selecting "green" materials can make a tremendous contribution to the sustainability of the building. Here are some examples of materials used for the main building:

• 4 acres of concrete block walls
• 35 acres of drywall
• 7 acres of carpet
• 12 acres of ceiling tile
• 2,861 interior doors

With quantities like these, it's clearly important to buy green products. EPA specified minimum percent recycled content on each material. In the main building alone, thousands of tons of recycled material went into the products that were installed. By purchasing these products, EPA helped drive the market for recycled material.

During construction, 80% of the Construction Waste was segregated and recycled - keeping about 20 million pounds of materials out of regional landfills. By using an on-site concrete batch plant, EPA eliminated at least 75,000 highway miles of concrete truck traffic and avoided the combustion of more than 10,000 gallons of fuel. Having the plant at the site also enabled wastes like crushed scrap concrete to be directly reused for the project.

A few more of our green construction practices include:

• No on-site burning
• Aggressive forest protection
• Stringent protection for lakes and streams
• Landscaping debris ground and used on-site as mulch
• Gypsum trimmings recycled or applied as soil amendments