Update: Shh - don't tell anyone - these apartments are green! | The Greenwash Brigade

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Update: Shh - don't tell anyone - these apartments are green!

About a week after this post, I received an e-mail from the marketing
firm working on Blue: We "immediately realized that you are right. The info on what makes Blue so green was definitely hidden on the site. We moved that up to the homepage for everyone to see."

Excellent!

Their language on what makes Blue so green could use some more specifics and be more comprehensible to consumers. What does it mean to save 5,000 gallons of water per year? Is that a 1% improvement or a 30% improvement over what's normal? They could also avoid stating the obvious ("higher levels of insulation") and highlighting tiny things like "Locally Quarried Granite in some units." But they're trying and getting close.

The e-mail also included an invitation for coffee to "make sure we are speaking the right language." And a tour of Blue.

We met, and I'm happy to report that while Blue isn't perfect, they are doing a good job. They have an interesting underground parking construction method that they didn't highlight on the info sheet and great stormwater management - again not on the sheet. They're also doing education with prospective and new tenants.

I'd live there.

July 11, 2008 by Janne K. Flisrand
1 comments

tags: green building marketing

Comments (1)

Allen | Respond
August 11, 2008 10:51 PM PT

Here in Colorado despite a few decades of huge population growth, we're on the verge of being a more populous state than Minnesota. The crazy thing is even with being a hair shy of 5 million people, 85% of the water in the state is still used for agriculture. Maybe it's not where we live but what we eat that will make the difference with water?

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Our hand-picked environmental professionals, each part of the Public Insight Network, are on the hunt for "greenwash" as they examine eco-friendly claims by companies, governments and other groups. They ask tough questions about the mainstreaming of green, from the perspectives of people in the trenches who are focused on these issues 24/7.

Jim Nicolow is a nationally recognized expert on sustainable design and leads the sustainability initiative for Lord, Aeck & Sargent, overseeing the incorporation of sustainable design strategies and features into the firm’s design projects. He is a LEED® Accredited Professional with extensive knowledge of the U.S. Green Building Council’s (USGBC) LEED rating system.

Janne K. Flisrand has worked as an affordable housing and urban planning research consultant for five years, primarily supporting local non-profits. Her focus is on transit, transit-oriented design, affordable housing, and sustainability. Currently, she’s the program coordinator for Minnesota Green Communities, a program promoting affordable, healthy, sustainably built housing throughout Minnesota.

Dennis Markatos-Soriano recently completed a Master's in Public Affairs at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School. He is now launching Sustainable Energy Transition (SET) to help individuals and institutions move from dependence on oil and gas to an efficient use of renewables. Previously, he co-founded SURGE (Students United for a Responsible Global Environment), which aims to bring young progressives together across issues of environmental and social justice throughout North Carolina and beyond. In the summer of 2006, he helped to start a small green company, Greenway Pedicabs, to provide a greenhouse gas-free transportation option for people in the Triangle of North Carolina.

Heidi Siegelbaum is a principal with Calyx Sustainable Tourism and works primarily on advancing sustainable tourism practices. She also specializes in science translation, cross-border indicators with Canada, cross-disciplinary planning and environmental technical assistance to businesses. Previously, she was in-house legal counsel for EPA for industrial chemicals and biotechnology and the senior performance measure analyst with the Washington State Department of Ecology. She is on the technical advisory committee of the Seattle Culinary Academy and a long standing member of the Chefs Collaborative.

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