Nelson Aggregate Helps “LEED” the Way to Green Buildings

The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system promotes the adoption of sustainable green building and development practices. Nelson Aggregate is pleased to be supplying LEED compliant recycled materials to three municipal projects in the cities of Burlington and Oakville. These projects are the Burlington Performing Arts Centre, the Appleby Ice Centre Expansion, and the Oakville North Park Quad Pad Arena.

What is LEED? LEED is a third-party certification program and an internationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction and operation of high performance green buildings. LEED promotes a whole-building approach to sustainability by recognizing performance in five key areas of human and environmental health including materials selection.

While many people think green buildings are just more energy efficient, as a staff memo* to Burlington Council pointed out, there are additional savings that are not just energy-related that provide environmental benefits to the community:

 

·       Undertaking the LEED administrative requirements, commissioning and Green Building Education demonstrates the City’s commitment and leadership in constructing sustainable built forms

 

·       Diversion of construction waste results in a reduced cost of trucking reduced associated green house gases and less material being sent to the regional landfill site.

 

·       Use of regional materials results in reduced costs for shipping of materials and results in reduced green house gases

 

At the Nelson Burlington Quarry, thousands of tons of used construction materials such as broken concrete, asphalt, blocks, and bricks are brought in from a number of Halton area construction projects. In fact, some of the materials were brought in from the site of the future Performing Arts Centre. Nelson then recycles about 50,000 tons of these materials each year into various LEED-compliant aggregate products that contain from 25% to 100% recycled content.

 

The LEED rating of the construction project is improved in several ways. Points are added because the demolition material from the project is being recycled, because the aggregate for the foundations and parking areas is derived from recycled materials, and because the material is being locally produced. It’s a win-win-win situation. Ultimately it’s the people from the area and the environment that benefit from these sustainable efforts.

Nelson Aggregate is a member of the Canada Green Building Council. See www.cagbc.org for further information on the LEED initiative.

 

* Appleby Ice Centre Expansion Report PR 7-09, February 1, 2009