Past Is Prologue

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So the team had to look deeper. They discovered that a big heat exchanger used to chill a computer facility was drawing fresh tap water, using it once, and sending it down the drain. By simply recycling the cooling water in this one room, says Bettin, the Mart was able to reduce water usage by 10%. Elise Zelechowski, associate director at the Delta Institute, tips her hat to the council for helping the Mart find better means to reach its goals. "They asked us to go through a detailed evaluation process," she says, "to understand the potentially complicated water usage project we had on our hands."

Overall, the Mart has cut its water consumption about 35%, or some 20 million gallons a year, since 2001. That means a smaller water bill—more than $100,000 less per year—but also lower electricity charges, because pumping water into a building's upper floors is a big consumer of energy.

OPERATIONS

For the Mart's tenants and workers, the most visible changes have been in the building's day-to-day operations. Take the dreary task of dust-mopping the Mart's seven entryways and miles of common areas. Done wrong—say, by using a mophead already loaded with grime—dry dusting only swirls the particulates around, a no-no given LEED-EB's stringent air-quality standards. What's more, a bad dust mop can force a janitor to repeat the job more often, encouraging the use of more aerosol antidust agents. More spray means more chemicals into the air, another no-no.

Avoiding waste, and sending it to the right place, also became a mission. Home to hundreds of furnishing and fixture showrooms, as well as a series of trade shows, floor space at the Mart is refitted with fashion-show frequency: Every year, more than 700,000 square feet of renovations take place—a space about 35 times larger than the average commercial building in the U.S. To encourage the use of green products in new construction, the Mart opened its own building-supply shop in the basement, stocked with discount-priced, sustainably harvested wood, low-vapor paints, and a menagerie of high-efficiency bulbs.

To keep this river of construction debris from flooding landfills, the Mart turned another part of its basement into an enormous recycling operation. In the loading bay, a full-time recycling supervisor guides a steady parade of workers hauling debris to a row of truck-size blue containers marked for practically every conceivable species of waste: cardboard, metals, construction materials, recyclables, and electronics.

In one corner, a $3,800 "Bulb Eater" sits atop a 55-gallon drum. When fluorescent tubes are fed into its maw, a spinning grinder reduces them to dust, and hospital-grade filters keep any toxins from escaping. For $360 per drum, Fluorecycle, of suburban Ingleside, hauls the drums to a plant where it recovers and recycles the glass, aluminum, copper, phosphor, and toxic mercury. Altogether, the share of refuse sent to landfills has fallen to roughly 35% today, from 45% in 2005.

NEXT

The race to earn points for a LEED award has its limits, of course. The Mart chose not to install a green roof or solar panels. A rooftop garden, in principal, helps a building stay cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter by adding a layer of insulation. It also absorbs rainwater, reducing the flow into overtaxed sewers. The Mart, with superstrong, 10-inch cement floors, could easily support such a roof. But the concrete already provides as much or more insulation than plantings would. And in overcast Chicago, solar panels would cost too much for the power they'd generate.

Still, Bettin considers environmentalism to be one of those never-ending pursuits: Good as you are, you can always be better. Plus, a building as gargantuan as the Mart simply cannot be retrofitted all at once. For instance, while about 3,000 of its more than 4,000 windows have been replaced with high-efficiency upgrades, at $3,000 a pop, it will take another few years to switch out the rest.

The Mart is also planning to buy 5,000 square yards of carpet for public and trade-show areas. A top priority was to make sure the flooring contained as much recycled and recyclable materials as possible. But the choice came down to something less obvious: color. Why? Brighter carpets reflect more light back into the room, which would allow the Mart to use fewer bulbs. Fewer bulbs, in turn, would cut power consumption directly—and indirectly, too, since they give off less heat, which reduces demand for air conditioning. "You start to see purchasing guys thinking through long chains of implications to make the best decision," says Kennedy. "Everyone is beginning to think in long, connected ways."

And not just inside the Mart. Bettin's team is advising senior operations executives at Vornado on ways to save energy at its huge portfolio of commercial buildings. Locally, the transfer of skills happens by doing, because all the contractors, designers, and show exhibitors who come to the Mart have to follow its new green guidelines. Already, Chicago has four other LEED-EB buildings and more than 250 pending projects, more than any other U.S. city. After all, if a building as big and old as the Merchandise Mart can meet 21st century environmental standards, why can't others?

Aston is Energy & Environment editor for BusinessWeek in New York.

With Damian Joseph.