Finavera

We hear everyday of ways we impact ecosystems from our transportation choices to our trash. And as we watch our elected leaders struggle with energy legislation, cars turning to hybrids, corn running diesel VW busses, we wonder how we can personally make an impact.

Finavera Renewables decided to open our US office doors in Portland, Oregon. To maintain the commitment we made as a company to sustainability, we could not fall short with our new office space. We decided to make a normal, non-energy efficient office in a rehabilitated mill into a practical and sustainable space.

To help us achieve this, we worked with the United States Green Building Councils LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Certification system, which is a voluntary rating system that has been a big part of the “green wave” in the building industry. By using the LEED Commercial Interiors rating system (LEED CI), we directed our efforts towards the LEED criterion for a sustainable interior space: energy efficiency, sustainable or recycled materials, natural lighting and indoor air quality to name a few.

Portland, Oregon is an oasis of sustainable building efforts and to create our environmentally conscious office we simply harvested the fruits of our neighbors’ ingenuity. We used our local Re-Building Center to design and construct our conference tables out of the reclaimed Douglas fir beams from the rehabilitated building. Yolo Paint, another local company, has created a line of paint that has zero VOCs (volatile organic compounds- the ones that are creating the holes in our ozone). By using this paint, low-emission sealers, adhesives and furniture systems, we created a low-toxic work environment. We also discovered a local company, EcoWork, that builds work-stations from recycled and renewable resources and to match their efforts, Re-Glassified (another local shop) has created artful glass walls from dumpster windshield glass, which we have used as office walls that double as day-lighting elements.

To celebrate the office opening, we invited local politicians and sustainable companies to an evening reception. We’ll post some of the pictures from that event in the coming days.