The costs of revising vendor contracts and implementing environmental best management practices should be minimal. Some green practices or products may carry small premiums. For example, additional site visits by your contractors for proactive pest monitoring may carry additional hourly charges. At the same time there is the potential for green practices to offset these cost premiums. For example fewer fertilizers, fewer pesticides and fewer tipping fees can help to offset some of the higher costs of a green program.

If your facility employs vendors for some or all of the activities covered by this credit, be sure to formally incorporate environmental best management practices into their contract language. 

You can use performance metrics for the landscape waste and fertilizer parts of the plan to demonstrate at least 20% compliance. You can use any metric that is reasonable and makes sense for your project, but it’s common to use the amount of product purchased or used, or the dollar value of your products, to determine your level of compliance.

Make sure you’re diligent in following practices that are better than standard practices. Teams often document standard practices, believing that this is enough to earn the credit. For example, using conventional methods of fertilizing the grounds is a standard practice and will not pass LEED review. Instead, use alternative organic and natural materials to the greatest extent possible. (See below for additional guidance on use of fertilizers.) 

Work with key operations staff and vendors (such as landscaping and pest management) to determine if any of their current methods qualify as environmental best management practices.

You are permitted to adopt best management practices for fertilizer reduction and landscape waste management incrementally, using a 20% minimum threshold. However, you are expected to adopt best management practices for integrated pest management and erosion and sedimentation control entirely. 

There will be a lot of crossover between erosion and sedimentation controls implemented for this credit, and stormwater management features that can contribute to earning SSc6: Stormwater Quantity Control. Coordinate your documentation of both credits. 

If you are combining your outdoor and indoor integrated pest management programs, only one inventory of pest management practices is necessary when documenting compliance with this credit and IEQc3.6: Green Cleaning—Indoor Integrated Pest Management. However, in your inventory, make sure you take into account all outdoor pest management issues, including but not limited to invasive species and arboreal diseases.

Conduct an inventory of all the products and practices currently implemented on the project site and associated grounds relevant to the operational elements of the Integrated Pest Management, Erosion Control, and Landscape Management Plan.

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