Our business uses large/wide format printing for design plans quite a bit and the paper has accounted for a large portion of our purchasing.
I've gone to our vendors to see about recycled content product, but it just isn't available.
Is there exception at all for needing to purchase product that would normally fall under a typical category but doesn't have a sustainable option for the specific product being used?
I'm 9 percentage points away from this credit because of this and I'll be so disappointed if we don't make it....
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David Posada
Integrated Design & LEED SpecialistSERA Architects
LEEDuser Expert
1980 thumbs up
March 29, 2011 - 4:10 pm
You might try looking into FSC certified wide-format paper:
http://www.fscus.org/paper/
and use the link to find the lists of certified papers and manufacturers. Some of these have recycled content as well. There can be a fuzzy area between products that aren't "available" or "known to be available." In some markets, we've seen printing companies competing with each other to be more "sustainable" by providing wide-format recycled paper, FSC paper, picking up used tubes, cartridges, etc.
Since one of the main goals of LEED is market transformation, they're unlikely to grant an exception based on a vendor's claim it's not available, but that does but some of the burden on individual project teams to push for things like this. That's one way a local chapter of the USGBC or a local LEED user group can be very helpful - putting out the call for a particular product and showing there's real demand for it.