The Refinishing Touch Blog

Energy-neutral buildings, once considered implausible, have begun to spring up throughout the nation as technology catches up with sustainable ambitions. Buildings and housing developments in Massachusetts, California and Arizona, planned or being built, utilize new, cutting-edge technology to produce or offset as much energy as they use. The government is also looking into applying the technology to reduce the energy usage of Federal buildings. This means that buildings, which currently account for about 40 percent of all energy usage in the U.S., will be able to lower their net energy usage to zero or near zero.

The technology exists for buildings to go energy-neutral, one of the major hurdles is cost. Despite growing popularity and slowly declining prices, the technologies that allow buildings to run on a net energy of zero are considered too high for the everyday homeowner to purchase: The estimated savings for switching to solar panels and wind-powered generators meets the initial outlay in about 12 years. While 12 years may seem like a long time, the amount of energy saved during that time alone means big benefits for the environment.

While net-zero energy technology is a huge help to the environment, it’s also shows that everyday homeowners can get involved in taking bigger steps towards sustainability and that large-scale changes are not limited to national hotel chains and corporate buildings. Every person can take steps to be more sustainable, and with any luck, as technology improves, tomorrow it will become ordinary for everyday people to adopt initiatives that today may seem extraordinary.

In December, we wrote about the City of Palo Alto, California and their web conference with AltaTerra Research called Carbon Footprint Reduction for the Long Haul. One of the key voices behind the conference was that of Karl Van Orsdol, Sustainability Leader and Energy Risk Manager for the City of Palo Alto. Karl was kind enough to take some time to talk to TRT and share his thoughts on sustainability as the first to take part in our series of “Keeping it Green” interviews.

What inspired you to get involved in sustainability?
I have always been inspired and awed by the natural environment. Starting out as a tropical biologist, I realized that forest use by timber companies, water use by power companies, and industry were major threats to the natural environment. So I focused my career on the interface between business and the environment. Sustainability is a natural outcome of that evolution. Sustainability is business and people acting to preserve nature and natural resources for future generations.

What does your job involve?
I work to help the City of Palo Alto develop and manage renewable power. At this point, about 70% of the City’s electricity comes from renewable, non-fossil sources. I also manage the City’s Greenhouse gas emissions work, where we are working to cut emissions by 15% by 2012 from their 2005 levels. This involves setting up an enterprise-wide system for monitoring electricity, natural gas, water, gasoline, diesel and compressed natural gas use in our fleet of 130 facilities and 600 vehicles. We are also looking at reducing our CO2 by ensure all products that are recyclable are not discarded.

What’s the best example of sustainability you’ve come across?
This is a tough question. Certainly some European cities, especially in Scandanavia, have developed renewable energy, public transportation, and 100% recycling programs that are clear leaders and which we in government in the US are trying to model. The key is to maximize sustainability while maintaining and improving living conditions.

What’s the most difficult element of your job? Do you find it challenging to motivate others to be sustainable?
The most difficult part of the job involves motivating myself and others to be sustainable. People want to be sustainable and want to make the right choices – or at least if they knew the impact of some decisions and had lower cost options available, they would choose those options. Motivating myself and others to continually look at what they do, what choices they make, and to see if there are better options is challenging sometimes. You can’t aim to achieve perfection, but if you can do the 80:20 rule, we would be so much closer to a sustainable future than we are now.

If you could enforce everyone to follow one sustainable initiative, law, or regulation, what would it be?
I don’t think enforcement works. I much prefer providing options that take into account the true environmental costs of actions, and letting people choose. Ultimately, if we fully account for the hidden costs of environmental degradation in products and services, people would make the lower cost, environmentally sustainable, choice. What we need to do is ensure that those costs are fully incorporated into products and services.

Who is your green icon?
The rural people of sub-Saharan Africa. In my years of working with them they show a resourcefulness in recycling, a lack of conspicuous consumption and an ability to live within the natural environment that is amazing.

What do you do in your everyday life to be more sustainable?
In California we have a looming water issue – so we reuse our dish and shower water to water houseplants and the lawn. We keep what lawn grass we have long to reduce water demands. We minimize our driving whenever possible and when we do drive, we use a hybrid. We manage our energy use very closely. We try to buy less, and when we do buy, we buy locally. Despite our efforts, our personal GHG emissions are still non-sustainable in the long run.

How can people make an everyday difference with regards to sustainability? Do you have an simple tip that can easily help people live more sustainably?
The two biggest factors in greenhouse gas emissions are electricity use and transportation. Keep your home heated or cooled at a reasonable level; put on a sweater if it’s cold. Try to walk, bike, or take public transport to work at least once a week.

Labels: City of Palo Alto, Green, Sustainability

2009 was a challenging year for many businesses. TRT’s founder and CEO, Mario Insenga, shared his reflections on the year in an article he wrote for Green Lodging News which was published this week.

In the article, Mario talks about how by choosing refinishing over buying new furniture, hotels can balance their budgets while being environmentally conscious and staying up-to-date on modern consumer demands. Take a look at the article here and feel free to let us know your thoughts on other ways the hospitality industry can work to make 2010 a year of growth and progress.

Yesterday’s conclusion of the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi brought global attention to the United Arab Emirates as one of the epicenters of innovation in sustainable building. Just 18 miles outside the city of Abu Dhabi lies the future home of Masdar City, which aims to be the world’s first carbon-neutral and zero-waste city.

Masdar City’s construction, projected for completion in 2016, will use a number of innovative new building materials. BASF, a chemical company that works to produce more environmentally friendly chemical products, will provide insulation materials, pigments for reducing surface heat, and low-emission concretes that will all be used to make Masdar City a model for sustainable building.

Although the BASF’s new special concrete, which will be used throughout construction, reduces carbon dioxide emissions during production by 60 percent, low emissions will not come at the expense of quality. New plasticizers preserve concrete quality during transports, make processing easier, and yield strong, durable finished products.

As a key presenter at the summit, BASF has taken a leading role in showcasing not only its own green technologies, but the development of Masdar City as well. Dr. Tilman Krauch, head of BASF’s Construction Chemicals division stated, “We provide our customers in the construction industry with highly efficient concepts, economically and ecologically.”

In Masdar City, they’re doing just that: creating more than construction materials, they are building an entire sustainable metropolis.

At The Refinishing Touch we modify thousands of armoires each year as our hospitality clients replace CRT televisions with new flat screen LCD and plasma alternatives.

This presents an interesting challenge - what happens to old TVs? Well, in many cases they could become part of the 3 million tons of electronic waste generated by the US each year.

Yes, 3 million tons – the hurdle here is that older TVs and computers are difficult to recycle because they contain toxic materials and often require special pickups or arrangements. Currently only 13.6 percent of televisions are recycled properly, while the remaining 86.4 percent occupy landfills.

As a company committed to using environmentally sound practices, The Refinishing Touch has launched a television recycling program to combat this growing e-waste problem. The new program recycles e-waste in compliance with OSHA and EPA industry standards, along with all local, state, and federal laws and regulations.

Our project is already delivering significant returns: a global hotel chain enlisted TRT to recycle TVs at two of its locations, Alexandria and Williamsburg, Virginia. At these we’ve modified over 330 armoires to accommodate new televisions, and recycled all the existing TVs that had been phased out.

With such a large stake in environmentally refinishing the furniture that holds televisions, it’s only natural for TRT to take an interest in the safe recycling of televisions as well. If we can lead the way with environmentally safe and sustainable practices in armoire modifications, we can and should do the same with the accompanying TVs.

For more information about our new television recycling program, visit http://www.armoireconversion.com/tv_recycling.html.

It often seems that going green requires significant innovation and reimagination. For example commercials would have us believe that the car is being reinvented to improve fuel efficiency, not power. However, the ways that the average person becomes more environmentally friendly are often much more subtle. We can build our homes with sustainable materials, recycle newspapers, plastics and soda cans, and turn off the lights when we leave rooms. Similarly, the way we travel needs no drastic overhaul. A few simple tweaks are all it takes to make 2010 a more environmentally friendly year than the last.

Some eco-friendly moves occur in the methods we travel: walking through cities is an easy way for travelers to stay immersed in their surroundings and keeps fuel emissions low; taking public transportation instead of renting a car is usually cheap and intuitive; and flying non-stop isn’t just easier, but it also saves fuel.

Other improvements require some changes to daily routines. At hotels, we are accustomed to freshly laundered sheets daily (sometimes with the added luxury of candy on the pillow), but choosing to reuse sheets saves time and energy while sacrificing little in comfort, and many hotels often provide a linen-reuse program. Using reusable water bottles can make a difference in preventing plastic bottles from ending up in landfills. Lastly, eating in local restaurants with local ingredients saves travel and energy, and can also improve your experience as you get a taste of the region without falling victim to sham authenticity and familiar chains.

Travelers don’t need to reinvent the vacation wheel. How we move through and experience the world doesn’t require any radical changes in order to become greener. We as travelers simply need to be proactive in making sure our travels are green and realize that even our smallest changes can yield considerable returns.

As more businesses and organizations work to become eco-friendly, a new technology promises to help buildings manage energy consumption and costs. Thermeleon roof tiles, developed by a group of students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), are designed to offset high heating and cooling expenses by changing colors like a chameleon. On cold days, such as in the winter when the sun is at its lowest impact, the tiles turn black to absorb what heat it can. On hot days, like in the summertime when the sun's heat is at its most intense, the tiles turn white to reflect heat.

The Thermeleon team, which won the third annual MIT Making and Designing Materials Engineering Contest (MADMEC), hope to further develop this technology in order to lower heating and cooling costs of buildings everywhere. The tiles are constructed with a polymer gel that reacts to changing temperatures in the form of changing color, and they also use common materials such as glass and plastic to keep costs low.

While still in its early stages, Thermeleon tiles show great potential to help individual homeowners as well as businesses to save money and help the environment by reducing the usage of heating and cooling systems. Hopefully, innovative ideas like this will continue to grow and develop in order to drive environmental sustainability towards the future.

Labels: building energy, hospitality industry, MIT, thermeleon

For many organizations and hotels, the uncertainty of 2009 means that 2010 needs to start with a definite direction. But where to head?

In 1900 L. Frank Baum published The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, also known as the ‘Great American fairytale’. The story resonated with readers across the globe, with engaging characters, narcoleptic fields of poppies, winged monkeys and the notion that ‘there’s no place like home’. When a tornado lands her in Oz (on the Wicked Witch of the East) Dorothy finds herself wondering where to head after being told to see the wizard in Emerald City for help in getting back home. She’s in an unknown land and doesn’t know quite what to do.

Many hotels, recovering from the tornado of the 2009 economy, find themselves in a similar bewildered state. They’re in an unknown land – one full of low occupancy rates, harsh business conditions, increased competition – with no given directions. Where do they head now?

There may not be a yellow brick road to follow, but a greener path continues to present itself for industry leaders to follow as a means to achieve more sustainable business practices in whatever way possible.

Refurnishing and refinishing are two ways that businesses can help themselves as they continue on their way in 2010. From hotels in need of updating accommodations to provide modern and pleasing décor for guests at reduced costs, to colleges that need to update dorm rooms with slashed budgets, reviewing alternatives to ‘rip and replace’ are not only environmentally-friendly, they’re green – good for the planet, the business, and its reputation.

Businesses are more prepared now than ever for the challenges that might present themselves along the way. Similar to America’s beloved fairytale, the business challenge of 2010 will demand a brain, a heart and courage to push us along. In terms of direction, we know that the green-brick road is a solid start and look forward to the adventures we are bound to meet along the way.

Labels: 2010, economy, Green, Sustainability