Clark Jones
DCL
While living in New York encourages certain environmentally friendly behaviors, like the use of public transportation, there are many aspects of life that could stand a little eco-improvement. Residential buildings are one such area: many buildings are older, run inefficiently, and use poorly maintained heating systems and outdated appliances such as older toilets that consume significantly more water than their newer counterparts. But with proper education, managers can take some basic steps to make their buildings vastly less wasteful of energy and water—and money.
Enter the Green Supers program, which has set out the goal of training 1,000 superintendents in one year. The program, which is run by the Thomas Shortman Training Fund, quotes studies showing that even before any major expenses are undertaken, simple changes in how a building is operated can reduce energy use by 10 percent—and that if all of the city's large apartment buildings reduced their energy by that much, New Yorkers could save $230 million a year and reduce their carbon emissions by the equivalent of taking 150,000 cars off the road.
Green education
Participating supers enroll in a 40-hour course that covers everything from the basics of building science, including laws of thermodynamics and air movement, to optimizing heating and cooling systems, to monitoring indoor environmental quality. Things like green cleaning and pest control are also covered, and "electives" are offered on topics ranging from green roofs to renewable energy to water reuse: supers can choose from these which skills are most applicable for their buildings. Upon completion, supers are certified by the Building Performance Institute and the Urban Green Council.
The reduction in energy is significant, with sometimes immediately visible results: look at Bill Aristovulos, who has been a super for 18 years. He installed an air conditioning chiller that has not only saved his building $20,000 in energy costs annually, but also 300 pounds of refrigerant from getting into the atmosphere, and low-flow toilets have reduced the building's water consumption by 30 percent. Hector Norat's building on Fifth Avenue is not only of one of the greenest buildings in NYC (built with 60 percent renewable materials), but it also houses the nation's largest residential geothermal pump, which contributes to a 70 percent reduction in heating and cooling costs. Another participating super, John Sarich, has reduced his building's energy costs by 20 percent by taking several relatively simple steps: he installed light sensors in the common spaces and motion sensors in hallways, and—a cost-free move—programmed the elevators so that one switches off during in the lowest period of nighttime use.
In a city where residents spend $13.4 billion every year on electricity, natural gas, and heating oil and where 77 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions come from buildings, providing a green education for the people who run those buildings is a truly crucial step.
Teamwork
As teachers who try to incorporate recycling into their schools know, if you don't have the custodians on your side, you won't get very far in carrying out even the greenest of visions. It's the same with where you live: if you try to save energy in your own apartment but the whole building is run inefficiently, your efforts are limited by those around you. So if you are a super, contact Green Supers and join their effort today, and if you're a renter, try chatting up the manager or superintendent of your building to see what steps toward efficiency they've taken already, applaud them for those, and then help them go farther.
Start getting efficient today
Straight from the source, tips for landlords and superintendents who want to start greening their buildings today (these points can also be handy for homeowners, and if you're a renter, mention these to your super):
1) Air sealing your building is one of the cheapest and most cost effective ways to save money—especially if you focus on the top and bottom of your building.
2) A clean boiler is an efficient boiler. A layer of soot even 1/16 inch thick on the fire-tube of a boiler reduces its efficiency by almost 5 percent. A typical New York City building with that much soot would waste more than $50,000 annually—simply because of dirt.
3) Install motion sensors or bi-level lighting systems in areas where lights are left on all the time, such as hallways, stairwells, laundry rooms and trash closets: you will start to see a return on these investments almost immediately.
