With the passing of Measure J (for jobs) in the past election, LA Community College District added $3.5 billion to the bonds the school already had from previous years to bring the total budget up to $6.5 billion. The money will go towards 50 new buildings and modernizing hundreds of others up to LEED Platinum standards.
LACCD is the largest community college district in the nation, serving 226,000 students yearly. The creation of these buildings brings purpose and mission together. Students learning about sustainable practices for their green job classes can touch and experience the very products that they may be working with later on after they graduate.
Green Building Pages has joined this exciting effort. (this blog is part of GBP) It will provide the evaluation system for the buyers and specifiers of the building materials used in these buildings. It's a unique site in that it's free to the public, comprehensive in its sustainable information and rewards performance vs. advertising dollars. Companies with the most sustainable products, that can prove it through Life Cycle Assessment and third party audits will be listed at the top of selection lists.
This is a very unique approach to a buying guide model where usually ad dollars do the talking. The more money, they higher on the lists products are ranked. In this case, Green Building Pages is encouraging companies to put their money into sustainable design and practices first.
Because the site is free to the public, companies are charged a listing fee of $300 per product placement. If the products featured are to be part of the LACCD Master Bid contract, then the fee goes up to $800 to cover the cost of cross-promotion between LACCD's E-catalog and Green Building Pages and many other promotions including to other school districts.
Green Building Pages has been around since 2000, but it wasn't until this year when it's mission of providing full, transparent information has met the market need. Ironically, this year is also when the USGBC has made "fostering social equity" part of its guidelines. Luckily social equity is something that Green Building Pages has included since its beginning.
For more information write Mary.Hunt@GreenBuildingPages.com or go to Green Building Pages.
