Green Business: Sustainable Food Strategy added to LEED Certification

If you’re reading this blog, you probably already know what LEED Certification is, in case you’re not exactly sure, here’s a brief overview, go to the U.S. Green Building Council site for more info

LEED is an internationally recognized certification system that measures how well a building or community performs across all the metrics that matter most: energy savings, water efficiency, CO₂ emissions reduction, improved indoor environmental quality, and stewardship of resources and sensitivity to their impacts.

So in addition to all the other requirements for being LEED certified, a sustainable food strategy has been implemented. This is an effort to help increase the use of locally grown foods and certified foods.

This is just another step in trying to reduce the carbon footprint of a building after it has been built.

From The Examiner,

Many of the existing LEED standards had an energy reduction strategy. The new Sustainable Food strategy is considered complementary to the other strategies that aim to reduce the carbon footprint of a building. A LEED project provides incentives to purchase building materials within a 500-mile radius of the site, enhancing local economies by keeping profits in the community. The same strategy applies to building operations, and a natural extension of this policy is to include purchasing food sustainably. No matter the size of a business operation, at one time or another, food will be served at an event or a meeting.

Building owners and managers can now gain credit towards LEED certification by using sustainably harvested foods certified by pre-approved organizations including USDA Certified Organic, Food Alliance Certified, Protected Harvest Certified, The Rainforest Alliance, Fair Trade, and the Marine Stewardship Council’s Blue Eco Label, and/or by acquiring food from within a 100-mile radius for food service and catering functions at the building. The threshold for achieving this credit is for 25 percent of all food and beverages to meet one or more of these sustainability criteria. Double points are awarded if the food is both certified and locally harvested.

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