Page 16 - The Green Building Bottom Line The Real Cost of Sustainable Building

INTRODUCTION xv

But even as my colleagues were making that presentation in Atlanta in 2005, I felt
that there was so much more we needed to say and share with others—lessons learned,
mistakes to be avoided, and opportunities to be realized for businesses that not only
build greener buildings but also embrace a values-centric orientation focused on social
and environmental consequences of what and how and where we build. Despite the
growing awareness in the United States of all things green, the sustainability move-
ment is still very much in its infancy, with tremendous work and a short time frame
4
within which to do that work facing us all. Moreover, there is still a prevalent belief
out there in the business world today that a values-centric, sustainable orientation is
not financially viable.
Political policy planner, one-time U.S. Secretary of Labor, and author Robert B.
Reich laments in Supercapitalism:

For many years I have preached that social responsibility and profitability converge
over the long term. That’s because a firm that respects and values employees, the com-
munity, and the environment eventually earns the respect and gratitude of employees,
the community, and the larger society—which eventually helps the bottom line. But
I’ve never been able to prove this proposition nor find a study that confirms it. 5

Marc Gunther, senior writer at Fortune magazine and author of Faith and Fortune,
echoes Reich’s lament, noting:

The truth is, no study has proven convincingly that social responsibility is good for busi-
ness, and it may be that none ever will. The definitions are fluid and fuzzy, and the inter-
play between values and profitability may be too complex to be reduced to numbers. 6

The Green Building Bottom Line is an effort to redress this lack: To provide a finan-
cially based business case study for how doing the right thing for land and community
also means doing well.
The Green Building Bottom Line is composed of interwoven parts. It is partially a
deep dive into the greening of Melaver, Inc., looking at the time, effort, and resources
expended in shaping a company culture built from the ground up around an ethos of
sustainability (Chapters 1 through 4). It is partially devoted to the examination of spe-
cific green projects we have been engaged in developing, looking particularly at the
costs and benefits derived from each one (Chapters 5 through 7). And it is partially
focused on the time, effort, and resources we have expended outside the company’s
specific projects in an effort to help the green movement become more widespread
(Chapters 8 through 10). Each chapter is written either by a colleague at Melaver, Inc.
or by a close associate (legal counsel, human resources counselor, marketing team
member, public relations advisor) who is aligned with our values and passion and has
worked with us for an extended period of time. My co-editor Phyllis Mueller and I
worked with the authors to shape the stories told in each chapter—me from the inside
looking out, she from the outside looking in. Each chapter has its own flavor, reflec-
tive of the particular roles the authors play in our company and of their slightly dif-
ferent philosophical orientations toward our collective endeavor.