Misleading Green Advertising

Great topic! Ilana Judah, AIA, OAQ, LEED AP BD+C, CPHD Principal, Director of Sustainability FXCollaborative Architects LLP D +1 646 292 8116 | T +1 212 627 1700

Julie Hendricks, This is great! I love it. Check in with Russ. This makes think of his 5 min presentation at ADSDL mtg at GreenBuild in San Antonio. I’m pretty sure his was about products though... -Meredith Sent from my iPad

Julie, I’m already looking forward to attending your session! Perhaps the one tricks that annoys me most (although all do…) is using the wrong baseline. For example: “XX% savings when compared to single pane glass!” (when talking about a terribly performing fully glazed façade that is using plain and standard code-required double pane glass…) Ale. Alejandra Menchaca, Ph.D., LEED AP, WELL AP Senior Associate Thornton Tomasetti 27 Wormwood Street, Suite 200 Boston, MA 02210-1668 T +1.617.250.4100 F +1.617.250.4110 D +1.617.250.4177 M +1.617.999.0274 AMenchaca@ThorntonTomasetti.com www.ThorntonTomasetti.com From: Mere

Great topic, Julie. I wonder if there’s a broader topic, at least to frame the conversation, beyond stats alone. Off the top, some general suggestions related to “greenwashing,” in case they’re helpful

Weirdly, most of that didn’t go through. (The site doesn’t like bullet points…?) Trying again: “Seven Sins of Greenwashing.” If you don’t know UL’s guide, it could provide a useful framework. http://sinsofgreenwashing.com/findings/the-seven-sins/index.html Six Myths of Sustainable Design. Many of the misperceptions about green building (e.g., it costs too much) just won’t die. The research and stats don’t back this up. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/lance-hosey/six-myths-of-sustainable-design_b_6823050.html Lack of clarity. Much of the language of “sustainability” allows a lot of wiggle room. Even calling something “sustainable” begs big questions about what that means. (And, of course, I think you know my pet peeve about calling materials “healthy,” so I’ll harp on that again. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/lance-hosey/the-healthy-materials-myt_b_3684328.html Intention vs. outcome. So much of what is touted as “green” relies on the intention of the design without providing any tangible evidence of a particular result. This happens at the organization level, as well. Many firm websites claim some version of this: “Everything we do is sustainable.” Whatever that means. Predicted vs. actual performance. As example of the above: I think everyone in this group knows the NBI study showing the wild variations between modeled and measured performance. The shift toward measured performance is arguably one of the industry’s biggest developments in recent years. https://newbuildings.org/outcomes-matter/ False equivalency. (To borrow a political term.) Many clients and institutions use a standard they refer to as “LEED equivalent.” In many cases, however, the projects don’t even meet the prereqs for LEED (e.g., fundamental commissioning, which clients often avoid, due to cost). We can’t call something “equivalent” if it doesn’t meet the eligibility requirements. From: Lance Hosey Sent: M

Most excellent topic. I have been struggling with this issue myself and often think back to a session I attended at GreenBiz earlier this year on the importance of ESG reporting. One of the points that stuck with me was made more than once by an airline and an investment firm about the distinction between “governance” and “marketing”. Both are needed to advance a business, but they are not the same and not interchangeable. My sense of how statistics can lie is totally about the way it is being deployed (greenwashing). One of my current points of conversation is the need for far more structure and integrity in “governance” which then leaves “marketing” to do its thing. Rand From: Lance Hos

Benjamin Disraeli:  "There are three kinds lies, damned lies, and statistics"

try again... Benjamin Disraeli:  "There are three kinds of lies:  lies, damned lies, and statistics"

Ha! I think a big part is omitting some key components (sin of omission?). My grandfather used to illustrate this (imagine his Bronx accent as you read), “well, it’s the truth and nothing but the truth, but… the whole truth…?” The idea that all your data can be correct but not the whole story is a big contributor to misleading the audience. 100% of the wood on this project is FSC certified. Did I omit the fact that there is $10 worth of wood on my $100,000,000 project? My bad! From: Luk

And what you find on the interwebs – supposedly never uttered by Disraeli: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damned_lies,_and_statistics F

I want to go to Greenbuild just to hear your talk! I like that this thread is posted around the time that Arch 50 is due, as we are all trying to interpret poorly worded questions in a way that allows us to showcase, without unreasonable liberties, what we’ve been able to do. 1. One of my favorites in simulation is an image a student of mine produced that shows what appears to be a good indoor balance of light…but the scale reads between .05 and .3 foot candles, way too low to be useful. I will never forget reviewing that one. 1. I start some of my lectures off with another one where I show what looks like two different shading options on a building; one shows lots of blue false colors and the other one is the reds and yellows. I ask students which shading device is more effective?…and after they all agree that it is the blue one, I tell them that there is no difference, it was just a manipulation of the scale. I can send images if you want to include these. 1. Another one that drives me crazy is seeing all the daylighting studies that show abundance of daylight with acres of glass but do not include blinds or shades in the simulation, even though the typology (office, often) demands them. In a recent office project, we showed that (for a specific orientation in the Seattle area) manual blinds or shades are likely to be open around 40% of the time; automatic mechanized blinds/shades open 73% of the time. Without diving into the metrics, this meant that daylight studies that don’t include manual blinds or shades would overestimate daylight (sDA >50% 150 lux) by 55% to 25%, or more than 2x!. If the client/tenant ponies up for automatic blinds/shades they would only have overestimated daylight by 55% to 52%, a very small amount. Mechanized shades are not the norm in my experience, so most teams are misleading clients. 1. I have loads of others, but professional courtesy keeps many of us, I’m sure, from sharing. -Kjell ................................................................. Kjell Anderson AIA, LEED AP BD + C Associate Director of Sustainable Design LMN 801 Second Avenue, Suite 501 Seattle, WA 98104 T 206 682 3460 lmnarchitects.com<%20lmnarchitects.com%20> From: Jul

Julie, I’ll send images separately. For the daylighting study, there are lots of details: We used Diva for Rhino and Diva for Grasshopper to run simulations on a specific orientation in Seattle, using sDA 300-50 as the yardstick, but we tweaked it to 150 lux instead of 300. We assumed office users could/would be located along the perimeter, so glare a couple of feet inside the window was going to trigger manual/auto shades to go down. Diva uses the Lightswitch algorithm to generate a schedule of when manual and auto shades are deployed, with only a few simulation-user inputs. Manual shades tend to be lowered and not raised very often, while auto shades are raised when periods of glare are over. Thus, shades are much more often open when they are automated/motorized, allowing in more daylight annually. How much more depends on the types of users, their work and sensitivity to light, how active the users would be with manual blinds, and many more things. As with any simulation, there are a great number of caveats. The simulation results also match my experience with multi-occupant manual and auto shade deployment in our office. For those who are daylighting experts, please correct me if I misspoke. -Kjell ................................................................. Kjell Anderson AIA, LEED AP BD + C Associate Director of Sustainable Design LMN 801 Second Avenue, Suite 501 Seattle, WA 98104 T 206 682 3460 lmnarchitects.com<%20lmnarchitects.com%20> F

I don't think that a daylight study should be considered incorrect just because occupants of a building are too freaking lazy to get up and open a blind.  Furthermore, I don't think we should be advocating for mechanized shades just because they are more typically open, as they also (typically) require power.  Everybody needs to move more to increase wellness and the simple act of walking over to the window to open the shade also encourages random conversations with fellow co-workers.  This goes to everyone having control over their own environment and everybody needing to exercise this control in whatever way they can - by opening and closing blinds, by bring plants to work, by taking the stairs and not the elevator, by not buying products infused with carcinogens, etc. So Julie, love the topic, sounds like another great Greenbuild session, and I will definitely sign up.  But can we ALSO focus on a deeper understanding of what we are trying to accomplish and some basic rules for how to do that? The best antidote for Greenwashing is understanding the issue.  

Anne, I’d love to change occupants minds and have them become active users and any thoughts you have on this would be appreciated. I believe the daylight studies are incorrect not because the occupants are lazy, but because the people doing the simulation are presenting an ideal scenario instead of a realistic one. In order to be accurate enough to be actionable, when we model things we need to consider human nature and tendencies, based on research. Most of the studies I am railing against shown tons of daylight to justify lots of glass. The reality is that the amount of daylight will be much less than shown in the misleading daylight studies. -Kjell F

The below is why I love Anne Hicks Harney FAIA. Don M. Jones, FAIA, LEED AP BD+C PRINCIPAL, DIRECTOR OF SUSTAINABLE DESIGN EwingCole Federal Reserve Bank Building 100 N. 6th Street Philadelphia, PA 19106-1590 DIRECT 215.625.4115 TEL 215.923.2020 MOBILE 610.529.5297 FAX 215.574.9163 EMAIL djones@ewingcole.com ewingcole.com

The latest stats/rationale for reducing the auto regs is great example of stretching the truth with statistics... Best ed On Wed, Jul 25, 2018, 11:41 AM Don Jones wrote: