The President, CEO and Founding Chair of US Green Building Council Rick Fedrizzi and CEO of Hearst Frank A. Bennack together announced that Hearst Tower has become the first commercial building in New York City to achieve LEED Gold for its new construction and LEED Platinum certification for operating and maintaining its existing building.
Hearst Tower had already won a certification for green building in the year 2006. The present certification is the highest rating to be received for implementing sustainable construction operations, and sustainable maintenance practices.
Through the implementation of such sustainable practices and regular evaluation of energy saving procedures, Hearst has reduced energy consumption by 40% and reduced the amount of wastage going to landfills by 82%. The tower has become the first commercial office building to use the composting program where all of its wet food waste is composted. The building also recovers non potable rainwater for the purposes of cleaning sidewalks and controlling overall usage of water and thus reducing annual water usage by 30%.
The tower was examined for a period of three months and major procedures such as re-commissioning of its HVAC systems, energy audit to monitor low cost energy efficiency, implementation of green building programme, waste audit to monitor the amount of waste going in to landfills and indoor air quality audit to monitor areas where the quality of air could be improved. The LEED project team for Hearst was led by Lou Nowikas who is the Senior Director of Corporate Real Estate and Victor Liu who is the Project Manager for LEED.
Source: http://www.hearst.com