Small Green

Well, all I can say is it was a good thing we bought my husband a Garmin GPS unit for Father's Day. Getting to Chicago was the easy part. I-80 all the way. But once we hit the city, it was a little like playing one of those PlayStation games where the cars chase around and you die all the time...

The first session on Saturday, entitled Small Scale Green, set the tone for my experience of the conference. The idea was how to integrate green practices into your planning right now, where you are, and then went on to describe standards that might require a new building. Emphasis was placed on incorporating planned changes into your strategic plan, including measurable goals to help justify more ambitious undertakings later. The speaker also advised attendees to try to include people on your Board or planning committee who support green energy. To help your Board support these initiatives, do not just report the building cost, but also emphasize the reduction in operating costs over time.

Among the practical suggestion for “greening” libraries are things we already do, like keeping track of supplies and recycling book sale leftovers instead of taking them to the landfill. Another suggestion was to develop a collection on green energy practices and highlight it in a display, or to move away from desktop computers to laptops. These suggestions support the notion that we can enhance our role in the community by being the advocate for sustainable practices.

Although somewhat frustrating to me, the speaker postulated that the greenest thing you can do is to preserve an existing building. A part of me sighed deeply, remembering the poor accessibility and ancient infrastructure of my own library, but his point was one we can take to heart: you have to stay on top of maintenance. If you tend to details such as cleaning out the gutters, you avoid more expensive rehabilitation later on. Involve all members of staff in planning, including the maintenance man who may be best able to make suggestions.

The speaker also validated my conviction that HVAC and lighting are at the heart of the green energy problem. He recommended making sure that you are correctly sizing mechanical systems by having a complete energy audit performed, and by action such as installing double-paned windows, making sure there are sweeps under the doors, and routinely changing air filters. Both speakers mentioned several times that one “green” option is to allow for a little wider temperature variation, and you can open windows if the indoor humidity is less than 50%.

One statistic I thought was worth noting is that lighting accounts for 1/3 of the typical electric bill. The recommendation was to think about upgrading fluorescent lighting if it is more than 10 years old because of recent advances in that area. Along those lines, he also mentioned that there is new interest in reporting on energy savings, and noted as an example the website at the University of Vermont has a “dashboard” to communicate their energy savings to the public.

The speakers went on to describe even more ambitious green initiatives such as geothermal ground source heat pumps, under floor ventilation, even earth ducting, as well as solar and small wind power generation projects. They also addressed storm water retention and treatment, using native vegetation in landscaping to reduce water use, and shading reflective pavings to reduce the “heat island” effect. If you are going to go ahead with a new building, you get LEED points for salvage and reuse as well as recycling construction and demolition materials. There are 50 LEED certified libraries in the country right now, and 270 more registered that are in progress.

This was a presentation that gave me a lot of practical ideas for short-term projects that fall into line with the new environmental consciousness of the country as well as plenty to think about in terms of longer-term planning for a possible new library.